Humboldt’s <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" rendition="#i">regard</hi> is significant in this passage, as one <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" rendition="#i">authorized</hi> to see, combine, and assemble disparate geographies into coherent mountain-systems. This chapter has explored the corresponding social system that authorized such a survey—the mines, border posts, and mountain-sentinels that made it possible to trace out the “Diorite- and Porphyry Rock that characterizes the Russian <placeName xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" ref="https://edition-humboldt.de/H0009659 https://www.geonames.org/1488441">Urals</placeName>,” from the iron-barred pits of <placeName xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" ref="https://edition-humboldt.de/H0017566">Bogoslowsk</placeName> to the <placeName xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" ref="https://edition-humboldt.de/H0009035 https://www.geonames.org/608797">“Mughodjarischen Mountains”</placeName> of the <placeName xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" ref="https://edition-humboldt.de/H0000374 https://www.geonames.org/1519671">Kyrgyz Steppe</placeName>.<note xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" place="foot" xml:id="ftn57" n="57"> <bibl corresp="https://edition-humboldt.de/DV9UD9GW">Ibid.</bibl>, 276.</note> The effect, in the Urals as in the <placeName xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" ref="https://edition-humboldt.de/H0002407 https://www.geonames.org/1516401">Altai</placeName>, was to prove the epistemic power of mineral empire and its infrastructure, where local observations could be projected into the lands of <placeName xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" ref="https://edition-humboldt.de/H0010689 https://www.geonames.org/2017370">Russia</placeName>’s nomadic subjects and foes.