428 
THE URENGA AND ADJACENT HILLS. 
Having ascended the Taganai, we found it to be composed of quartz rock, evi- 
dently of metamorphic origin, for in some parts the stone is seen to pass through 
distinctly stratified beds into grit and conglomerate, whilst in others it is so highly 
crystalline as even to assume the characters of avanturine. Rising up from amidst 
masses of micaceous and chloritic schists, and surrounded by granitic and other 
igneous rocks which are laid bare at lower levels, the Taganai is, in truth, iden- 
tical in structure with the adjacent Ural-tau, ol which it must be considered a 
western counterfort, though considerably higher than the true watershed ol the 
mountains. 
The Urenga is a great crystalline mass of micaceous and chloritic schist, which 
contains dykes and bands of quartz, and is traversed at many points by greenstone 
dykes, and is also, we believe, metamorphic. The Nazimskaya-gora, to the north 
of Zlataust, which rises to near 2300 feet above the sea, may be considered a 
prolongation of the Urenga. From the eastern side of this mountain we took the 
opposite view of the Taganai, which thus appears as a slioit but lofty, isolated, 
ridge surrounded by dense woods. 
On the western flank of the Nazimskaya-gora we collected some beautiful minei als 
from a point of rock which had been recently laid open by order of General 
Anosoff. At this spot the matrix is a chlorite schist with some limestone, pene- 
trated in a very irregular manner by points of greenstone, the calcareous matter 
being usually in the form of spar, and the greater number of the simple minerals 
being found between it and the face of the intrusive rock. Among these minerals 
was the newly-discovered repidolite, together with garnets, crystallized talc, &c. 
Wherever the rocks are exposed, immediately to the north or south of Zlataust, or 
in the gorges to the west of it, they are seen to consist either of amorphous masses, 
like those just mentioned, or of regularly stratified micaceous and chloritic schists 
and quartz rock, with which are associated intrusive greenstones, often, to a great 
extent, assuming the form of beds and dipping with the strata. 
Western Dependencies of the Mountains between Zlataust and Simsk .- — Before we 
describe our general section across the chain in the parallel of Zlataust and Miask, 
we beg to give a brief sketch of the succession from the crystalline centre of which 
we have just been speaking, to the western edge of all the rocky region near Simsk. 
The crystalline and metamorphic ridges of Taganai and Urenga, with a subsidiary 
limestone at Kuvashi, are flanked by a basin-shaped mass of schistose calcareous 
deposits, of which the limestone of Kussinsk is the fullest type. These we are 
