s, and indeed supplies
the great bulk of those wants within herself, with to spare in some of
these products for her neighbours and other countries. Her mines are
annually increasing in productiveness and number, as enterprise is
extended and capital invested in them, and as domestic manufactures and
improving agriculture increasingly absorb their produce. The
treasure-yielding progress of her gold mines is one of the extraordinary
events of the age. The existence of gold in Siberia was scarcely
suspected till 1829. The first researches of adventuring individuals
were attended with no success. Feodot Popoff, one of the earliest,
succeeded at length in that year, when all others had abandoned the
undertaking as hopeless, in discovering traces, and procuring some
inconsiderable specimens, of gold--not in quantity, however, to repay
the working; and the doubts before existing seemed confirmed as to the
fruitlessness of further perseverance in the search. Major-General
Kovalevsky, of the engineers of mines, having been appointed governor of
Tomsk, renewed the attempt in 1830; and, at the close of that year, his
indefatigable labours, and more methodical plan of operations, were
rewarded with the discovery of a first considerable stratum of
auriferous sands, which was designated Yegorievsky, (St George.)
Adventurers flocked into the district forthwith, and in numbers, upon
the widespreading news; and excellently did renewed labours recompense
the zeal of the more fortunate; numerous were the discoveries of layers
of golden sands. In one of these, last year, a massive piece of native
gold, weighing 24-1/2 pounds Russian, (the Russian pound is about 1-1/2
oz. less than the English,) was discovered embedded in a fragment of
quartz, and is now deposited in the museum of the School of Mines at St
Petersburg. The yield of the Siberian mines has since been at the
following rate of progression--omitting the intermediate years for
brevity, although in every year there was an increase of quantity upon
the preceding:--

1830 5 poods, 32 lbs., 59-1/2 zdotnicks.
1832 21 --- 34 --- 68-3/4 ---
1834 65 --- 18 --- 90-3/8 ---
1836 105 --- 9 --- 41 ---
1838 193 --- 6 --- 47-1/2 ---
1840 255 --- 27 --- 26-3/8 ---
1842 631 --- 5 --- 21-1/4 ---

The total of the thirteen years has been 2093 poods, 38 lbs., 46 zd. The
pood, be it remembered, is equal