Note 356 — Chapter VII · —Geographical Boundaries

Sometimes the border is preserved as a wilderness by formal agreement. A classic example of this case is found in the belt of untenanted land, fifty to ninety kilometers wide, which China and Korea once maintained as their boundary. No settler from either side was allowed to enter, and all travel across the border had to use a single passway, where three times annually a market was held.356 On the Russo-Mongolian border south of Lake Baikal, the town of Kiakhta, which was established in 1688 as an entrepôt of trade between the two countries, is occupied in its northern half by Russian factories and in its southern by the Mongolian-Chinese quarters, while between the two is a neutral space devoted to commerce.357