This 1826 map of Yakutsk Province and Okhotsk Okrug 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 (two types), borders with foreign lands, provincial, regional and district borders, forts, redoubts, monasteries, and factories. 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. Yakutsk was founded in the early 17th century as a fortress to protect Russia’s gateway to the northeastern regions of Siberia. The region is the homeland of the Yakuts, a Turkic-speaking people who migrated there from southern areas near Central Asia under pressure from the Mongols in the 13th century. The northern reaches of the area, stretching along the Arctic coastline as far as Chukotka, comprised the ancestral home of the Chukchi people and their reindeer herds. The Siberian Yupik and related Eskimo groups in Chukotka inhabited the shore regions and hunted marine mammals, including whale and walrus.