Notwithstanding the value of the anthracite beds in Pennsylvania, competition is gradually driving the iron trade from these districts to the bituminous deposits, where the coals and the ores associated with them are cheaper. In the Lehigh Valley alone there are fifty-one anthracite furnaces, and many of the Pennsylvanian works, both for iron and steel, rank amongst the most complete in the world, such as those of the Cambria Company, at Johnstown (between Pittsburg and Harrisburg), which turn out 80,000 tons of steel and iron rails per annum. The works at Bethlehem (fifty miles west of Philadelphia) are pre-eminent for their completeness, and especially in connection with the Bessemer steel process. Pittsburg itself (population 156,381) is a second Birmingham, and the centre of the iron trade of the New World. Amongst other adjuncts of the trade, it contains 33 large rolling mills, with a productive capacity of 400,000 tons, equal to one-eighth of that of the whole of the States. In New York State, Buffalo and Troy are the chief iron centres, the latter town, containing the large Bessemer works of the Albany and Rensselaer Company.

Ohio has recently come to the fore as a (bituminous) iron producer. Upwards of thirteen new furnaces of the most approved height and construction, have been erected in the counties of Athens, Hocking, and Perry, where valuable beds of coal and ore exist. There are large works in Illinois, at Joliet and North Chicago, turning out some 50,000 tons a year, while in the adjoining State of Missouri there are furnaces at Carondelet, and large steel works (the

Vulcan) at St. Louis. It is, however, mostly in the Bessemer steel that the greatest advance has been made, not so much, perhaps, in the nature of the works, as in their completeness and scientific arrangement. There are now in the districts between Troy and St. Louis (that is, from New York to Missouri) eleven Bessemer mills with twenty-two converters, with a capacity of production of 550,000 ingots of steel per annum. The advantage possessed by the American steel makers is, that they have been able to profit by the experience of the English and Swedish nations, and to begin their Bessemer, trade, as it were, full grown.

As regards the production of iron, it must be remembered that the wages of ironworkers in the United States are a good deal higher than those of England; but on the other hand, the cost of living and provisions is much higher also, and it is a serious question for the consideration of those who think of emigrating from the Old World to the New, whether they will benefit themselves by so doing.

The various manufactories of wrought iron are widely distributed throughout the States. Bar iron. is produced in twenty-four States, to the amount of nearly three-quarters of a million tons. There are 220 bar and hoop iron mills, of which Pennsylvania again heads the list with 84. Plate and sheet iron are manufactured in fifteen States, though none is made south of Kentucky or west of Missouri. Pennsylvania turns out more plate and sheet iron than any State, producing in fact more than 60 per cent. of the entire quantity made in the Union.

MINING INDUSTRIES-PRECIOUS METALS AND

QUICKSILVER.

It is given to very few countries in the world to be producers of gold and silver on a large scale; but in this respect nature has been so bountiful to the United States, that the mining industries arising from these valuable metals are equalled in no other localities at the present date. The enormous riches contained under the head of gold alone in the States may be imagined, from the fact that the yield of 1879 was $38,900,000 (see equivalents of money, p. 220), and of silver, $40,812,000; total, $79,712,000; and that the amount of metals deposited at the mints and assay offices up to that date had reached the gigantic sum of $1,238,387,536.

GOLD and SILVER, which we must take together, are found in the following States :-California, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Dakota, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Washington Territory, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. It will be readily seen that the gold and silver-bearing districts are mainly found in the Western States, and especially those through which run the great chains of the Rocky Mountains, and thence slope towards the Pacific coast. As, however, the supply of gold, previous to 1846, came almost entirely from two or three of the Southern States, viz., Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, it will be well to notice these districts first. The North Carolina gold discoveries date from 1824, the gold field occupying an area of about 12,000 square miles, and the principal

mines being found upon a belt of granite which runs across the State, near the towns of Queensboro' and Charlotte. There are about 140 mines, more or less developed; but as they have been worked in a very desultory manner, quite different from the scientific undertakings in the Western States, the production of North Carolina and the adjoining States has always been fluctuating. Nevertheless, the total yield of these States up to 1879 has been considerable, viz., Alabama, $219,120; Georgia, $7,608,250; North Carolina, $10,527,691; South Carolina, $1,389,983; Tennessee, $82,267; Virginia, $1,663,345. The gold field of the latter State is a continuation of the Appalachian gold field, which extends from the north of the Potomac into Alabama, the width of the belt, where it is crossed by the Rappahannock River, being about twelve miles. The ores are very plentiful, though not of the richest quality, and the mines, chiefly situated in Fauquier County, are worked with considerable energy.

The gold districts of the Western States date their discovery from as short a time back as 1848, California being the first, succeeded by Nevada, and within the last half-dozen years by Arizona, Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, and Oregon. The following table gives the yield of the Western States in 1879, for both gold and silver :

:

The Californian gold field, which extends ov seven degrees of latitude, covering with its longe axis a distance of 500 miles, includes an area larg than the State of New York. The mines of Califo nia, Oregon, and Nevada are more or less situated the ranges of the Sierra Nevada and the Cascad the principal Californian mines being in the counti of Yuba, Nevada, Calaveras, Sierra, Butte, Shaste Placer and Inyo. Perhaps the most famous of a the American mines, and indeed we may say of th world, are in Nevada, near Virginia City, which stand 1,500 feet above the Carson Plain. The mountain here are traversed by a wonderful vein or lode, ex cessively rich in gold and silver. It is called the Comstock Lode, and it is worked in the most com plete and scientific manner at about nine large mines the deepest and hottest in the world. Some of these mines, such as the Consolidated Virginia and the California, are fabulously rich in ore, and have been the cause of intense speculation. A few of these "bonanzas," as they are called, have realized for their owners, fortunes which read more like an Arabian Nights' tale than anything else. Indeed, the two