O'RENBURG, a Russian government in the Ural region, lies partly in Europe and partly in Asia, and extends between the governments of Tobolsk on the n.e. and Samara on the s.w. Area of the government, 73,600 sq.m.; pop. '70, 900,547. The governmant is divided into four districts — Orenburg, Verchne, Uralsk, Ovsk, and Troitsk and Tehelabiusk. Capital, Orenburg (q.v.). Till 1865, Orenburg comprised within its area the whole of what is now the distinct government of Ufa (q.v.); but in that year the part of Orenburg lying to the n.w. of the Ural mountain range was organ ized into the new government. The populations, the surface, soils, flora, and fauna of this extensive country are of the most various kinds. The government is one of the most elevated in the empire ; but it also contains extensive low-lying tracts and steppes. It is traversed by numerous navigable rivers, by means of which and by canals it is in communication with the Caspian and Baltic seas, and with the Arctic ocean. The main streams are the Bielaia (running into the Kama, a tributary of the Volga), the Tobol, and the Ural. As many as 2,300 larger and smaller lakes lie within the frontiers. Of the whole area, about three-tenths are forest, a half.is waste land, and only about a twentieth part is cultivated. The hill country has much pleasant scenery, but great tracts of the steppe regions are utterly barren and desolate. The inhabitants are made up of Russians, Bashkir, Tartar, and Kirghis tribes, Kalmucks and certain Finnish peoples, with a few Germans. The trade is chiefly with Bokhara, Khiva, Tashkend, and the Kirgheez; the exports are gold, silver, and other metals, corn, skins, and manufactured goods; the imports, cattle, cotton—the demand for and supply of which have greatly increased since the commencement of the American war—and the other articles of Asiatic trade.
The imports are either disposed of to Rnssian merchants in the custom-house on the frontier, or are carried by Asiatic traders into Russia, and sold at the great national market of Nijni-Novgorod. There are in the province numerous iron and copper works, as well as valuable gold diggings, both belonging to the crown and to private individuals. The salt mines are valuable. There is a small-arms factory on a large scale, and a few other factories. Cattle-breeding is very extensively carried on. The number of horses in Orenburg is larger than in any other Russian government. The southern frontiers arc defended, at intervals of 12 or 12 tn., by fortified settlements, inhabited by Cossacks; those on a larger scale being surrounded by a bulwark and a moat. This line of forts extends over a frontier of 2,000 rn. eastward to the boundaries of China; the series from the mouth of the Ural to the Tobol, occupied by upwards of 242,000 Ural and Orenburg Cossacks, being known as the Orenburg line. The region of which Orenburg forms part was originally called Bashkir-land, and became subject to the Czar of 3loscow in 1556. Besides the towns giving name to the governmental districts, the only other place of consequence is Mijask.