THE SOUTHERN URALS. 375 



tlieir operations to the more recent deposits annually formed on tlie outskirts of 

 the lake during the thaw, when the muddy streams charged with saline particles 

 drain from the surrounding steppe, causing a yearly accumulation of about 

 2,000,000 tons of salt in the Yelton basin. The water holds such a quantit}^ in 

 solution that it never freezes even when the glass falls 50° Fahr. below freezing- 

 point ; but it is then dangerous to expose the limbs to its action, for the skin 

 immediately becomes livid, often followed by mortification of the flesh. According 

 to tradition there are some springs of pure and icy water in the middle of the lake. 

 The yield of salt had increased from 80,000 tons in 1S65 to 275,000 in 1871, 

 when the management passed from the Government to a private company. At 

 present this company confines its operations mainly to the Baskunchak marsh, 

 which is more accessible from the Volga. 



Most of the saline steppes stretch north of the Caspian between the Volga 

 and Ural Rivers. The salt area west of the Caspian is much more contracted, 

 the steppes here consisting mostly of argillaceous plains studded with lakes, some 

 of which are fresh. In the north the steppes are generally sandy throughout 

 their entire extent, and interrupted only by marshes and the two triassic districts 

 of the Great and Little Bogdo, and here and there by shifting dunes. Kocky 

 steppes are confined entirely to the Asiatic side. But whether salt, argillaceous, 

 or rocky, none of these steppes at all resemble the grassy prairies of the Dnieper, 

 scanty pastures occurring only here and there in the low-lying tracts at con- 

 siderable distances from the present shores of the sea. Even in these places^ 

 after the not unfrequent visits of the locusts, not a blade of grass remains, the 

 very reeds and sedge of the swamps disappearing to the water's edge. Yet these 

 dreary wastes are inhabited not onlj' by the nomad Kirghiz and Bashkirs, but 

 even by hardy settlers, by Great Russian Cossacks, pioneers of the race which has 

 peopled the whole of Central Russia. 



East of the river Ural rocky plateaux, breaking the monotonous surface of the 

 steppes, form the first elevations of the long range of the Ural Mountains stretching 

 thence northwards through twenty-eight parallels of latitude across the four zones 

 of the steppes, forests, tundras, and ice-fields, far into the Frozen Ocean. 



The Southern Urals and River Ural. 



The section of the Urals, which begins at the sources of the Petchora, and 

 which forms the eastern limit of the Volga basin, is not accompanied by parallel 

 ridges, like the Northern Urals of the Voguls, Ostyaks, and Saraoyeds. But on 

 the eastern or Siberian side some eminences, such as the Deuejkin Kamen, rise to 

 a greater height than any others in the entire range. South of the Konchakov 

 Kamen the Urals cease to present the appearance of a connected system, here 

 dwindling to a series of broken ridges, with a mean elevation varying from 700 

 to 1,000 feet above the surrounding lowlands. The base of these ridges is even 

 so broad that the fall on either side is often scarcely perceptible. The water- 

 parting line, which has an absolute elevation of only 1,200 feet above the sea, 



