Description

Large nautichal chart shows Strait of Tartary, which divides the Russian island of Sakhalin from mainland Asia, and connects the Sea of Okhotsk in the north with the Sea of Japan in the south.

The strait was a puzzle to European explorers until the mid 19th century. Only in 1848 a Russian navigator Gennady Nevelskoy surveyed the north part and the outlet of the Amur River, proving Strait of Tartary was not a bay. In 1850 he founded Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, the first Russian settlement in the region and soon one of the main economic centers on the Pacific coast of the Russian Empire.