286 



EUSSIA m EUEOPE. 



Topography. 



The most elevated town in the Dnieper basin is Vazma, 830 feet above the sea, 

 on the little river of like name. Like its neighbour DorogohiiJ, it is a busy place, 

 close to the ethnical frontier of Great and White Eussia. Smolensk, capital of the 

 government of like name, covers a large space on both sides of the Dnieper, at the 



Fig. 142. — Smolensk. 

 Scale 1 : 150,000. 



2 Miles. 



intersection of several routes, and of the Riga and Orol, and Warsaw and Moscow 

 railways. It is thus a chief commercial centre, and one of the vital strategical 

 points of the empire. As capital of the Krivichi, it was a flourishing place in the 

 ninth century, and in the fourteenth was said to have 100,000 inhabitants. But it has 

 suflered much from sieges, and in 1812 was burnt at the battle which opened to the 



