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Updated: June 21, 2025
About thirty thousand poods of copper are produced annually in this district, but none of the copper zavods are at Barnaool. All gold produced from the mines of Siberia, with the exception of that around Nerchinsk, is sent to Barnaool to be smelted. This work is performed, in a room about fifteen feet square, the furnaces being fixed in its centre like parlor stoves of unusual size.
Captain Anossoff proposes to erect a smelting establishment at Blagoveshchensk, supplying it with iron ore from the Buryea region and with coal from the Zeya. Copper and silver exist in several localities, but the veins have not been thoroughly examined. The mountains are like those in the Nerchinsk district that have yielded so richly in precious metals.
As far as I could observe it is not a place of perpetual frost and snow, its summers being warm though brief. In winter it has cold winds blowing occasionally from the Yablonoi mountains down the valley of the Nertcha. The region is very well adapted to agriculture, and the valley as I saw it had an attractive appearance. The product of the Nerchinsk mines has been silver, gold, and lead.
After twelve months' negotiation, protracted by the outbreak of war with Galdan, the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the first concluded between China and any European power, was signed, and the brief and only war between Russia and China was thus brought to a speedy and satisfactory termination. The Russians agreed to the destruction of Fort Albazin, but they were allowed to build another at Nerchinsk.
On its left bank and two or three miles from its mouth is the town of Nerchinsk with five or six thousand inhabitants. Its situation is charming, and to me the view was especially pleasing, as it was the first Russian town where I saw evidences of age and wealth. The domes of its churches glistened in the sunlight that had broken through the fog and warmed the tints of the whole picture.
Many of the present inhabitants are exiles or the descendants of exiles, Nerchinsk having been a place of banishment for political and criminal offenders during the last hundred years. Those condemned to work in the mines were sent to Great Nerchinsk Zavod, about two hundred miles away. The town was the center of the military and mining district, and formerly had more importance than at present.
It is related that when organizing his expedition he forcibly seized this priest and kept him under guard during the journey to the Amoor. The Chinese twice besieged Albazin, once with eighteen thousand men, and afterward with nearly double that number. The Russians resisted a long time, and were only driven from the Amoor by the famous treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689.
The worst offenders, either political or criminal, were generally sent to the mines of Nerchinsk, their terms of service varying from two to twenty years, or for life. I was told that the longest sentence now given is for twenty years. The condition of prisoners in former times was doubtless bad, and there are many stories of cruelty and extortion practiced by keepers and commandants.
At Nerchinsk I resumed my efforts to purchase a tarantass, but my investigations showed the Nerchinsk market 'out' of everything in the tarantass line and no promise of a new crop. Fortune and Kaporaki favored me, and found a suitable vehicle that I could borrow for the journey to Irkutsk. I was to answer for its safety and deliver it to a designated party on my arrival there.
Under the reign of Nicholas and his father Nerchinsk received its greatest accessions, the Polish revolutions and the revolt of 1825 contributing largely to its population. Places of exile have always been selected with relation to the offence and character of the prisoners.
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