Yessentuki () is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, located in the shadow of Mount Elbrus at the base of the Caucasus Mountains. The city serves as a railway station in the Mineralnye Vody—Kislovodsk branch, and is located southwest of Mineralnye Vody and west of Pyatigorsk. It is considered the cultural capital of Russia's Greek population and even today close to ten percent of its population is of Greek descent. Population: History Research by the Soviet archaeologist M.E. Masson and excavations of eight mausoleums showed that there was a large Golden Horde settlement near the present-day Essentuki in the 13th-15th centuries. Masson believed that the name Essentuki came from the name of a certain Khan Essentug from the names "Yesan Forest" and "Yesan Field" that have survived to this day. In 1798, the Russian military and border redoubt of Yessentuksky was laid on the right bank of the Bolshoy Yessentuchok River, near its confluence with the Podkumok River. After the construction of the Kislovodsk fortress in 1803, the redoubt was abolished, and only the Cossack post was kept on its site. The mineral waters of Yessentuki were first probed in 1810 by the Moscow doctor Fyodor Gaaz. Gaaz found two small wells with salty water (the present Gaazo-Ponomaryovsky spring) in the valley of the stream of Kislusha, about northeast of the Yessentuksky post. A detailed study of Bugunta mineral waters (the original name of the waters, after the Bugunta River flowing nearby) was made in 1823 by the Russian doctor and pharmacologist A. P. Nelyubin, who found twenty more mineral springs on the slopes of the mountain he referred to as Shchelochnaya (Nelyubin's numbering of the Yessentuki mineral waters is still maintained). In 1825, General Yermolov founded the stanitsa of Yessentukskaya on the Bugunta River northeast of the former Yessentuksky post; its inhabitants were engaged in trade, trucking, and serving arriving patients. In 1839, water from springs ##23-26 was led to the common pool, where the first two baths of the wooden bathhouse were built at the expense of the Cossack Regiment Management. Since 1840, springs ##4 and 17 have come into use and become especially popular. Yessentuki was recognized as one of the best health resorts for treatment of the digestive organs. In 1846, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, the namestnik (vicegerent) of Caucasus, ordered to extend the territory of the stanitsa of Yessentukskaya to the northeast to approach the springs.