346 
SOUTHERN URAL. 
east, we were naturally enabled to read off upon their banks the true relations of 
the strata, on either side of the crystalline meridian axis. 
In the northern mining tracts, or in all the country between Ekaterinburg and 
Bogoslofsk, considerable facilities for inquiry, indeed, exist • since they abound not 
only in good communications between the Zavods 1 , but also in lines of intercourse 
with their detached mines. 
In these districts all difficulties have, in truth, vanished before the perseverance 
and energy of the Russian miners, whose labours have thinned the forests, erected 
commodious and often splendid buildings, drained the marshes, filled the gorges 
with lakes (for water is their great mining power), and rendered the tracts around 
their Zavods the residence of a population more advanced in knowledge than any 
with which it was our lot to meet in the greater part of the Russian Empire. Yet 
in no work of geography or statistics can the general reader acquire an adequate 
conception of the highly flourishing condition of these centres of industry, each 
more populous and thriving than many towns which are marked on maps in large 
letters ; and though it is not our object on this occasion to enter into economical 
details, we cannot avoid stating, that these establishments, both Imperial and 
private, often contain many thousand industrious workmen, whose houses and 
essential comforts we have seldom seen surpassed in the manufacturing towns of 
Europe. When once the inmate of these hospitable establishments, the geologist 
can effect with comparative ease any inquiry which lies within the circuit of their 
jurisdiction ; and under the powerful recommendations with which we travelled, 
obstacles were overcome, which, if unprotected travellers, we could not have 
attempted to face. 
The Southern Ural of our Map, i. e. all the mountainous region extending from 
55-j 0 north latitude to the parallel of Orenburg, being much less densely wooded 
and much less marshy than the Northern Ural, is necessarily more accessible to 
geological research. Near the northern end of this division of the chain, lie Miask 
on the east and Zlataust on the west ; the former the most important auriferous 
Zavod of the south ; the latter, as its name (gold-mouth) implies, a debouche 
for the metal into Europe. An excellent road is necessarily kept up between 
them, which affords a most instructive transverse section 2 , and supplied us with 
1 Upon our Map all the Zavods are engraved in a strong character, in order to mark their statistical 
importance. 
3 See PI. III. f. 1. 
