LARGE LUMPS OF GOLD ORE. 
489 
little conical hills, composed of serpentine, diallage and other trappsean rocks with 
slaty schists, rise up and form low counterforts on the eastern edge of the Ural- 
tau. Little streamlets called Tashkuturgan and Kuslikinovka, across either of 
which a man can jump, are employed for the grinding and washing of this detritus. 
In order to satisfy the reader that the gold alluvia have been formed in an ancient 
alluvial period, when the relations of land and water differed from those of the 
present day, we first annex a little diagram taken from a spot adjacent to the works 
of Zarevo Nikolayefsk. 
64. 
This drawing represents a conical hill upwards of 100 feet in height, chiefly 
composed of a slaty greenstone, from the sides and summit of which gold detritus, 
consisting of fragments of quartz veins, chlorite schist and greenstone have been 
taken in greater abundance in and towards the depressions on the sides, though 
in smaller quantities all over the hill and even to its summit. This fact, like that near 
Neviansk, proves, that although the detritus is more or less local, it has been 
accumulated by an agency which carried it down in broad sheets, and distributed 
it over all the inequalities of the surface, lodging it on acclivities as well as in 
hollows. In the depressions, as might indeed be looked for, the greatest masses 
of detritus have been accumulated, and there only are they covered with a thick 
spread ot clay. In these latter hollows, particularly around the Zavod of Zarevo- 
Alexandrofsk, the very heavy “ pepites ” or lumps of solid gold have been 
found (evidently portions of very rich veinstones or nests of ore) which have ren- 
dered this locality so celebrated 1 . At the period of our visit, t he heaviest of these 
“ pepites ” (others of thirteen and sixteen pounds having preceded it) weighed 
twenty-four pounds sixty-eight zolotniks ; but since we left Russia a lump of 
native gold was found in these works in 1843, which is now deposited with the 
others in the Museum of the Imperial School of Mines, and which weighs about 
1 These workings vary much in their value ; formerly they gave from 9 to 10 zolotniks of gold per 
pood of gravel, now they afford 11 zolotnik only. For the equivalent of Russian weights, see p. 477, 
