[Sidenote: THE CASTLE OF THE DEMIDOFFS.] The castle of the Demidoffs, as it is called, stands on the bank of a small river in the Ourals, at the town of Neviansk. Part of it was built by the elder Demidoff; it has since been enlarged, so that it is now a goodly sized palace. In it is a large saloon with fresco paintings by an Italian artist who was specially engaged for the work, and it has several rooms which would make large halls anywhere else. The furniture was made expressly for the house, and is renewed from time to time, whenever it becomes antiquated or faded. Several rooms are kept for the use of travelers, and everything, including the table, is furnished free of charge. You may arrive there at any hour of the day or night, and find a warm welcome, and a room ready for you. You are fed with a most liberal hand, and may have the best wines known to the European market—champagne, port, sherry, anything and everything you choose. Stay as long as you please, go where you wish to, and you have no bill to pay. Let us hope for a speedy adoption of this Demidoff custom everywhere, with the assurance that it will be highly popular with the majority of visitors, and tend to a large increase in their number. The principal mining town of the Demidoffs is on the river Tagil, and is known as Nijne Tagilsk. It has a population of about twenty-five thousand, and contains many fine buildings, including churches, hospitals for the workmen, schools, academies, dwellings for the directors and sub-directors, and an immense pile in which are the offices of the administration. The smelting furnaces, forges, rolling mills, machine shops, and the like, are on an enormous scale, and are surpassed by very few establishments anywhere in the world. Much of the machinery is made on the spot, and the facilities are such as to astonish any visitor, even when he knows beforehand that he will see something colossal. All the smelting is done with charcoal, and consequently the charcoal burners are an important element of the population. The forests of the estate cover many hundreds of square miles, and are managed with great care. Not a tree is cut without the order of an officer, and the work is so arranged that the young trees are protected until they are of suitable size. When a piece of ground has been cleared, it is replanted, and in eighty years it can be cleared again. [Sidenote: THE METALS FOUND.] The iron ore is about a mile from the town, and near the top of a hill, so that it can be rolled directly into the works with very little labor. It is of the kind known as magnetic ore, and the supply is simply inexhaustible. It is worked in an open quarry, no tunneling or shafting being needed, and as the vein is four hundred feet wide, eighty feet thick, and a mile or more in length, there is no danger that the supply will be exhausted for some thousands of years. And if it should be, there are other and larger deposits not far away.