Mistress of the Copper Mountain

The Gumyoshki mine was famous for its various wonders, where copper ore was mined for the nearby Polevskoy factory since the 18th century. And not without reason: the power here belonged to the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. She could take various forms: sometimes she would turn into a lizard or appear as a cheerful young woman, sometimes she would enter the house as a wanderer or greet guests as a commanding sovereign in her realm. But in any form, the Mistress loved to "outsmart a person": she would give a complex task — and the overseer would cruelly punish the worker; she would beckon with a mysterious stone flower — and the master would disappear forever into her mountain. And in the mountain "there are large rooms... and the walls vary. Sometimes they are all green, sometimes yellow with golden speckles. On them, again, there are copper flowers. There are also blue ones, azure ones. In a word, it is so beautifully decorated that one cannot even describe it." This beauty of the Ural land, the incredible wealth of the Ural mountains, was conveyed with love and deep knowledge of the nature of stone by the artist Vyacheslav Nazaruk, who dedicated several years to illustrating the most famous tales of Pavel Bazhov.