Gogol

The Gogol is a small river of the upper Don basin, flowing into the Semenek among the forest-steppe lands north of Yelets. Early seventeenth-century records of the Yelets district name several settlements along the Gogol and near its mouth, including Nikolskoye and Cherns­kaya. Their presence shows the spread of villages into the wooded river country as the Russian state secured its southern frontier. The smaller streams of this district drain toward the Krasivaya Mecha and the Don.