GOLD SHINGLE AND MAMMOTH BONES AT SOIMANOFSK. 
487 
Gold Alluvia at Soimanofsk in the South Ural .— Let us now cast a glance over 
the gold mines to the north and south of Miask, on which some of the features 
which bear upon our views are still better developed than in the North Ural. 
One of the most northern of these spots, called Soimanofsk, is highly interesting, 
as being situated upon a great line of igneous eruption and metamorphism, to 
which allusion has already been made. It lies, in fact, at the opening of a small 
transverse valley, close to the foot of the chain, in which masses of quartzose and 
schistose rocks, with a very copious development of limestone enveloped in serpen- 
tinous and other eruptive rocks, are covered with a very great thickness ot auri- 
ferous alluvia. A large portion of the auriferous gravel having been removed, 
the limestone has been exposed throughout a considerable area, as represented in 
this woodcut, and it is curious to observe to what powerful action its surlace had 
been subjected before this detritus was lodged in it. 
63 . 
The tops of the highly inclined beds are, in fact, rounded off, and the interstices 
between them worn into holes and cavities, as if by the action of water. Now 
here, as at Berezovsk, mammoth remains have also been found, and they were 
lodged in the very lowest part of the excavation, at the spot to which the figure 
of a man is pointing in the above woodcut, and at about fifty feet beneath the sur- 
face of overlying gravel, before it was removed (see upper dotted line c*). The evi- 
dence at this spot seems therefore decisive of the fact, that the entombment of the 
mammoths was here accompanied by powerful local debacles, which filled up the 
depressions with the debris of the adjacent ridge 1 . To this consideration, however, 
we shall return in the sequel. 
1 That streams like those which now flow could never have accumulated the immense mass of detritus 
here exposed, is seen by referring to the present small rivulet o, the bed of which has been lowered by 
the miners to the level n. 
3 r 2 
