The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

MINING INDUSTRY. 151also now being made to restock the exhausted lakes and rivers of the peninsulaitself. An establishment of pisciculture has been founded at Hernosand, on theGulf of Bothnia, and oyster beds have been laid out at various points of theNorwegian coast. The upper portions of some of the fiords, forming naturalreservoirs, have been utilised as preserves, where the spat is reared and protectedby wirework against its enemies.Mining Industry.Like the fisheries, the mining industry no longer bears the same relativeimportance to agriculture that it formerly did in Scandinavia. The silver lodesof Kongsberg and the copper veins of Boros and Falun have lost their formerinfluence in the mineral market, and even the Dalecarlian iron ores have foundrivals elsewhere. A few grains of gold may still be extracted from the Falunmines, but those of Arendal, from which the crescent-shaped ducats of Christian IV.were coined, are now abandoned, while the rivers of Lapland, containing golddust, flow through too remote and cold regions to attract gold-seekers in anynumbers. The richest streams are said to be those flowing from the Peldoniemigroup, on the frontiers of Norway and Eussian Finland, towards the sources ofthe Tana and Ivalo. In 1872 the five hundred adventurers who visited the newEldorado collected no more than from 100 to 120 lbs. weight of fine gold.Several deposits, which in more favoured climates would be worked by thousandsand surrounded by factories, here remain untouched, although long pointed out bygeologists. Thus the copper veins of Eaa-fiord, on the shores of the Alten-fiord,containing one-half of pure metal, have only quite recently been seriously worked.The Skjaerstad iron ores near Bodo, on the Norwegian coast, also remain intact,although rich enough to supply all the workshops in the world. So also theGellivara iron deposits inSwedish Norrbotten have only been surveyed, and thesurface barely scratched. The lines of railway have not yet been constructedwhich are intended to connect this district, on the one hand, with the navigableLulea, on the other with the Norwegian coast through a gap in the Kjolen ;yetthe iron beds in this part of Sweden are extremely rich.The ores, containing anaverage of from 50 to 70 per cent, of pure metal, are disposed in parallel layersbetween denuded masses of gneiss. Thanks to its exceptional hardness, the irorhas not been affected by the atmosphere, and crops out in black or red masses,here and there rising to the proportion of hills. The metal contained in thesedeposits is estimated at billions of tons.But in the central and southern districts of Sweden there is still iron enoughto meet the local demand, and allow of a considerable export trade in ores and castmetal. The mines of Dalecarlia and neighbouring provinces give an annualyield of from 700,000 to 900,000 tons of ore, smelted down to about 350,000 tonsof metal, shipped chiefly for England. The yield of copper, till recently twiceas great, has been unable to compete with the mines of the New World, andconsequently much fallen off. Sweden also possesses several zinc mines, amongstm 2has