258 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the date of March 31, 1847, the gold bullion, entirely unproductive, in 

 the imperial treasury amounted to $85,000,000. By an order then 

 issued, $22,500,000 was invested in public stocks, mostly French and 

 English. And again in May, 1848, there was lying idly in the vault 

 $82,000,000. 



" The great extent of the Siberian placers is worthy of special 

 study as regards their bearings on the history of the future. They 

 are larger than those of California, even according to our widest cal- 

 culations. To exhibit the estimate formed of them by those compe- 

 tent to judge, we refer to the recent work of Sir George Simpson, 

 Governor of the Hudson's Bay Territories in North America, and also 

 to that of Sir R. I. Murchison, President of the Geological Society 

 of England. Both of these most intelligent persons have visited Si- 

 beria. Sir George says : ' The whole surface of the country, from 

 the Uralean Mountains to the Yablonnoi chain, would appear to be 

 one vast bed of the precious metals. The government reserves to it- 

 self all the mines, turning them to excellent account, both as sources 

 of revenue and penal colonies. The washeries, however, are open to 

 private enterprise. When capitalists wish to embark in the work, 

 they employ peasants of experience, and there are instances in which 

 peasants have earned $40 a day during the two or three months of 

 the working season. As an instance of the speculative character of 

 this occupation (i. e. the mines), one individual, who embarked in 

 the business about three years ago, obtained no returns at all till this 

 season, when he was richly repaid for his outlay of more than a mil- 

 lion of dollars, by obtaining gold to the amount of $4,200,000. The 

 precious metals are more abundant in Siberia than in all the rest of 

 the Old World, the most precious of them being, perhaps, more plen- 

 tiful than in all the rest of both hemispheres taken together. 



" ' At present the mines and washeries are very unfavorable to the 

 settlement and cultivation of the country, by calling away laborers 

 from more steady occupations to the pursuit of precious metals. Al- 

 ready has the effect been seriously felt in Kra-noyarsk, where a pood 

 of meat has risen in ten years from $1.35 to $15, and where fowls 

 have risen from 20 cents apiece to $1.20.' 



" Sir R. I. Murchison, knighted for his geological researches, says : 

 ' It is a fact, that within the last four years only, a tenth portion of 

 the earth's surface, Chinese Tartary and Siberia, has been for the 

 first time made known to us as in many parts auriferous ; and when 

 from one portion of it only Europe is already supplied with so large 

 an amount of her chief circulating medium, well may political econo- 

 mists beg for knowledge at the hand of the physical geographer and 

 geologist, and learn from them the secret on which the public faith of 

 empires may depend.' 



" These Siberian gold regions, the description of which reminds us 

 of the daily accounts from California, began to be discovered some 

 twenty years ago quite extensively, though during the last ten 

 years only has their vast value been fully revealed." 



The Ecole des Mines, at St. Petersburg, possesses a series of over 

 750 pieces of the Siberian gold, among which is one, discovered in 1848, 

 weighing 90 pounds, which is in very nearly a pure state. Editors. 



