184 
SALT MINES OF ILLETZKAYA-ZASTCHITA. 
the Modiola Pallasii, Retepora Jlustracea, var. ? closely allied to a species of the 
Magnesian Limestone of England, &c. &c. 
Rock-Salt at Illetzkaya-Zastchita in the Steppes of the Kirghis. — Freezing Cavern. 
— Our readers of this chapter having been already fatigued with lithological de- 
tails, we will now endeavour to relieve such monotony by a short episode, which 
embraces an account of a very remarkable phaenomenon. 
It was in the early days of an unusually hot and parching month of August 
that we travelled from Orenburg to visit these famous salt-works, and were driven 
at a furious pace over the parched up and undulating steppe to the south of that 
city. Passing through caravans of Bukharians and Chivans, journeying to and 
from the great Russian entrepot, the pretty little green oasis of Illetzkaya-Zast- 
chita at length broke upon the sight. Its groves of trees, its fort, and well-arranged 
buildings (diversified by mounts of gypsum not unlike, in miniature, the <f buttes 
de Montmartre ” near Paris), announced the most remote of the Imperial esta- 
blishments in this wilderness. 
With the exception of the fossiliferous limestone in the adjacent hills (and of 
which we have just spoken), the whole of the tract is made up of reddish, sandy 
marl and whitish gypsum, amid which materials, the rock-salt appears as a vast, 
irregularly formed mass. The protrusion of certain points at the surface, had long 
ago led the Kirghis, or original nomadic inhabitants of the soil, to use the salt ; but 
it is in latter years only that the Russians, regularly occupying the spot, have laid 
bare a large portion of the mineral. By sinkings in the neighbourhood they have 
further ascertained, that undulating at slight depths beneath the surface, the rock- 
salt extends over an area having a length of two versts and a width of rather more 
than an English mile. Selecting one of the most favourable situations within this 
space, for the open work ; i. e. where the ground rises to a little height above the 
ordinary drainage, the Russian miners have now exposed a broad surface of salt 
and have cut into the rock to the depth of about seventy feet. This mass is cry- 
stalline, of white colour, without a stain, and so pure, that the salt is at once 
pounded for use without any cleansing or recrystallizing process. Upon first view- 
ing this bright white mass from above, we were impressed with the notion that 
it was composed of horizontal beds; hut on descending into the quarry, we found 
that this appearance was caused by the method employed to extract the salt. 
The reader who would bring these features to his mind, must first imagine an 
open quarry, from which the upper portion of the salt had been removed, with 
