The navigation of the Russian and Siberian rivers is making astonishing progress. There are now no less than 370 tugs on the Kama and Volga, and new steamers are being added every year. One company runs steamers from Nijni to Perm, and two from Nijni down the Volga to Astrachan. The Volga Steam Navigation Company is managed by an Englishman at Nijni-novgorod, and in his hands has proved a very remunerative undertaking. Under Russian direction it had been quite the reverse. Nearly all the steamers are of foreign construction. Many come from the German ports, and many from England. They are usually sent to Russia in pieces, but several have steamed across the North Sea, and have made their own way into the very heart of the country by means of the canals in communication with the rivers. The facilities enjoyed by Russia and Siberia for inland navigation are so vast, as to afford almost unlimited scope for capital and enterprise in introducing steam. It is, of course, a serious disadvantage that vessels have to be built in foreign countries, but there is no good reason why this should continue. If the authorities had encouraged the working of their own iron and coal mines with half the zeal they have misapplied to the gold-diggings, the country would have been further advanced in real wealth than it is. The Russian statesmen must sooner or later learn that mere gold no more constitutes wealth than tallow or any other article that has a mercantile value. The capital and labour consumed in procuring a given quantity of the precious metals would have probably produced a higher marketable equivalent, if coal and iron had been the object. At any rate, iron would have proved a surer basis for the propagation of wealth than gold. When steamers, for example, are built in Siberia, the manufacturing profits will, in the first instance, be disseminated in the country, and the gold that would, as now, be sent abroad for their purchase, may lie in the bowels of the earth, and no one be a loser by it. A good deal has already been done on the Siberian rivers, and the heavy traffic between Irkutsk and the west is conveyed for the most part in barges, which on the Om and Irtish are towed by steamers. The mere navigation of rivers in the Russian dominions is not new, but in former times the barges were incapable of ascending the rapid streams. They were constructed merely for the one trip down stream, and on reaching their destination and discharging their cargoes, they were broken up for fire-wood. The water communication between Eastern Siberia and Western Russia is necessarily very circuitous from the circumstance that the great rivers in Siberia run from south to north, and fall into the Frozen Ocean. For example, the distance by water from Omsk to Tumen is 3000 versts, and by land only 632. The Amoor and its tributaries form an exception, flowing eastward and falling into the Sea of Ochotsk. To begin at the extreme east; the grand water-route