On Mud Volcanoes and Salt Lakes in the Crimea. 413 



though not to any great extent. The mud stream very gra- 

 dually became slower, as it was more distant from the vent, and 

 ultimately tended to raise the cone, not escaping into the 

 neighbouring valley. 



Close to this vent was a crater-shaped pool of water, 

 measuring about twenty-five paces in circumference, and 

 through the water filling this pool large bubbles of gas were 

 rising at the rate of about thirty-six per minute. A large 

 conical hill is immediately adjacent. I noticed that while the 

 mud volcanoes in action were made up entirely of the peculiar 

 fine black marly mud emitted from the little craters, the adja- 

 cent conical hill consisted also of numerous fragments of iron- 

 stone, and some angular fragments of marly limestone, such as 

 I observed to exist in, and be highly characteristic of, the 

 shales through which the springs rise. They were only present 

 in small fragments, but they were everywhere, and very 

 abundant. 



A short distance beyond, but always in the same general 

 line, are other cones of precisely the same kind. Some are 

 extinct and covered with vegetation, others are still bare, but 

 not now running, and a few are pouring forth small streams of 

 cold bubbling mud or thin paste. Of these streams a few 

 reach the small valley below, but most of them do not reach 

 more than a few yards, or even a foot or two. Some are just 

 commencing, others just concluding. The whole proceeding 

 is languid enough, but is a curious illustration of the changes 

 going on in the earth's interior, and it has singularly modified, 

 and even created, the chief physical features of the district. 



Passing along to the west, about six miles, over a limestone 

 hill, and through a clay valley, we come to Boulganak, where 

 there is a large and remarkable coulee of mud from a cone of 

 considerable size and height, with several smaller and newer 

 cones close around it. Over a space, at least fifty yards in dia- 

 meter, there is a bare, rugged, cracked surface of mud. Numer- 

 ous similar heaps, to the number of upwards of twenty, may 

 be counted within a narrow belt of land, about sixty yards in 

 length. The temperature of the mud in all these cases was 

 about 58°, or two degrees higher than at Enikale. Here, as 

 at Enikale, I found ironstone in small fragments, and some 

 fragments of limestone on the sides of the older cones, but 

 none could be found amongst the mud recently erupted. The 

 general direction of the belt is from E.N.E. to W.S.W., and 

 petroleum springs exist in the neighbourhood. 



It is certain that near this place, though not at the exact 

 point where the mud is erupted, there are springs yielding 

 naphtha. The naphtha, however, is independent of the mud, 

 and not abundant. There are also sulphur springs. Some old 



