The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

THE SOUTHERN URALS. 375their operations to the more recent deposits annually formed on the outskirts ofthe lake during the thaw, when the muddy streams charged withsaline particlesdrain from the surrounding steppe, causing a yearly accumulation of about2,000,000 tons of salt in the Yelton basin. The water holds such a quantity insolution that it never freezes even when the glass falls 50° Fahr. below freezingpoint ; but it is then dangerous to expose the limbs to its action, for the skinimmediately becomes livid, often followed by mortification of the flesh. Accordingto tradition there are some springs of pure and icy water in the middle of the lake.The yield of salt had increased from 80,000 tons in 1865 to 275,000 in 1871,when the management passed from the Government to a private company. Atpresent this company confines its operations mainly to the Baskunckak marsh,which is more accessible from the Volga.Most of the saline steppes stretch north of the Caspian between the Volgaand Ural Rivers. The salt area west of the Caspian is much more contracted,the steppes here consisting mostly of argillaceous plains studded with lakes, someof which are fresh. In the north the steppes are generally sandy throughouttheir entire extent, and interrupted only by marshes and the two triassic districtsof the Great and Little Bogdo, and here and there by shifting dunes. Rockysteppes are confined entirely to the Asiatic side. But whether salt, argillaceous,or rocky, none of these steppes at all resemble the grassy prairies of the Dnieper,scanty pastures occurring only here and there in the low-lying tracts at considerabledistances from the present shores of the sea. Even in these places,after the not unfrequent visits of the locusts, not a blade of grass remains, thevery reeds and sedge of the swamps disappearing to the water's edge. Yet thesedreary wastes are inhabited not only by the nomad Kirghiz and Bashkirs, buteven by hardy settlers, by Great Russian Cossacks, pioneers of the race which haspeopled the whole of Central Russia.East of the river Ural rocky plateaux, breaking the monotonous surface of thesteppes, form the first elevations of the long range of the Ural Mountains stretchingthence northwards through twenty-eight parallels of latitude across the four zonesof the steppes, forests, tundras, and ice-fields, far into the Frozen Ocean.The Southern Urals and River Ural.The section of the Urals, which begins at the sources of the Petchora, andwhich forms the eastern limit of the Volga basin, is not accompanied by parallelridges, like the Northern Urals of the Voguls, Ostyaks, and Samoyeds. But onthe eastern or Siberian side some eminences, such as the Denejkin Kamen, rise toa greater height than any others in the entire range. South of the KonchakovKamen the Urals cease to present the appearance of a connected system, heredwindling to a series of broken ridges, with a mean elevation varying from 700to 1,000 feet above the surrounding lowlands. The base of these ridges is evenso broad that the fall on either side is often scarcely perceptible. The waterpartingline, which has an absolute elevation of only 1,200 feet above the sea,c c 2