APPENDIX L. 
(GOLD PRODUCE OF SIBERIA.) 
649 
be but the indications of similar spurs, or detached meridian ridges, which may be discovered in many 
other tracts of a region equal in extent to the whole of Europe. From the researches of the Russian 
engineers, and from Humboldt and his associates, we learn that rocks similar to those which are so auri- 
ferous in the Ural, reappear in various parallels of longitude along the flanks of the Altai. By a recent 
letter, indeed, from my friend Colonel Helmersen, the distinguished and successful explorer of the Ural, 
Altai and Siberia, I learn that his former associate in these countries. Professor Hoffman, has, in his last 
visit of 1843, discovered a tract in Siberia, in which the very richest gold alluvia occur in a “terrain” 
exclusively composed of granite and metamorphic schists, the gold being in the latter. Now in the Ural, 
as in other parts of Siberia, greenstones, syenites and serpentines seem invariably to have been the agents 
by which the metamorphic rocks have been rendered auriferous ; this discovery, therefore, widens the 
field of the gold-searchers, and opens out great probable, practical as well as theoretical, results. In 
truth, Siberia and its adjacent regions may be found to contain another Brazil, where granite also is the 
great eruptive agent of mineralization and metamorphism. 
“ Count Key selling also assures me in one of his letters that the discovery of M. Hoffman relates to an 
area larger than France , every part of which seems to be more or less auriferous, and all the subjacent 
rocks (palaeozoic schists and limestones ?) when pounded up and analysed affording a certain per-centage 
of gold ! If this diffusion of gold through the very matrix of rocks, which is, I may observe, a pheno- 
menon hitherto almost unknown \ be really found to hold good over so vast an area, it imparts a new and 
most important element to our reasoning, and renders it vastly more probable that no sort of limit can 
be set to the increase of the produce of Russian gold. \\ c know also from our enterprising medallist 
Adolph Erman, that, palaeozoic, eruptive and metamorphic rocks, similar to those of the Altai and the 
Ural, extend even to the Alden mountains' 1 2 , not far from the shores opposite Kamtschatka; and if so, 
why may they not contain the same minerals ? Again, we are told by Helmersen and others, that some 
of the southern offsets from the Altai, which extend into China, are auriferous, and one of them, the 
Far-Bagatai, the northern part of which is in the Russian territory, has already proved highly productive. 
The last fact is of very great importance ; for the Celestial empire, which has only just now been partially' 
opened out to European enterprise, may very probably (and I have strong reasons to think that the same 
classes of rocks extend through Chinese Tartary) prove to be another golden region like Siberia. Even 
in our own Hindustan, auriferous veins and deposits, as yet, it is true, of no great value, are known at 
various points from north to south, and have recently met with a good describer in Lieutenant Newbold, 
who strongly urges their further and more scientific exploration 3 ; whilst we have yet to learn, whether, 
in the progress of civilization, the gold tracts of South Carolina may not afford considerable additions to 
the metallic wealth of the new world. 
“ But, reverting to Northern Asia, how are we to limit our anticipations of the augmentation of such 
produce, when it is a fact, that within the last few years only, a tenth portion of the earth’s surface (Chi- 
nese Tartary and Siberia) has been, for the first time, made known to us as in many parts auriferous , and 
1 In our travels in the Ural we learned, indeed, from General Anosoff at Zlataust, that by a searching analysis 
gold had been discovered disseminated in the matrix of some of the limestones south of Miask. 
2 M. Adolph Erman has made the bold effort to colour geologically large portions of Siberia and the whole of 
Kamtschatka under the title of " Geognostische Skizze von Nord Asien.” (Archiv fiir Russland. Berlin, vol. ii.) 
The more recent travels of M. Middendorff show the extension of the same eruptive and metamorphosed palaeozoic 
rocks from Nertchinsk to the Stanovoi mountains, and to the Shantar Isles in the Sea of Okhotsk. (See Mr Mur- 
chison’s Anniversary Address to the Royal Geographical Society, May 1845.) 
3 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1843, p. 203. 
