Accordingly, the real boundaries of the National territory of the Ukraine are insufficiently known. They are best known within Austrian territory, altho the statistics, expecially those of Galicia, are very poor. Even less exact in respect to the distribution of the Ukrainians are the Hungarian statistics. In Russia the condition is worst of all. The first real census here was taken on January 28, 1897. All earlier calculations and estimates are of very questionable worth. For instance, all the Pinchuks, the Ukrainian inhabitants of the Polissye, have been erroneously counted with the White Russians, the Ukrainians in the vicinity of Mhilin and Starodub with the Great Russians. Besides, very many Ukrainians were registered under the general heading of "Russians."
For this reason, it is impossible at the present time to give the boundaries of the Ukrainian racial territory as exactly as those of the Western and Central European countries. The boundaries here given, however, are drawn from official statistical sources, and only very conspicuous and generally acknowledged errors have been corrected.
The western boundary of the compact Ukrainian national territory begins on the shores of the Black Sea at the delta of the Danube, where part of the descendants of the Zaporogs are still devoted to their traditional vocation of fishing. Here the neighbors of the Ukrainians are the Roumanians and Bulgarians. The Ukrainian- Roumanian boundary line then goes thru Bessarabia, Bukowina, and Northeastern Hungary.
In Bessarabia the border passes thru Ismail, Bilhorod, the mouth of the Dniester at its liman, then up the Dniester to Dubosari, running in adventurous windings past Orhiev and Bilzi until it reaches the Pruth-Dniester divide, and leaving this province near Novoselitza. Innumerable ethnographic islands lie on both sides of this boundary; Roumanians on Ukrainian territory and Ukrainians on Roumanian territory. Only within the past centuries has the land been settled more thickly and the main body of Roumanians has been so dotted with this medley of races as to form a veritable ethnographic mosaic.
In the Bukowina, the boundary of the Ukrainian territory, running along the national border at first, reaches the cities of Sereth and Radivtzi. Then it turns with a sharp bend to Chernivtzi and passes in a wide curve toward the southwest and west, thru Storozhinetz, Vikiv, Moldavitsia and Kirlibaba to the White Cheremosh, where it extends over into Hungary. In the Bukowina, too, the ethnographic boundary of the Ukrainians is not of great antiquity (the Cheremosh region excluded).
The boundary is all the older in Hungary, for the Ukrainian people have had a place here since the early middle ages. This boundary extends along the Visheva, and then the Tissa, past Sihot to Vishkiv. At this place the border crosses to the left bank of the river and, passing along the Gutin Mountain Ridge, reaches the river Tur near Polad. Here the Roumanian-Ukrainian boundary ends and the neighboring country of the Magyars begins.
The boundary of Ukrainian territory here runs in a generally northeast direction, touching Uylak, Beregszasz, Mukachiv (M unkacs), Uzhorod (Unghvar), Bardiiv (Bartfa), Sabiniv (Kis Szeben), Kesmark. At Lublau the boundary crosses the Poprad River and reaches Galicia. Between Unghvar and Bartfeld, the Slovaks become the neighbors of the Ukrainians. The boundary between Slovaks and Ukrainians is very indistinct, and only the investigations of Hnatiukand Tomashivsky have succeeded in determining it and in proving that thru the centuries the borders of Ukrainian territory have been subject to comparatively slight changes.
In Galicia, the Ukrainians are neighbors to the Poles. The Polish rule of over 500 years' duration, has forced the Ukrainian element eastward to a great extent into the hill country and the plain. Only in the mountains has the Ukrainian element preserved itself and the Ukrainian territory here forms a peninsula extending far to the west.
The Ukrainian-Polish boundary in Galicia begins at the village of Shlakhtova, west of the Poprad Pass, and extends eastward, touching the small towns of Pivnichna, Hribov, Horlitzi, Zmigrod, Dukla, Rimanov, Zarshin, as far as Sianik, whence it follows the general direction of the San as far as Dubetzco. Here it turns toward the northeast, reaches the San River again near Radimno,
and runs along the left shore past Yaroslav, Siniava, Lezaisk, reaching Russian-Poland at Tarnogrod.