452 
SILUKIA. 
[Chap. XIX. 
so auriferous in the classical era, have, I repeat, long since ceased to offer any 
notable quantity of the precious metal. 
The Ural Mountains. — No country furnishes a clearer example than Russia of 
the dependence of gold on certain geological and mineral relations. Her Euro- 
pean territories are, as has been stated, chiefly occupied by slightly solidified 
primeval deposits. Under these conditions, and with a total absence of any 
crystalline rocks, whether of intrusive or of sedimentary and metamorphic cha- 
racters, not a particle of gold has been discovered in them, over an area larger 
than the rest of Europe ; but where the same formations have been thrown up 
into inclined and broken positions in the Ural Chain, and have there been pierced 
by porphyry, greenstone, syenite, and granite, in association with huge masses 
of serpentine, the very same deposits that are so soft in European Russia have 
been hardened, crystallized, veined, and rendered highly metalliferous, some of 
the igneous masses being also auriferous. 
As the rocks in this chain, which separates Europe from Asia, are now known 
to be similar in character to those of numerous other auriferous ridges in Siberia 
and the Altai Mountains of Asiatic Russia, the present description may serve to 
explain the composition of those vastly larger eastern tracts. The study of this 
Uralian Chain enabled me to suggest, in the year 1844, by comparison of the 
rocks of the two countries, that Australia would also prove to be an auriferous 
region. The survey of the Ural Mountains in 1842 led me further to define, 
within certain limits, the period when the Silurian rocks were chiefly impreg- 
nated with gold, and also to affirm that gold, as a distinct metallic mass, is of 
younger date, in that region, than the associated ores of copper and iron *. 
"With a watershed for the most part not exceeding 2000 feet above the sea, 
their highest peaks rarely rising above 5000 to 6000 feet, the Ural Mountains, 
throughout a north and south range of 18 degrees of latitude, are composed of 
rocks more or less crystalline, chiefly metamorphosed representatives of the 
Silurian and Devonian, and occasionally of the Carboniferous age. The Lower 
Silurian strata are, indeed, to be recognized in a crystalline state only. They are 
for the most part talcose schists, quartzites, and limestones j whilst the Upper 
Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous, though often also considerably altered 
(the limestones being frequently converted into marble occasionally dolomitic), 
offer here and there traces of their characteristic fossils. The flexures and frac- 
tures of the stratified rocks (Devonian and Carboniferous), as they approach the 
western flank of the altered and metalliferous axis of the chain, have been repre- 
sented in the view of the gorge of the Tchussovaya, p. 366. 
The following sketch will convey some idea of the wild and central, highly 
mineralized masses which in the Northern Ural peer out here and there from 
amid forests of the gigantic Pinus Cembra. It was taken by myself from the 
summit of the Katchkanarf, a rugged pile of stratified and jointed augitic 
rock, highly charged with magnetic iron. Platinum, as well as gold, has been 
* See ' Enssia-in-Europe and the Ural Moun- ploration, when, in a few minutes, the broken and 
tains,' vol. i. p. 472 et seq. Also Journal of the jagged outline of the Katchkanar burst upon our 
Eoyal Geographical Society, President's Dis- sight under a fine bright sun and amid the merry 
courses, 1844-45. song of birds. The dull, wet, and marshy wood- 
t The following sketch of the approach to this lands were now exchanged for sunshine and rocks. 
mountain (visited, I believe, by no other Euro- .... Accustomed as we have been to the wildest 
foi 
jciussia ana cue ural Mountains, voi. 1. Alps, we are unacquainted witn any scene pre- 
p. 392: — "A large chaotic assemblage of loose senting a finer foreground of abruptly broken 
pean travellers) through the forests, is given in features of the Highlands of Scotland and the 
the work ' Russia and the Ural Mountains,' vol. i. Alps, we are unacquainted with any scene pre- 
angular blocks now lay around us, from amid rocks ; and never certainly had we looked over so 
which rose the magnificent Pinus Cembra, tower- grand and trackless a forest as that which lay 
ing above all its associates, the rocks being over- around us, and from which some straggling distant 
grown with pseonies, roses, and geraniums. Such peaks (those on the north only being still capped 
stony features alone would have led us to suppose with snow) reared their solitary heads." 
that we were at the foot of the object of our ex- 
