When the Russian government set itself the highly just goal of lowering the cost of salt for many millions of consumers of such an important product, it began the construction of a salt railway from the Vladimirovka pier to Baskunchak Lake. The total length of this rail track is 54 versts, and counting it with side and siding tracks 72 versts. The cost of building the road extends to 8,200,000 rubles, which is 68 thousand per mile of the main route - the price would seem enormous if we take into account that the route runs along completely flat terrain, which did not require either embankments or excavations, and that the roads, mostly wooden, have a rather modest appearance. But we must take into account that the rolling stock of the salt road, by the very nature of its purpose - the transportation of such a bulky and cheap product as salt - is very large, the prices for labor during construction were very high, and the work itself required a lot of labor, since the heavy soil of the drift - completely dried clay - required a lot of effort from the workers, yielding only to a crowbar and a pick.
Actually, regarding Lake Baskunchak, as it lies at a considerable distance from the Volga, we could limit ourselves to only the above, but in view of the importance of its significance for the region, we hope that the reader will not complain about us if we devote a page or two of our essay to it.
The road to the lake runs through the steppe, the like of which you can hardly find even in the Volga region: not a hill, not a tree, not a bush. The clayey soil is covered with cracks from the heat that reigns here. There is an overwhelming dead silence all around. From time to time you will glimpse a group of huts—a small, crazy village—and then again the vast steppe will appear, into which not only do no birds fly, but in which, among other insects, you will only meet the unpretentious tarantula.
But, however, on the way to the lake you will see a wonderful play of nature for such a meteorite: in the middle of the steppe sticks out a lonely high mountain, rising from the flat space surrounding it to a height of 80 fathoms; the profile of the mountain is extremely original: you don’t need much imagination to find in it a resemblance to a colossal monster stretched out on the steppe, whose head is turned towards the lake, and whose body stretches 2 or 3 miles. This mountain is called Bogdo. How she ended up in this smooth and level steppe is difficult to say. Perhaps it was pushed to the surface from the earth's underground volcanic forces. That this mountain with the entire adjacent steppe was at that time the bottom of the sea is beyond doubt, since its surface is strewn with sea shells and fossils of marine animals. Kalmyk nomads consider Mount Bogdo sacred and come to it to worship. When you approach Lake Baskunchakskoye, a picture of a fascinating world spreads out before you.
— 135 giving you a look that you never expected to see: in the middle of the sultry steppe you see before you, as if by magic, a spread-out picture of winter. The lake is 17 versts long and 9 versts wide, completely covered, as it were, with ice and ice; Closer to the shore, it’s as if the ice has thawed, and there is water on its surface, and in the middle of the lake, white mounds are scattered in a picturesque disorder, looking like tents covered with snow. All this oil and ice is the salt that covers Lake Baskunchak and is extracted from it.
The railway, approaching the lake itself, covers with its tracks with its arc to the right and left. Being on the very shore, you will see that the lake is all covered with salt, and that the water, correctly speaking, brine (in the local expression ri > aa g: “wound”), protrudes above the layers of salt by a few inches. By the shores of the lake the layers lay at the bottom, and further to the middle, the lake is very deep, it is unknown whether they reach the bottom. The thickness of the salt layer is so great, especially in the middle and near the northern shore, that they could not drill it to the bottom with sweepers. In the southern part of the lake the salt sheet is much thinner; there, little by little, it turns into some salty mud, which is considered very beneficial for rheumatism. Swimming in the lake itself is probably also possible; You just don’t need to wet your heads, and it is necessary, after getting out of the lake, to immediately pour fresh water over it, since otherwise the entire body will be covered with salt crystals, which, if not washed off, will arouse severe itching in it.
The process of extracting salt from the lake is quite simple: using a crowbar or a pick, salt blocks are broken off and crushed into pieces by a hammer