Mokrous

The open country around Mokrous lies east of the Volga, between the river's meadow bank and the dry interior steppe. Before the later settlement was founded, the grasslands belonged to a wider landscape of seasonal grazing and movement between the Volga and Ural. In the eighteenth century Russian settlement expanded eastward from the great river, while pastoral peoples continued to use the plains beyond the growing line of villages. Shallow valleys and salt-bearing soils mark this part of the Trans-Volga country.