GUBERLINSKI HILLS. — AXIS OF THE SOUTH URAL. 
447 
fact, precisely the same strike (north-north-west to south-south-east) as the adjacent 
carboniferous deposits which we have described along the north and south course 
of the river Ural, whilst to the west they are separated from other carboniferous 
rocks by a great central band of eruption which occupies the Guberlinski Hills'. 
GuberlinsH Hills (PI. III. fig. 3). — Escorted by mounted Bashkirs, armed with 
bows and arrows 2 (for we were now on the extreme frontier of the wild Kirghis), 
we quitted the low and arid tract around Orsk, and passed among some hillocks 
of a conglomerate, partly calcareous. As these masses are horizontally bedded, we 
conceive that they can have no connection with the highly inclined carboniferous 
conglomerates and jaspidified schists. Reaching the station of Khabarnoi, we 
ascended the Guberlinski Hills, composed essentially of plutonic rocks, having 
chiefly the character of greenstone, serpentine, &c. ; these hills, which from their 
low altitude are only considered a plateau by Helmersen 3 , are of the highest in- 
terest to the geologist in determining the true meridian direction of the mineral 
axis of the Ural. When viewed upon their summit over which the road passes, 
they are seen to be made up of a series of rapid, bare and stony undulations, 
resembling an agitated sea, scarcely any one wave of which rises higher than 
another, as represented in this woodcut. 
61. 
> M Rose gives a valuable detailed account of one of the broken prolongations of the Irendyk, which 
here terminating near the river Ural, is separated by a valley from the Guberlinski Hills. Greenstone 
and hypersthene rock abound in it, and he offers a diagram, showing how the latter rock has overflowed 
the schists, which in contact with it are jaspers, and a little removed from it contain Kieeel-schiefer. 
(Reise nach dem Ural, 2Th. p. 192.) 
- See a sketch of one of our escort, opposite p. 444, where the Bashkir soldier is contrasted with a 
Russian peasant. 
3 965 English feet above Orenburg. 
3 M 2 
