their encyclopedias and history books and taught to the whole nation, causing of course much misunderstanding of the problem of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian nation.
However, in the French National Library a map of the year 1580 has been found on which the land Ukraina is plainly indicated. On the map of H. L. De Beauplain of 1650 Ukraine is indicated by “Typus Generalis Ukrainie”. In another book of his, “Description d’Ukrainie” published in 1650 De Beauplain gives definite boundaries of Ukraina and identifies it as entirely independent of Poland and Muscovy. (The name Russian did not begin to be used until the second half of the 18th century).
Likewise maps of the Italian geographers Sancone and Cornetti of the years 1641 and 1657 have been found in which Ukraina is called “Ukraina a Paesa de Cosacchi” (Ukraine or the land of the Kozaks). In the same library there is a globe of Cornelius dated 1660-1670 in which Ukrainian lands are called “Ukraina”. Then there is an English map of Morden 1709 where also is found the name “Ukraina”.
Thus it can readily be seen that the name Ukraina was used from the very beginning of its history not only by the Ukrainians themselves but also by European scholars of that time. The very oldest folk songs of the Ukrainian people, still in existence today, indicate that the name “Ukrainian” was used by those clans occupying the land on which Ukrainians still live today.
Ethnographically the plains of Ukraine once stretched in a wide belt of about 600 miles along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, from the lower Danube and the Carpathian range in the west, crossing the rivers Don and Volga and reaching to the Ural mountains in the east. About 773,400 square kilometers, bordering upon the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, are under the U.S.S.R.; 132,200 square kilometers, consisting
219
