454 
SILUKIA. 
[Chap. XIX. 
tised, and with very small profit, is at Berezovsk near Ekaterinburg. There 
the shaft traverses a mass called ' beresite,' a decomposing granite with veins 
of quartz, in which gold is disseminated. In this case it is apparent that 
the gold-bearing rock is a true granite. The syenite of the Peschanka 
mines, near Bogoslofsk, is likewise impregnated with particles of gold, and the 
surface-degradation of that rock affords profitable washings. Much further to 
the east, in Siberia, Colonel Hoffmann long ago indicated a tract where even the 
schistose stratified rocks are equally permeated by the small diffused particles of 
the metal, imperceptible to the naked eye. 
The prevailing practice, however, has hitherto been, to grind out the Uralian 
gold (by water-mills) from the broken or drifted materials only, and collect it 
for use. This is notably the case on the east flank of the chain *, where the 
mixed and coarse detritus of all the hard rocks, including much greenstone, has 
at certain spots proved to be auriferous, and in some cases much more so than 
in others, there being very large tracts indeed where no trace of gold can be 
detected even in similar detritus. 
On the east flank of th.e South Ural (south of Miask), where the chain is still 
auriferous, conical igneous rocks have burst out, as represented in the annexed 
Lake op Aushkul, Southern Ural. 
(From a lithograph in ' Bussia and the Ural Mountains,' vol. i. p. 359. The ' Holy 
Mount ' of the Tatars is opposite, and the Ural range is seen in the distance.) 
* The reader must recollect that the superficies works are known only at one spot in the western 
of all the localities of the Ural Mountains in which side of the watershed, viz. at Chrestovosdvisgensk. 
gold has been found, united, amounts but to a It was there that most of the few small diamonds 
very small part of the whole chain. Incalculably found in the Ural chain were detected, in coarse 
more diminished is the proportion between rocks ancient drift. They were no longer discovered 
which from their nature might be, but are not, when I visited that place, and traversed the wild 
auriferous and those of similar structure which wooded chain by the Katchkanar to Nijny Tu- 
really contain gold, when we extend our researches rinsk. See ' Russia-in-Europe and the Ural 
into Central and Eastern Siberia. Thus gold- Mountains,' pp. 391-480. 
