102 SECTIONS NEAR THE DONETZ— CONTORTED AND DISLOCATED STRATA. 
rises on its escarpment side into rocky eminences. The lower coal, in all from two 
and a half to three feet thick, is made up of very thin courses, most of which con- 
sisting of hard and pure anthracite, are subordinate to unctuous shale. It is 
chiefly worked by galleries, in which the poor Cossack miners have followed it to 
short distances from its natural outcrop on the sides of the brooks. A roof of schist, 
of about fifty feet in thickness, separates the lower from the higher coal, which is 
less thick, but of equally good quality, and when we visited the locality, was reached 
by shallow shafts from the surface of the hill 1 . From the gentle inclination of the 
beds and the height of the ground, drainage may indeed be effected to a great 
extent without recourse to steam-engines ; but the use of the latter and the sinking 
of shafts might, doubtless, open out the mineral to greater advantage. 
Sections on and near the Donetz . — Approaching this coal country as we did from 
the eastern steppes of the Kalmucks, we were at once made acquainted with the 
powerful convulsions to which it had been subjected, by examining the natural 
sections which are exposed on the right bank of the Donetz above the station of 
Donetzkaya. Seams of coal and anthracite are seen at intervals in highly dislo- 
cated positions at several places, viz. at Nijni and Verkni, Kundriutcheskaya, and 
on the river Kundriutshia which falls into the Donetzkaya. The relations of the 
black schists, impure limestones, flagstones, grits and coal along a portion of these 
streams, are explained in PI. I. fig. 6. 
Whilst the violent dislocations and high inclination of the strata render it un- 
likely that coal can be worked to much profit in this neighbourhood, its inhabit- 
ants have an agreeable compensation in their fine climate and fertile soil ; the 
vine, pomegranate and water-melon being as abundant and fine-flavoured in this 
corner of the Russian coal-field as in Italy. 
To the east of the embouchure of the Donetz, and indeed to some extent up 
that stream, the carboniferous strata are obscured by much blown sand. We 
conceive, however, that the formation ranges on the south-west up to the river 
Kargalinsk, because we there observed brown, grey and ferruginous sandstones 
1 The details of the working of these mines, as well as of the quality of the anthracite, are given by 
Captain Ivanitzki in the sixth volume of the ‘ Journal of the Imperial Mines.’ Upon visiting the Zavod 
of Lugan, we became aware of the superiority of this anthracite over all the other coals of this territory, 
whether in forging iron or in the production of steam ; facts which were ascertained through trials insti- 
tuted by order of General Tclieffkine. The reader will find these points clearly explained by Captain 
Ivanitzki . — Journal des Mines, vol. v. 
