To sketch accurately the boundary of the Ukraine toward Muscovy is not easy, even tho there is by no means a gradual transition here, as there is on the White Russian border. The boundary of the Ukraine is even much more sharply defined here than in the region where it separates the Ukrainians from the Poles, Roumanians and Magyars. But it is hard to determine without detailed investigation on the spot, for the official Russian statistics have been compiled very much in favor of the ruling race. In addition, it must be observed that the districts along this border were not thickly settled until the 17th and 18th Centuries. The settlers came from the Ukraine on the one side and from Muscovy on the other, and established themselves in separate settlements. To this day a purely Ukrainian village or small town often borders on one made up entirely of Russians, and the number of ethnographic islands is rather large on both sides. The boundary of the compact Ukrainian territory in the Governments of Kursk and Voronizh passes thru Putivil, Rilsk, Sudza, Miropilia, Oboian, the sources of the Psiol, and Vorskla, Bilhorod, Korocha, Stari Oskol, Novi Oskol, and Biriuch, and reaches the Don River near Ostrohosk. The Don forms a smaller part of the border of the Ukraine than the Dnieper. The boundary line leaves the river at the mouth of the Icorez, cuts the Bitiuh River and, passing Baturlinivka and Novokhopersk, reaches the Khoper River in the country of the Don Cossacks. Here begins the [123]eastern boundary of the Ukrainian country. It extends first along the Khoper River southward, crosses the Don perpendicularly at the mouth of the Khoper, passes along the Kalitva and the Donetz, crossing the Don for the third time near Novocherkask, and, pursuing a wide curve along the Sal River, reaches Lake Manich. Right opposite, on the left bank of the Don, the Ukrainians confront the Kalmucks, the advance guard of the sub-Caucasian and Caucasian medley of races. Among these thinly scattered and culturally inferior tribes, a strong flood of Ukrainian and Russian colonization has been pouring in the course of the past century. The Ukrainian element is gradually predominating in the entire region of Ciscaucasia and is constantly pushing forward toward the east and southeast. New islands of Ukrainian-speaking people are forming and are growing constantly and uniting to form larger complexes. From Lake Manich, the border of the Ukraine country runs southward thru the district of Medveza of the Government of Stavropol, as far as the sources of the great Yahorlik. Then it turns eastward past Stavropol, Alexandrivsk and Novohrihoryvsk. In a narrow strip the Ukrainians here reach the Caspian Sea. It was only suggested in the census of 1897, but proved beyond doubt by the reports of the new settlements of the Ukrainian element in these regions, that the Ukrainian area here shows a great increase.