This 1826 map of the Kamchatka District and Kurile Islands 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 and district borders, forts, yurts, and winter camps. 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. The modern history of Kamchatka, a peninsula in the Russian Far East, began with the voyages by Vitus Bering to Alaska in the 18th century. After a long overland journey with supplies across Siberia, Bering founded the new town of Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka in 1740. There he built his ships that voyaged to the New World. On his first voyage, in 1725−30, Bering sailed through a body of water later named for him, the Bering Strait. On his second voyage, in 1741, he became the first European explorer to discover Alaska. The results of this expedition led to a rush for furs, particularly sea otter, and Kamchatka became a staging ground for many subsequent voyages to Alaska. Other ships went south from Kamchatka to the Kurile Islands, which also became important in the maritime fur trade.