The mountains of Spain were, according to ancient writers, very rich in gold and silver; and accordingly Gibbon calls that kingdom, “the Peru and Mexico of the old world.” He adds, that “the discovery of the rich western continent of the Phenicians, and the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labor in their own mines for the benefit of strangers, form an exact type of the more recent history of Spanish America.” The Phenicians were acquainted only with the sea-coasts of Spain; but avarice, as well as ambition, carried the arms of Rome and Carthage into the heart of the country, and almost every part of the soil was found pregnant with gold, silver and copper. A mine near Carthagena, is said to have yielded daily twenty-five thousand drams of silver, or over thirteen hundred thousand dollars a year. The provinces of Asturia, Gallicia and Lusitania, yielded twenty thousand pounds’ weight of gold annually: but rich as these mines are, the modern Spaniards have chosen rather to import the precious metals from America, than to seek them at home. Portugal is in many parts mountainous; and these mountains contain, beside others, rich ores of silver. But the Portuguese, like the Spaniards, having been supplied with metals from South America, and particularly with an abundance of gold and silver from Brazil, have not worked the mines in their own country. Gems of all kinds, as turkoises and hyacinths, are also found in these mountains, together with beautifully variegated marbles, and many curious fossils. But the richest and most productive gold mines of Europe, at the present time, are probably those of Russia. It had long been known that gold was to be found in the Russian dominions; but in 1829, Baron Humboldt, with two scientific associates, at the request of the emperor of Russia, made a mineralogical tour to the Ural and Altai mountains. In this journey, they not only discovered new localities of gold and silver, but from the geological features of the country suggested that, at certain localities, diamonds would also probably be found, which accordingly happened. And as the result of the report they made to the Russian government, mining operations were commenced on a large scale in these mountains, which have now become one of the most prolific gold regions in the world. The increase of these sources of gold, in extent and amount, has been such, that from the value of about ten thousand dollars in 1836, the amount received in 1843, was some eighteen millions of dollars; and the supply has since increased annually, until at present, 1855, it amounts to about twenty million dollars a year. Most of this large amount of gold is gathered from washing the sand and loose earth, and not from deep mines; and as it is every year becoming greater and greater, it must add immensely to the wealth and resources of the Russian empire.