The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

876 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.is reached from the European side so gradually that the traveller is scarcelysensible of having quitted the plains. On the Asiatic side the slope is even stillmore gentle, the absolute descent as far as Yekaterinburg scarcely amounting to300 feet. The bare rocks are also seldom visible, being mostly covered with mosses,Fig. 200.Divergent Spurs of the Southern Urals.Scale 1 : 6,580,000.E.of P.(/TcMWi£m1p 55,a o oE.of Gor even peat beds, and according to Ludwig lakes are concealed beneath suchthick layers of turf that carriage ways cross them without danger.The region of the Middle Urals, which has been most exposed to the action ofthe weather, has also acquired the greatest importance from its mineral wealth.Since 1815 gold associated with platinum has here been mined, besides which thereoccur whole mountains of iron and other metals, especially copper, nearly alwaysembedded in Permian formations. But the gold is sought not in the granite orserpentine rocks themselves, but in the fragments scattered over considerable tracts,probably by glacier action. On both sides of the range the Perm, Orenburg, and