368 
DISTRICT NORTH OF EKATERINBURG. 
from the other tertiary and oceanic deposits, may have occupied a great space in 
Siberia during a more recent period. But we cannot here wander into such specula- 
tions, and having completed the description of one complete traverse of the Ural 
Mountains and their dependencies, from the low country of Europe on the west, 
to that of Asia on the east, we would now transport our readers to other tracts and 
sections of the North Ural, there to fill up the lacunse in this first sketch, which 
simply narrates the leading features detected by passing geologists in one journey 
across a tract, having a width of upwards of 300 versts. 
Chief Phenomena in the Districts immediately to the north of Ekaterinburg . — In 
journeying from Ekaterinbui'g to the northern mines, the tourist passes along the 
lateral eastern valleys of the chain in which, and on the banks of their lateral 
streams, gold alluvia have been largely deposited and much worked 1 . Neviansk, 
the oldest Russian Zavod, established by an ancestor of the Demidoffs, is the first 
pleasing relief offered to the eye of the traveller, who has passed through a half 
desolate tract between it and Ekaterinburg, in most of which the forests have been 
exhausted for the use of the contiguous mines, whilst culture has not yet made 
much progress 2 . 
Small hills, composed of porphyry, serpentine and other eruptive rocks, range 
to the east of the Zavod, which, with its large buildings and gay churches, lies in 
a depression between the low trappeean ridge and the eastern counterforts of the 
Ural. Where exempt from the local alluvia and detritus (often auriferous), this 
depression consists essentially of limestone, which from several corals discovered 
in it {Favosites polymorpha, Devonian variety of Amplcxus tortuosus?, Caunopora 
ramosa P, &c.) we may consider Devonian. These limestones, with associated 
schists, strike north and by east, south and by west, or exactly parallel to the axis of 
the adjacent portion of the chain. The Ural, as seen from this comparatively low 
tract, has no longer the dim and scarcely perceptible outline which it assumes in 
the parallel of Ekaterinburg, but appears as a narrow, bare ledge, rising up in the 
distance, and separated from the spectator by subconical undulations covered with 
wood, as represented in this hasty little sketch. 
1 These gold alluvia, including those of Berezofsk near Ekaterinburg, will be considered in the 
sequel. 
® The foreigner who is making his first excursion in the Ural, cannot but feel when he arrives at 
Neviansk, that he is in a land of true hospitality ; for a large and comfortable house is kept up by the 
proprietor of the mines for the use of all strangers, from none of whom is any exaction demanded. 
