The gold on the Nertcha and its tributaries is found in the sand and earth that form the bed of the streams.  Often it is many feet deep and requires much ‘stripping.’  I heard of one priesk (claim) where the pay-dirt commenced sixty-five feet from the surface.  Notwithstanding the great expense of removing the superincumbent earth, the mine had been worked to a profit.  Twenty or thirty feet of earth to take away is by no means uncommon.  The pay-dirt is very rich, and the estimates of its yield are stated at so many zolotniks of gold for a hundred poods of earth.  From one pood of dirt, of course unusually rich, Mr. Kaporaki obtained 24 zolotniks, or three ounces of gold.  In another instance ten poods of dirt yielded 90 zolotniks of gold.  The ordinary yield, as near as I could ascertain, was what a Californian would call five or six cents to the pan.

Each of these merchant-miners pays to the government fifteen per cent. of all gold he obtains, and is not allowed to sell the dust except to the proper officials.  He delivers his gold and receives the money for it as soon as it is melted and assayed.  It was hinted to me that much gold was smuggled across the frontier into China, and never saw the treasury of his Imperial Majesty, the Czar.  The Cossacks of the Argoon keep a sharp watch for traffic of this kind.  “They either,” said my informant, “deliver a culprit over to justice or, what is the same thing, compel him to bribe them heavily to say nothing.”

Nerchinsk formerly stood at the junction of the Nertcha and Shilka, on the banks of both rivers, but the repeated damage from floods caused its removal.  Even on its present site it is not entirely safe from inundation, the lower part of the town having been twice under water and in danger of being washed away.

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.  Many participants in the insurrection of 1825 were sent there, among them the princes Trubetskoi and Volbonskoi.  After laboring in the mines and on the roads of Nerchinsk, they were sent to Chetah, where they were employed in a polishing mill.

In many stories about Siberian exiles, published in England and America, Nerchinsk has occupied a prominent position.  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.