SECTION CONTINUED THROUGH HIGHER STRATA ON THE NORTH. 97 
Lumps of pyrites are indeed seen, at intervals, in the coal itself. In some parts, 
however, it seemed to be of very good quality. 
These workings are made by shallow shafts, the mouths of the highest of which 
are not 100 feet above the Kalmiuss, and the lowest not above seventy, with a 
shaft eighty-four feet deep, and hence the mines are occasionally stopped by the 
influx of water : for here, as in other parts of the carbonaceous region, steam- 
engines are unknown, and with the exceptions of the Imperial mines at Lissitchia- 
Balka and Uspensk (of which we shall treat hereafter), pits are never sunk, 
except in those situations where a natural drainage and open adits will keep them 
dry. 
Continuation of this Section through still higher strata on the North. The high 
grounds to the north of Alexandrofsk, from whence the Kalmiuss flows to the 
south, and where the feeders of the Voltchia and the Dnieper are deflected to the 
west and south, constitute one of those broad domes of elevation, several of which 
occur in the eastern and northern portions of these coal tracts. If the section is 
prolonged directly to the north-north-east, or to the east of Bachmuth, other lines 
of elevation are met with, and beds of coal and limestone are repeated at localities 
(Jeleznoe, &c.), to which we shall hereafter refer ; but as we did not follow up these 
masses to their junction with superior strata, we prefer to complete, in the first in- 
stance, what we consider to be one continuous ascending section, by carrying our 
present line almost due north. Passing over, for the present, certain central mem- 
bers of the series with Spirifer Mosquensis, because in this line of section (near to 
Celidofka) they are either sterile in coal or little exposed, and returning to their 
consideration in another transverse section upon the Toretz, where they are highly 
inclined and well known, it is sufficient for our present purpose to state, that re- 
posing upon the lower series of the Kalmiuss, these middle carboniferous rocks 
occupy a broad undulation, and dipping slightly to the north-north-east, are carried 
under reddish and white grits with red shale, which, occupying poor moorlands, 
slope down to the large village of Goradofka (see PI. I. fig. 2.). The grits are 
there quarried for door-posts and troughs, and afford an excellent, porous free- 
stone, of almost pure white colour, occasionally with a greenish tinge, in parts a 
conglomerate, in which the grains of quartz are cemented in a felspathic base. 
In this tract, where no trees are in existence, and where, as nearly all over Russia, 
the great mass of the inhabitants live in wooden houses, this stone might be veiy 
largely employed for building purposes. This rock, dipping 12° to the north-east 
