362 
DESCENT OF TITE RIVER ISSETZ. 
Convinced that a true acquaintance with the substrata could best be acquired in 
this manner, we requested General Glinka, the commander of the North Ural 
mining country, to make arrangements to enable us to accomplish our wishes, 
which he most obligingly and effectively carried out, by entrusting us to the charge 
of M. Schultz, the chief of the forests of this arrondissement. This excellent and 
judicious administrator, forewarning the authorities and inhabitants of our approach, 
prepared canoes at each little village on the banks of this stream, from the point 
at which we proposed to begin our descent. 
Looking back from Ekaterinburg to the Ural, the traveller can scarcely recog- 
nise the chain he has passed, so imperceptible is the slope ; the gay spires and 
towers of the town itself, 850 feet above the sea, seeming simply to rise out of a 
slightly inclined woody region. For some leagues to the east of Ekaterinburg, the 
base of this tract is essentially granitic, with aventurine and other metamorphic 
rocks, the granite very frequently assuming a thin-bedded or jointed structure. 
We travelled rapidly over that space in our “ tarantasses 1 ” and joined the 
Issetz near the station ofLoginof, forty-seven versts from Ekaterinburg, and where 
the river becomes deep enough even in dry weather for the navigation of small 
boats. Here taking to the canoes, we soon learnt to how much trouble we had 
exposed a whole population in order to satisfy our geological inquiry. Flowing 
with some rapidity from the eastern slopes of the Ural and through a thickly peo- 
pled tract well covered with grain, the inhabitants naturally avail themselves of 
this stream to grind their corn, damming it up to establish the necessary mill- 
races. At each village, therefore, often not more than a mile asunder, we were 
compelled to disembark and walk round the dam, whilst the boats were lifted over 
by numerous peasants assembled at each station for the purpose. The opposite 
lithograph will afford some idea of the scene at Volchof, of which we shall pre- 
sently speak, and where the river escaping from the higher defiles enters into the 
flat country of Siberia. 
Following, in this way, the windings of the Issetz for two days and examining all 
the rocks on its banks, we made the section which is given on the right-hand or 
eastern end of PI. II. fig. 1, he. from Ekaterinburg to Kaltchedansk. 
The rocks we first observed on the banks of the stream, after quitting the gra- 
nitic plateau, were green micaceous chlorite schists, which are again succeeded 
1 The “ tarant.iss,” which is the carriage of Eastern Russia, has the body of a caleche on long elastic 
poles which serve as springs. In a subsequent view one of these vehicles is sketched. 
