84 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



feet of water per minute to the surface. In the engine- 

 room two men at a time spend eight hours daily, for which 

 they each receive in money about fifteen pence. We prom- 

 ised ourselves, as a great feature in the descent of the 

 copper-mine, the seeing of malachite in its natural state ; 

 and we were not disappointed. The captain took us 

 through long galleries of timber beams, and then to the 

 spots where the miners had been working. Here, by the 

 light of our lamps, the pieces of green mineral could be 

 clearly seen, and we had the pleasure of digging them out 

 with a pick, and bringing them away as specimens. The 

 price of malachite at the mine is six shillings a Russian 

 pound, if in moderate-sized pieces ; twenty shillings when 

 the lumps are large, but only two shillings if they are 

 small. 



4 Besides these copper and magnetic iron mines, they 

 have others of maganese iron ore, which contains 64* per 

 cent, of binoxide of maganese, the peroxide being sold at 

 the rate of about eighteen shillings per hundredweight. 

 Specimens of these, and other minerals of great interest to 

 the geologist, are exhibited in a museum not far from the 

 works. 



' Among the remarkable things to be seen at these 

 hives of industry were a machine for drawing water by a 

 cord from a copper-mine two miles off, a steam-hammer of 

 seven tons weight, an iron furnace of 10,000 cubic feet 

 dimensions, said to be the largest high furnace for wood 

 in the world, and a machine for splitting their fuel wood, 

 of which they burn annually 100,000 sajens that is to 

 say, a 325 feet cube, or, roughly speaking, a pile of logs 

 twice as big as St. Paul's Cathedral.* 



' They make steel for Sheffield, and can do castings up 

 to more than 30 tons in weight. Their iron is excelled in 

 quality, I believe, only by that of Dannemora. They have 

 eleven zavods, or "works," of which eight are connected 



* What- extent of land must be cleared to furnish sncb an quantity of fuel I know not, 

 but the railways of Central Kussia are said to consume yearly the timb.er off 90,000 acres 

 of forest an area, that is, about the size of Rutlandshire. 



