Chap. XIX.] GOLD OF THE URAL MOUNTAINS. 455 
drawing, and constitute a picturesque scene. The rich grassy low grounds 
around this Lake of Aushkul, in the country of the Baschkirs, are to some little 
extent auriferous, the gold having been derived by debacles of former periods, 
which denuded the surfaces of the slaty and quartzose chain (as seen in the 
distance), or the adjacent conical hills of greenstone, altered schists, porphyries, 
syenite, and serpentine surrounding the lake. The slopes and depressions are 
partially occupied by the gold-bearing debris *. 
The extent to which limestones of the Carboniferous age have been altered 
on the eastern flank of the South Ural is instructively seen at Cossatchi-Datchi, 
a remote spot visited by my companions and myself, and where also a little gold 
has been found. 
Hills op Cossatchi-Datchi. 
(From ' Eussia and the Ural Mountains,' vol. i. p. 439.) 
The hills forming tne background of this sketch are composed of eruptive 
rocks and some old schistose strata, whilst in the foreground a little basin is 
occupied by a number of small conical hillocks of Carboniferous Limestone. 
Their form and mineralized condition are probably due to the action of gaseous 
vapours and change of the original substance, since not only the traces of 
bedding are obliterated, but the limestone has been rendered fetid and saccha- 
roid, breaking upon a slight blow of the hammer. In this case the metamorphic 
action, however it may have been produced, has just been sufficiently intense to 
render the limestone as pulverulent as sugar ; but it has left numerous organic 
remains so uninjured that they are easily removed from the matrix f. 
Diggings at the Soimanofsk Mines. 
(From ' Eussia and the Ural Mountains,' vol. i. p. 487.) 
At the Soimanofsk mines, south of Miask, great piles of ancient Drift or gravel 
having been removed for the extraction of gold, the eroded edges of highly in- 
* The rock in the foreground, on which we stood, some of which we could not distinguish from well- 
is a compound of diallage and serpentine, and is known forms of the Mountain-limestones of York- 
to some extent magnetic. The most striking of shire, Westmoreland, and Derbyshire, nor others 
the conical mounts is the Holy Hill of the Basch- from species which are abundant in the same for- 
kirs (' Russia and the Ural Mountains,' p. 437). mations in Belgium and France ! . . . . Without 
t After enumerating upwards of thirty species this discovery we could not have ventured to 
of these fossil shells, my companions and myself affirm that many other adjacent masses of crys- 
thus spoke of them : — " Those alone who have the talline limestone immersed among the granites 
same respect for a true characteristic fossil as and trappean rocks of these mountains belonged 
ourselves can imagine the feelings of delight with to similar or associated deposits." (' Russia and 
which we here found congregated in one natural the Ural Mountains,' vol. i. p. 44.) 
Siberian storehouse so great a number of shells, 
