About thirty years ago firs were still the chief export article of Siberia--to China, European Russia, and Western Europe--but since then the discovery of its rich auriferous deposits has made gold its most important produce. The precious metal is found on the western slopes of the Ural chain and in West Siberia; but the most productive diggings are situated in East Siberia, where they give occupation to many thousands of workmen, and riches to a few successful speculators. The vast territory drained by the Upper Jenissei and its tributaries, the Superior and the Middle Tunguska, consists for the greater part of a dismal and swampy primeval forest, which scarcely thirty years since was almost totally unknown. A few wretched nomads and fur-hunters were the only inhabitants of the Taiga--as those sylvan deserts are called--and squirrel skins seemed all they were ever likely to produce. A journey through the Taiga is said to be one of the most fatiguing and tedious tours which it is possible to make. Up-hill and down-hill, a narrow path leads over a swampy ground, into which the horses sink up to their knees. The rider is scarcely less harassed than the patient animal which carries him over this unstable soil. No bird enlivens the solitary forest with its song; the moaning of the wind in the crowns of the trees alone interrupts the gloomy silence. The eternal sameness of the scene--day after day one constant succession of everlasting larches and fir-trees--is as wearying to the mind as the almost impassable road to the body. But suddenly the sound of the axe or the creaking of the water-wheel is heard; the forest opens, a long row of huts extends along the banks of a rivulet, and hundreds of workmen are seen moving about as industrious as a hive of bees. What is the cause of all this activity--of this sudden change from a death-like quiet to a feverish life? These are the gold-fields; the sands of these swampy grounds are mixed, like those of the Pactolus, with gold, and their fortunate possessors would not exchange them for the finest meadows, cornfields, or vineyards. Fedor Popow, a hunter of the province of Tomsk, is said to have been the first discoverer of gold in Siberia; and Government having granted permission to private persons to search for the precious metal, a few enterprising men directed their attention to the wild spurs of the Sajan Mountains. A brilliant success rewarded their endeavors. In the year 1836 an exploring-party, sent out by a merchant named Jakin Resanow, discovered a rich deposit of auriferous sand near the banks of the Great Birussa; and in 1839–40, similar deposits were found along several of the tributaries of the Upper Tunguska, and still farther to the north, on the Oktolyk, a rivulet that flows into the Pit.