Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/404

398 nowhere attain to great heights. All this part of the Urals is rich in minerals; there are extensive mines of iron, copper, and gold, those of iron being of the greatest, and the gold-mines of the least importance.

"A very large part of all the iron used in Russia comes from the Urals, and the same is the case with the copper. The copper-money of the Empire is coined at the Moneta Fabric, or mint, at Ekaterineburg, and from an immense foundery a few miles away comes the Russian sheet-iron which is so popular in America for the manufacture of parlor stoves and stove-pipe. The Urals contain the only mines where malachite is