Jottings. 377 



over the main chain and watershed of the Urals. It was a 

 glorious morning of sun and masses of floating clouds, inspirit- 

 ing and inspiring. We all tumbled out and trooped off through 

 the rather flat and marshy meadows that run all through the 

 ridge summits here ; even through the forests, for a mile and a 

 half toward a rocky peak, Alexandrofskiasopka, which rises 

 abruptly above the level ridge. Once on the rocks, it was a 

 sort of race for the summit, which 1 was the first to reach, 



though closely followed by B , R and L ; and later 



by others, chiefly Americans. A magnificent panorama lay 

 beneath us — the most interesting part being, of course, that on 

 the Asiatic side. Range after range of level-topped, tree-clad 

 mountains, with here and there peaks rising, like our own, 

 above the general level. Of these the most prominent was the 

 Taganai group, a little higher than we were, about four thou- 

 sand feet. Toward the east a level sky-line formed by the dis- 

 tant Siberian plain ; with a new feature, many lakes lying in 

 flat basins. The fresh breeze, the unwonted sunshine, the 

 grand shifting cloud masses, the color of rock and forest were 

 all delightful, and we left unwillingly after an hour spent on 

 the summit. At the foot we found some wine, with which we 

 drank adieu to our leader, Tschernycheff, who is replaced by 

 another, Karpinsky. I forgot to say that most of the party 

 stopped short of the summit, on a point a hundred feet below, 

 leaving the craggy ridge for a few of us. We photographed 

 one another in all sorts of seemingly dangerous positions, but 

 there was really no difficulty of any sort there. We returned 

 to lunch, and then the train took us on to Miass. Here we took 

 wagons, ever the same helter-skelter sort of things and drove 

 a short way, passed the lake of llmen, to the gold placers, where 

 the whole process was shown us: — the mining of the gravel, 

 which is simple, (it is not very rich,) the washing — the clean- 

 ing of the riffles where the gold is caught with quicksilver, and 

 finally the retorting of the amalgam. The sight was novel to 

 a majority of the party. To us familiar with the refined 

 methods of California, the process was crude and wasteful ; and 



