﻿Prof. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 393 



(Listwenite). This strikes north and south parallel to the adjacent 

 Urals, towards which it also di}DS. It is very much broken, very 

 ferruginous, soft, and generally irregular in its character. In one 

 direction it appears to merge into a kind of serpentine. Inter- 

 stratified, so to speak, or at all events running parallel with the 

 strike of the talcose schists, are bands or dyke-like masses of a 

 granitic rock, containing but little mica, called beresite. 



These bands vary from 28 to 180 feet in breadth. An average 

 breadth is about 80 feet. As they descend, they become denser and 

 narrower. In one shaft that I descended, which was sunk altogether 

 in this rock, I had a fair opportunity of seeing its various characters. 

 Near the surface it commenced with its usual appearance of a white 

 clay, which clay I was told was used for making fire-bricks ; deeper 

 down, however, it appeared as a compact grey rock, which, owing 

 to its non-splintery character, had been finished off with as smooth 

 a surface as that of an ordinary brick wall. These bands of beresite 

 apparently occur in great numbers, and in the neighbourhood of 

 Beresovsk 157 have already been discovered. Sixteen of these are 

 within the distance of six or seven versts as measured across their 

 strike. These, with the exception of three, which run east and 

 west, preserve a north, and south course parallel with the adjacent 

 Urals. 



At right angles to these bands of beresite, and also to the talcose 

 schists, there are numbers of quartz veins, and it is in these latter 

 that the gold is found. These veins are generally from three to 

 seven inches in thickness, but in places they have reached a thick- 

 ness of more than three feet. Like the beresite veins they traverse, 

 they often thin out in going downwards. Their strike, which is 

 generally east and west, is apt to vary, and two or more of them 

 will intersect to form a pocket. Sometimes several small veins, 

 which at the surface appear as mere streaks, are found, as they 

 descend, to unite together to form a solid course. Some of these veins 

 have been traced to depths of nearly 500 feet. In looking at a plan 

 of a portion of the workings, I counted thirty-seven quartz veins all 

 crossing a strip of beresite not more than eighteen Eussian fathoms 

 (126 feet) in length, and in another plan I saw seventeen veins 

 crossing a vein of similar length. In such places as these the 

 quartz veins are of course very near to each other, but there are 

 places where they are as much as 40 fathoms (280 feet) apart. 

 These veins are either vertical or else dip steeply towards the north. 

 They are often strongly coloured with oxide of iron. In places they 

 contain a little galena, and occasionally a few specks of copper 

 pyrites. It has been observed that the lodes are rich at those places 

 where they cross each other, where they are much stained with 

 oxide of iron, or contain the above minerals, and when they do not 

 remain altogether in the beresite, but cut through into the rock 

 on either side. On the other hand, where the veins or lodes are 

 confined to the beresite, when they are flat, that is, do not dip 

 almost vertically, and as a rule as they descend in depth, they 

 are usually observed to yield but little gold. Up to the date of 



