ECONOMICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



375 



many respects the most wonderful counterpart of California. That the gravel 

 is on the whole richer, and that the number and value of the quartz lodes 

 is greater in Victoria than in the Sierra Nevada seems to the writer a clearly 

 established fact. But the Tertiary gravels of the former country are con- 

 centrated into narrow channels, and these usually covered with volcanic 

 materials. There are no deposits which will compare in magnitude with 

 many of the larger ones in California. Besides this, the facilities for procur- 

 ing and storing water in sufficient quantity, and for bringing it into the gold 

 fields under sufficient pressure, are not offered by either the climatological 

 or topographical features of the Victorian mountains. 



Whether any of the Russian gold-bearing districts will ever lend them- 

 selves to a development of the hydraulic mining business is a question which 

 the writer finds it impossible to answer ; for the careful examination of all 

 the accessible material in regard to that country has not enabled him to form 

 a clear idea of the mode of occurrence of the auriferous deposits through that 

 vast region. The opinion of the Russian mining engineers in regard to the 

 extent and future development of the gold-fields of their vast country seems 

 to be of the most sanguine kind, as would appear, at least, from the recent 

 work of Mr. Bogoliubsky on that subject* This writer looks forward to the 

 time as not far distant when the present number of gold washings on Russian 

 soil will be multiplied by ten. That a portion of the gravels of that country 

 are rich in gold would seem evident from the statistics of their yield ; but 

 how these richer deposits are distributed with reference to the poorer ones, 

 and how much of the country they cover, cannot be made out from anything 

 that has yet been published. 



An all-important question, in regard to which the reader of the present 

 volume might expect to find in its pages some information, is, How perma- 

 nent are the high gravel deposits of the Sierra Nevada ; or, in other words, 

 how much longer can they be worked without exhaustion? No amount 

 of labor in the field would have sufficed for procuring the information neces- 

 sary for giving anything like a satisfactory answer to this question. In a few 

 localities, as, for instance, near Placerville. where the conditions were espe- 

 cially favorable, the amount of gravel remaining unwashed and still available 

 could be estimated with considerable approach to accuracy.! 



In a few districts examined it has been plainly seen that the mass of the 



* Zoloto, ego Zapasui i Dobuitcha. St. Petersburg, 1877. 

 t See Mr. Goody ear's estimates on p. 120, ante. 



