in the west Urals. The Permian deposits cover a wide zone all along the western slope of the Urals from north to south, and are most important on account of their copper ores, salt beds and salt springs. They are also covered with variegated marls which are almost destitute of fossil organisms, so that their age is not yet quite settled.
Climatic, Geo-Botanical and Geo-Zoological Importance.—The importance of the Urals as a climatic and geo-botanical boundary can no longer be regarded as very great. Most European species of plants freely cross the Urals into Siberia, and several Siberian species travel across them into northern Russia. But, being a zone of hilly tracts extending from north to south, the Ural Mountains necessarily exercise a powerful influence in pushing a colder northern climate, as well as a northern flora and fauna, farther south along their axis. The harshness of the climate at the meteorological stations of Bogoslovsk, Zlatoust and Ekaterinburg is not owing merely to their elevation a few hundred feet above sea-level. Even if reduced to sea-level, the average temperatures of the Ural meteorological stations are such as to produce a local reflexion of the isotherms towards the south. The same is true with regard to the limits of distribution of vegetable and animal species. The reindeer, for instance, is met with as far south as the 52nd parallel. The Southern Urals introduce into the Cis-Caspian steppes the flora and fauna of middle Russia.
In the distribution of the races of mankind the Urals have played an important part. To the present day the Northern Urals are inhabited by Finnish races (Samoyedes, Syryenians, Voguls and Permians) who have been driven from their former homes by Slav colonization, while the steppes on the slopes of the Southern Urals have continued to be inhabited by the Turkish Bashkirs. The Middle Urals were in the 9th century the abode of the Ugrians, and their land, Bjarmeland or Biarmia (now Perm), was well known to the Byzantine historians for its mineral wealth, -there being at that time a lively intercourse between the Ugrians and the Greeks. Compelled to abandon these regions, they moved (in the 9th century) south alon the Ural slopes towards the land of the Khazars, and through tie prairies of south-eastern and southern Russia (the Λεβεδία of Constantine Porphyrogenitus) towards the Danube and to their present seat—Hungary—leaving but very few memorials behind them in the Northern and Middle Urals.[1] At present the Urals, especially the Middle and the Southern, are being more and more colonized by Great Russian immigrants, while the Finnish tribes are rapidly melting away.
Metallurgy and Mining.—The mineral wealth of the Urals was known to the Greeks in the 9th century, and afterwards to the Novgorodians, who penetrated there in the 11th century for trade with the Ugrians. When the colonies of Novgorod (Vyatka, Perm) fell under the rule of Moscow, the Russian tsars soon grasped the importance of the Ural mines, and Ivan III. sent out German engineers to explore that region. in 1558 the whole of the present government of Perm was granted by the rulers of Moscow to the brothers Stroganov, who began to establish salt-works and mines for iron and copper. Peter the Great gave a new impulse to the mining industry by founding several iron-works, and from 1745, when gold was first discovered, the Russian colonization of the Urals took a new departure. The colonization was of a double character, being partly free—chiefly by Nonconformists in search of religious freedom—and partly compulsory,—the government sending peasant settlers who became serfs at the iron and copper works. Until 1861 all work at the mines was done by serfs belonging either to private persons (the Stroganovs, Demidovs and others) or to the crown. Not only are the Urals very rich in minerals, but the vast areas covered with forests afford an almost inexhaustible supply of cheap fuel for smelting purposes. Thus for a long time the Urals were the chief mining region in Russia. But when coal began to be used for smelting purposes, south Russia generally, and Ekaterinoslav in particular, became the chief iron-producing region. Attention has, however, again been directed to the great mineral wealth locked up in the mountain region, and the last two years of the 19th century witnessed a “ boom " in the purchase of iron and gold mines by foreign companies. The chief pig-iron and iron-works are at Nizhniy-Tagilsk, and the principal steel-works at Bogoslovsk. The manufacture of agricultural machinery has increased in the southern Urals, especially at Krasno-ufimsk, and the manufacture of tea-urns has grown in importance at Perm.
Gold is met with in the Urals both in veins and in placers; the output increased from about 30,000 oz. in 1883 to three times that amount at the end of the century. The Urals have also rich placers of platinum, often mixed with gold, iridium, osmium and other rare metals, and supply annually some 13,000 ℔, i.e. 95% of all the platinum obtained in the world. Silver, mercury, nickel, zinc and cobalt ores are found. Rich mines of copper are found at Turinsk, Gumishev and other places, yielding as much as 5% of pure copper; nickel is obtained at Revdinsk, and the extraction of iron chromates has developed. Coal exists in many places on the western slope of the Urals, mainly on the Yaiva river, in the basin of the Kama, and on the Usva (basin of the Chusovaya), and about 500,000 tons are raised annually. Several beds of coal have been found on the eastern slope; excellent anthracite exists at Irbit and good coal at Kamyshlov. Sapphires, emeralds beryls, chrysoberyls, tourmalines, aquamarines, topaz, amethysts, rock crystals, garnets and many kinds of jade, malachite and marble are cut and polished at several stone-cutting works, especially at Ekaterinburg; and diamond-mining may prove successful. Good asbestos is extracted, and pyrites is worked for the manufacture of sulphuric acid Many varieties of mineral waters occur in the Urals, the best being those at Serginsk, Klyuchevsk and Elovsk.
Authorities.-Sir R. J. Murchison, Geol. of Russia (2nd ed., 1853); E. Hofmann, Nordl. Ural (St Petersburg, 1853–56); Meglitzky and Antipov, Bergbau im Ural (1861); Ruprecht, Verbr. der Pflanzen im nördl. Ural; Panaev, Climatology of the Urals (Russian, 1882); P. Semenov, Geographical Dictionary (Russian); E. Fedorov, Geological Researches in Northern Urals (1884–96), and Bogoslovsk District (1901); Chupin, Geogr. and Stat. Dict. of the Government of Perm; Mendeléev, The Ural Iron Industry (1900). (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
URALSK, a province of Asiatic Russia, lying N. of the Caspian Sea, with an area of 140,711 sq. m. It is bounded by the government
of Astrakhan on the W., Samara and Orenburg on the N., Turgai and the Sea of Aral on the E., and the Caspian Sea and Transcaspian region on the S. It is geographically situated mostly within the boundaries of Asia, i.e. E. of the Ural river, and both its physical features and its inhabitants are, to a
very large extent, Asiatic. Administratively, it belongs to the
“ Kirghiz provinces,” or governor-generalship of the Steppes.
Apart from a narrow strip of land in the north, where the slopes
of the Obshchiy-Syrt plateau, covered with fertile black earth
and stretches of forest, descend towards the Ural river, and the
gentle slopes of the Mugojar Hills in the north-east, Uralsk
consists of arid steppes and deserts, which incline with an imperceptible
gradient towards the Caspian. Most of the province
is below sea-level, the zero altitude line running from Kamyshin
on the Volga to the south of the town of Uralsk.
Uralsk is drained by the river Ural or Yaik, which rises in Orenburg and flows south, west and south, entering the Caspian after a course of 900 m. Its chief tributaries, the Sakrnara, the Qr and the Ilek, are in the north; along its lower course the Great and Little Uzen and many small streams on the left bank become lost in lakes before reaching the Ural. The Emba, which flows through the north of the Ust-Urt plateau, reaches the Caspian by a series of shallow lagoons, which were navigable in the 18th century.
The climate is influenced by the Central Asian steppes. A cold and dry winter is succeeded by a hot and still drier summer, during which the grass, and sometimes all the crops, are destroyed by the burning heat. Uralsk, although lying wholly to the south of 52° N., has the same average yearly temperature as Moscow and south Finland (39°.5); its January is colder than that of north Finland (3°), while July averages 73°.
The estimated population in 1906 was 730,300. It consists of three different elements—Ural Cossacks, who constitute about one-fifth; some 15,000 Russian peasants, and Kirghiz. The Kirghiz are almost entirely dependent on pastoral pursuits. The Cossacks, descendants of those independent communities of free settlers and Raskolniks who are so often mentioned in Russian history under the name of Yaik Cossacks, owing to their unwillingness to submit to the rule of the tsars, are line representatives of the Great Russian race, though not without some admixture of Tatar and Kalmuck blood. Their chief occupations are live-stock breeding and fishing.
History.—In the first half of the 16th century Uralsk was occupied by the Nogai horde, a remnant of the Mongol Golden Horde, which retired there after the fall of Astrakhan and Kazan; the khans resided at Saraichik on the river Ural. At the same time the lower parts of the Ural were occupied by Russian runaway serfs and free Cossacks who did not recognize the authority of Moscow. They took Saraichik in 1560 and formed an independent community, like that of the Zaporogian Cossacks. When the Moscow princes attempted to bring them under their rule and prosecuted them for nonconformity, the Cossacks revolted, first under Stenka Razin (1667–71) and afterwards under Pugachev (1773–75). After the latter rising, the name of Ural was officially given to the Yaik river and the Yaik Cossacks. The disbanding of their artillery, the planting
- ↑ Comp. Moravia and the Madiars, by K. J. Groth; Zabyelin's History of Russian Life, and the polemics on the subject in Izvestia of the Russ. Geogr. Soc., xix. (1883).
