This section is from "The American Cyclopaedia", by George Ripley And Charles A. Dana. Also available from Amazon: The New American Cyclopędia. 16 volumes complete..
Kiakhta, Or Kiachta, a town of Siberia, near the Chinese frontier, in the Russian province of Transbaikalia, lat. 50° 20' N., lon. 106° 30' E., about 100 m. S. of Lake Baikal, on a small stream of its own name, 2,500 ft. above the sea; pop. in 1867, 4,286. It consists of the fortress, where the custom house and the government buildings are established, and of the lower town or town proper, where the merchants live, many of them in elegant houses. Kiakhta is a great emporium of trade between Russia and China, the Chinese settlement Maimachin being less than half a mile from the lower town. In 1727 a free commercial intercourse was established between China and Russia, to be carried on at the common boundary on the Kiakhta. Fairs were formerly held annually, at which Russian productions were bartered for Chinese, especially tea, a great amount of which was forwarded to the fair of Nizhni-Novgorod. The trade of Kiakhta, formerly estimated at $8,000,000 a year, has decreased since the treaty of Peking, Nov. 14,1860, which opened for traffic the whole line of the Russian-Chinese frontier.
 
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