GREAT TRANSVERSE VALLEY. — ORSK TO ORENBURG. 
449 
lage below, and looking upwards to the mountain, will convey a tolerably good idea 
of the scene. 
From this spot, the road leading through the alluvial gravel of the valley in 
which the Ural flows, and only skirting the hilly tracts, we had no opportunity of 
examining the rocks for some little space ; hut to the west of the station of Pod- 
gornoi, the road again leads over one of the southern spurs of the chain. This 
ridge partly consists of igneous rocks, which throw off patches of limestone and 
iron ore. These are followed by hills having a more rounded outline, and con- 
sisting for the most part of strong ledges of grit and conglomerate, which highly 
inclined to the west, dip away, therefore, from the great axis of eruption, and 
overlie the shreds of dismembered limestone which fringe the trapprean hills. The 
Podgornoi hills strike from nearly nortli-north-west to south-south-east, and the 
beds dip 65° west-south-west, thus showing that the Guberlinski Hills form the true 
axis of the chain, throwing off similar limestones, grits and conglomerates, both to 
the east and west. That these highly inclined conglomerates are truly carboni- 
ferous we had no doubt, for they contain plants of that age, as well as fragments 
of pre-existing limestones ; and we believe that, like the conglomerates of which 
we have before spoken, and which succeed to the carboniferous limestone on the 
other flank of the axis north-east of Orsk, they are all of the same epoch. To the 
west of Podgornoi the conglomerates and grits are repeated in masses of enormous 
thickness, and are associated with calcareous grit, and flaglike, grey granular lime- 
stone. The strike of these last-mentioned beds is north-north-west, and they dip 
to the east-north-east., forming a trough with those to the east of Podgornoi. In 
comparing them with other deposits in the Ural, we can scarcely doubt that these 
last-mentioned strata belong to the group of calcareous psammites and conglome- 
rates which we term the grits of Artinsk, and which have been shown to constitute 
the uppermost member of the Carboniferous system in these regions. 
Other calcareous grits and flagstones which appear at Illienskaya and a few 
places in the low country, but which we did not see in situ, the surface being much 
covered up with gravel and clay, belong in all probability to the Permian system, 
and are, we doubt not, confluent with the great masses of that deposit, which, occu- 
pying all the low region around the city of Orenburg, are extended upon the flanks 
of the Mugodjar Hills, and ramify westwards for a considerable distance in the great 
depression watered by the Ural, along which we travelled. 
In one parallel, the carboniferous limestone is thrown out in a great advanced 
