m depredation, by annually pouring out
from those prisons, as the time of their sentences expires, the whole
crowd of villany to live on villany once more;--making the very streets
a place of danger, and filling the country with hungry crime.

The only argument on the opposite side is, that the free settlers are
offended by finding themselves in a population of convicts. But to this
the obvious answer is, that the colonisation of Australia was originally
intended as a school of reform--that the convicts have been to a great
extent reformed, which they never would have been at home--that the
convicts were in the colony first, and that the settlers going there,
with their eyes open, have no reason to complain.

We then have a Notice on another subject, which is at present engrossing
the speculations of all Europe, namely, the gold-country on the
Yenissei. Krasnoyayk, the capital, stands in a plain in the centre of
the district, where the mania of gold-washing broke out about fifteen
years ago. Some individuals have been singularly lucky in their search.
One person, after having laboured in vain for three years, and expending
a million and a half of rubles, suddenly, in this very year, had hit
upon a depot which gave him a hundred and fifty poods of gold--worth
thirty-five thousand rubles each, or five millions and a half of rubles.
Gold here measures every thing: a lady's charms are by weight, "a pood
is a good girl, and two or three poods are twice or thrice as good as a
wife." _This_ province alone has, in this year, yielded five hundred
poods of gold.

Ekaterineburg is the centre of the mining district of the Uralian
mountains. The population amounts to about fourteen thousand, who are
all connected with the mines. The town has an iron foundery, a mint for
copper and silver coin, and various establishments for cutting marble,
porphyry, and polishing precious stones. The neighbouring mountains
appear to be nature's richest repository of minerals, yielding, in great
abundance, diamonds, amethysts, topazes, &c.; gold, silver, iron, and
platina. These inexhaustible treasures chiefly belong to Count Demidoff
and M. Yakovleff. The Count is said to receive half a million sterling
a-year from this princely property.

Hurrying now towards England, with the anxiety which every one feels to
reach home as the end of a long journey seems to be nigh, the traveller
passed through Kazan, second in national honour to Moscow, but fou