The new gold fields are situated within the Yakut Republic (now a The Tommot intersect Four years of work on the Aldan jand the both tributaries of the River Aldan [which is navigable in its lower pave 10 pos fs, Gold wat found there but of such a quality. that the Lena Company, which had the pick of the best, did not con-
Yellow fever is only carried by! members of the genus Stegomyia, which may be recognized by the bunded appearance of the abdomen and legs. They are generally black, Banded white. The larve of Stegomyia are longer than those of other mosquitoes and of a bright red or crimson colour.
As regards the distribution of mosquitoes, it is an interesting fact that it is not always in the tropics that they are most prevalent. In countries like Manchuri Alaska, British Columbi prairies of Canada, mos Beveral species abound in numbers. that outrival the tropics altogether. In some of the swampy areas of Manchuria and the Amoor which ave visited mosquitoes occur in uch swarms as to beggar deserip-In one place where " plucky trying large scale, mosquitoes were so bad that they 'Iiterally poisoned the herses to death, and in order to save the lives of the few they had left, the farmers had to keep them night and' day inside rooms with. wire-octooned doors and windows.
The mosquito belongs to the great order of insects known as the Diptera, or two winged insects, and it de thus @ relation of the common fly. Indeed some of the smaller forms of mosquito, commonly called midges, are almost indistinguishable federal territory of the U.S. S.R), a land famous already in the first half of the 19th century as the richest gold country in Siberia and Russia, Gold was first found there when the Californian gold-craze broke out, and, as early as in 1842, Jan adventurous Siberian trader, Sokoloff, came across gold in a remote corner of the Ya-Provine some 200 miles from the Lena River, a place that has known under the name of Yar." Since that time within an jtesion and flows into the Lena. On sider it worth the trouble. For the lits upper course the Aldan is a gold, they said, was "too ie series of gorges pressed into deep leanyons, reminding one of the dicates. a high silver content, and judest stretches of the Yukon but|that also in much too small a the fact that the Aldan is, if)uantity to bother with. possible, stilt more wild and detert When the company therefore de-than the Yukon ever was. No man cided to abandon its claims, the wes on the rocky banks of the|Aldan gold fell into disfavour, Who Upper Aldan, for the only aborigines would care to break his neck going of the land, the Yakut tribes, are [up the Aldan when gold was found fers and inhabit only. the in numberlesss other places at much fon of the river where|Iess risk and trouble? such begins. Tt is only in|nonsense as a survey was needed 19 winter time that a few hunters will! strike gold on any of the tributaries Jarea of 500 miles to the South and Yore's¢ fur te set their: traps for lof the Lena, for instance on the Zhut 300 to the North countless oriferous veins have been found of which but a few hundred have been worked. mostly by primitive means. This territory included the mines of the Lena Company, financed in Englar: under the name of "Lena Goldfiel with Baron Ginzburg as Chairmen. The mines of the company soon became famous on account of the dizzy dividends paid in spite of the primitive and inadequate technical means by which exploitation was carried on. the precious sable, the silvery fox|or the Chara. On the former the and the bush-tail squirrel.
English, in the person of Mr. W.
The foremost sede jai experts have attested the mines as the! richest ones existing, yielding one to three zolotniks to each hundred pods of ore. During the year 1912, 50,000 workers of the company struck and, when in accordance with the spirit of these times, the military were sent to "pacify" the workers, 500 of the strikers were killed. by the naked eye from some of the The result of this step was that it How GOLD 1s GAINED IN NEW FIELDS BY MOST PRIMITIVE MEANS. dredge and work wit cess in regard to qual ty of the output, until the 1 tion forced them to cease work.
Here it was that the writer spent 1912-1914, in working concern, and gaining i sight into the life of the gold. diggers.
The Tommot in 1924
Returning now to the expedition of which the writer was a member, it must be said at once that the im: pressions gained on the Tommot were all but satisfactory, and the results obtained in no proportion to the pains taken, We found there, on the Nimyr a mere handful of tramp-miners, living the miserable life of pioneers, and the amount of gold gained by them was insignificant and not better in quality than mined in any cther place at much less trouble and danger. The men were half-starved and emaciated by sickness, lucking the very first necessities of Tie in food and materials. By the first half of August when the frst snow falls and the arctic winter closes down on the land they were threatened with being cut off definitely from the, outside world, and sure to perish there miserably, We warned them in a friendly way and jedvised them to leave the place before it was too Into, but with no more success than that, they grate fully accepted a part of our modest stocks of gunpower, lead, matches, tobacco and some medicines. They remained there too feeble to resist the tempting hope to "strike rich," und their end could be easily foretold.
The Aldan ig hardly passable even in summer time, when we had to carry on our backs our self-made boats through the cataracts which turn into whirling ice-barricndes_ soon as the front sets in, The cavernous, torn rocks that line the river are covered with millions of needle-sharp icicles, on which even the polar dogs cannot stand, and animal life becomes nearly extinct in the forests near by. Under such conditions it is only the hardy Yakut that can have a chance of escaping from this ice-hell where every European is bound to perish from ex-posture unless well equipped and lioned for a long, bleak winter's What ix the Tommot?
The writer had the rare "luck" to explore thie country of gold and terrors personally, and all that related here is a summary of his experience As already said, the Tom-mot is the name of a whole country, Etretching along the right bank of the River Aldan and farther along the Nimyr where the newly-found mines are situated, The Nimyr is about 100-160 yards wide at ite delta, and narrows down all the way northward, having: a course of about 35 kilometres, all told. The Eanks are covered by sparse fir forests of which the storms often sweep whole trunks into the river bed, thereby making passage a torture even in the rough paddle-'Boats of the natives. It winds along [ina narrow valle, about halt {mite wide, except in the middle of the river's course where the mountains form a deep but, wider opening of two miles in width, On the top of the right bank w noticed fields of quartz, flowing: {down towards the river, a sign of the "presence. of old' of which Guarty ea faithful and inseparable We come to the conclusion that the sold.of the Tommot (ie, the Nimye) fof the sual origin, being a fore motion of the tertial epoch, and therefore appears as sand and not in the form of ore. It is found comparatively easy, at a depth of 1-7 yds. from the surface, near to, or in the bed of the river. This, how-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.