This 1824 map of Tobolsk Province is from a larger work, Geograficheskii atlas Rossiiskoi imperii, tsarstva Pol'skogo i velikogo kniazhestva Finliandskogo (Geographical atlas of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Finland), containing 60 maps of the Russian Empire. Compiled and engraved by Colonel V.P. Piadyshev, it reflects the detailed mapping carried out by Russian military cartographers in the first quarter of the 19th century. The map shows population centers (six gradations by size), postal stations, roads (four types), provincial and district borders, factories, monasteries, forts, and redoubts. Distances are shown in versts, a Russian measure, now no longer used, equal to 1.07 kilometers. Legends and place-names are in Russian and French. Tobolsk was founded in 1587, soon after the Cossacks under Ermak entered Siberia. Ermak crossed the Urals in 1581, late in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and subsequently sacked the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Qashliq (near Tobolsk). The Russians rapidly moved east across Siberia, reaching the Pacific Ocean by 1639. The interests of the promyshlenniki (fur-trading frontiersmen) who followed the east−west tributaries of the large Siberian rivers that flowed north to the Arctic Ocean (the Ob, Irtysh, Lena, and Yenisey Rivers) largely drove the eastward migration. Tobolsk became the first, unofficial capital of Siberia. It was also where thousands of prisoners of war from the Swedish Army were sent to prison and exile after Sweden was defeated in the Battle of Poltava (1709). The city became the capital of Tobolsk Province and the initial seat of the governor-general of Western Siberia.