MAGNETIC IRON ORE, ETC. OF BLAGODAT. 
379 
and Helmersen in our own time) that theVogul chief Tchumpin was sacrificed and 
burnt by his wild countrymen, for having introduced the Russians to the tract, 
pointing out to them the site of the ore. 
According to Colonel Helmersen, who has given an admirable geological de- 
scription of these environs, this mount is about 500 feet 1 above the adjoining lake, 
and its summit is rendered conspicuous by a monument which records the barba- 
rous sacrifice. Differing somewhat from the rock which is associated with the 
magnetic iron at Nijny Tagilsk, the chief eruptive rock in the Great or Lesser 
Blagodat is felspathic augite porphyry. This rock is fully displayed between the 
Zavod and the higher summit, on approaching which, upright masses with metallic 
surfaces are seen to rise out, as it were, from the porphyry, indicating the ancient 
quarries from which the iron ore has been extracted. As far as they have been 
worked down, these excavations exhibit a continuous mass of the same fine-giained 
magnetic ironstone, with flakes of yellow and pink felspar and brown mica. Re- 
ferring to Colonel Helmersen’s very valuable details of the variation in structure 
of these rocks in different parts of the hill, it is enough for our purpose to state, 
that this author seems to have satisfactorily proved these felspathic ironstone 
masses to be portions of dykes of eruptive character which have traversed the 
augite porphyry, a fragment even of that rock having been found in one of them 
which rises up from near the base of the hill. 
In our very hasty survey we descended from the summit of the higher Blagodat 
into the adjacent depression on the east, in which the greatest masses of the iron 
ore have been accumulated ; and though when on the spot we were not led to en- 
tertain the opinion of Colonel Helmersen, and were rather disposed to view the 
great lateral and rudely stratified accumulations as sediments which had been me- 
tamorphosed by the influence of the contiguous eruptive rocks, we were then igno- 
rant of the fact, that dykes of really intrusive character, made up of crystalline 
and igneously-formed minerals, and clearly formed posterior to the body ot the 
, Helmersen states, that the Zavod of Kushva (or Kushvinsk), being about 800 French feet above the 
sea, the absolute height of the summit of the greater Blagodat is 1260 French feet. Calling t e lesser 
hill Blagodatka, the same author mentions, in add.tion to other variations in mmeral character that on 
the south side the rock passes into an amygdaloid with nests of quartz, that on the north side of the lull 
blocks of fine-grained limestone occur, and that Colonel Josse had found nests of limestone m the body 
of the rock. (Der Magnetberg Blagodat am Nordlichen Ural, 1837.) Again, according to Hermann, 
portions of beds of limestone were in his time detected in the ferriferous mining masses. (Rose, vol. i. 
p. 346.) 
