Note 159 — MR. THOMAS WITLAM ATKINSON, AND HIS ADVENTURES IN SIBERIA AND CENTRAL ASIA.

The scenery of the Tchossowaia valley is warmly praised by Sir Roderick Murchison. “A more picturesque river-gorge,” he says, “was certainly never examined by geologists. Between the hamlet of Kinist and Ust-Koiva we passed through scenes even surpassing in beauty those higher up the stream, and to which it would require the pencil of a professed artist to do justice. The river runs in a limestone gorge, in which are cliffs of every variety of form, occasionally exposing large caverns along their vertical faces, with trees and flowers grouped about in the clefts—rocks varying in colour from black to white.”—“Geology of the Oural,” p. 188.