METALLURGY. bl 



iron which you can twist about like lead without breaking 

 it; and they are still making horse-shoes, nails, spades, trays, 

 and boxes, said to be the best in Russia, if not in the world. 

 If fibre and ductility are to be the test, this iron will bear 

 comparison with any Swedish or Low Moor iron you can 

 produce. I have seen their iron twisted and tied into all 

 kinds of beautiful knots like twine, and this of all sizes, up 

 to three quarters of an inch diameter. And I have seen 

 their sheet-iron as thin as paper, as smooth and as bright 

 as a mirror, and weighing only a quarter of a pound to the 

 square foot. All the old zavods which were built by him, 

 both those built for Government and those built for private 

 owners, are still acknowledged by all competent authorities 

 to have been laid out with great practical skill and judg- 

 ment, generally at the confluence of two or more streams 

 which drain all the water from the surrounding hills for 

 water supply and water power. He picked out the nar- 

 rowest, and otherwise most eligible spot, between two banks, 

 and there he made his dams, stretching right across the 

 river, and these of various heights according to the natural 

 formation of the vale, some of them having a fall of thirty 

 feet. Then he erected the works below the dams, naming 

 them after the river near which they stood. These water 

 dams are now large and beautiful lakes, some of them 

 thirty versts long and ten wide, four times the area of 

 Loch Lomond. 



' Had those vast forests, those extensive lakes, those 

 inexhaustible mines and mountains of ore, some of them 

 containing 80 per cent, of pure iron, been in the hands of 

 our countrymen, they would have been worth more than 

 the mines of Peru, California, and Australia, all put 

 together; and the proprietors would not have been, as 

 they are now, in the slough of despond. 



( Some of these estates are as large as Yorkshire ; the 

 Government of Perm is as large as England, the whole 

 Ural region is larger than all the British isles put 

 together. 



' It is very interesting to watch them let off these lakes 



a 



