NIKOPOL  , a

town of Russia, in the government of Ekaterinoslav, on the right bank of the Dnieper, 70 M . S.S.W. of the town of Ekaterinoslay . It was formerly called Nikitin Rog, and occupies an elongated peninsula between two arms of the Dnieper at a point where its banks are low and marshy, and has been for centuries one of the places where the middle Dniepercan most conveniently be crossed . Its inhabitants, 21,282 in 1900, are Little Russians, Jews and Mennonites, who carry on agriculture and shipbuilding . The old secha, or fortified camp of the Zaporogian Cossacks, brilliantly described in N . V . Gogol's novel Taras Bulba (1834), was situated a little higher up the river . Numbers of graves in the vicinity recall the battles which were fought for the possession of this important strategic point . One of them, close to the town, contained, along with other Scythian antiquities, the well-known precious vase representing the capture of wild horses . Even now Nikopol, which is situated on the highway from Ekaterinoslav to Kherson, is the point where the " salt-highway " of the Chumaks (Little Russian salt-carriers) to the Crimea crosses the Dnieper . Nikopol is, further, one of the chief places on the lower Dnieper for the export of corn, linseed, hemp and wool .