to the discovery of America,) it was $3,000,000; during the third period (prior to the extensive working of the Russian gold mines, in 1843,) it was $26,000,000; during the fourth period (prior to the double discovery of the California gold mines in 1858, and the Australia gold mines in 1851,) it was $140,000,000; during the fifth period (which immediately succeeded afore-mentioned discoveries,) it was $243,000,000; during the sixth period (immediately succeeding the double discovery of the New Zealand gold mines in 1861, and the silver mines of Nevada and other countries bordering on the Pacific slope of the United States,) it was $212,000,000.  The annual products of the precious metals attained its acme in 1853, when it was $285,000,000.  The increase in the amount of the precious metals in existence has been greater during the last forty-years than during the previous two hundred and ninety-four.  Of the amount ($6,441,000,000) of the precious metals estimated to have been obtained from the surface and mines of the earth, from the earliest times to the close of 1884, $12,100,000,000 are estimated to have been obtained from America $6,724,000,000 from Asia (including Australia, New Zealand and Oceanica), $3,751,000,000 from Europe, and $2,866,000,000 from Africa.

* * * * *

AMESBURY:  THE HOME OF WHITTIER.

BY FRANCES C. SPARHAWK.

Amesbury is only a town.  It has defects that would strike a stranger, and beauties that one who has learned to love them never forgets; they linger in glimpses of wood and hill and river and lake, and often rise unbidden before the mind’s eye.  The poet Whittier says that those who are born under the shadow of Powow Hill always return sometime, no matter how far they may have wandered.  He himself, though not Amesbury born, has found it impossible to desert the old home, full of associations and surrounded by old friends.  He always votes in Amesbury, and he often spends weeks at a time in his old home.  The river that he has sung, the lake that he has re-christened, the walks and drives with which he is so familiar, all exercise their spell upon him; he loves them, just as he loves the warm hearts that he has found there and helped to make warm and true.

But what a stranger would first notice in coming into town is, that the houses, instead of being on land regularly laid out for building, seem to have grown up here and there and everywhere, a good deal in accordance with their own sweet wills, and without the smallest regard to surroundings.

But there are handsome houses in Amesbury, and these are growing more numerous every year.  The people themselves would assert that the walks and drives about the village, the hills and the river are the things to be longest remembered about the place.  If they were inclined to boasting, they might say also that they had as good a right as any people in America to be considered of ancient stock, for some of the names of the earliest settlers are the familiar names in the town to-day, and few towns in America are older than Amesbury.  The names Barnard, Challis, Weed, Jones, and Hoyt, appear on the first board of “Prudenshall,” and that of Richard Currier as town clerk.  This was in April, 1668, the year after the new town was named.