ARCHANGEL, considered as a province, has very little to do with the industry of all nations. Its climate is severe, and its pro ductions few. The bread in use is a com pound of meal, moss, scrapings of the hark of the pine, and grated roots ; yet this food, coarse as it is, is unknown to more northern palates, which must be content with dried fish. The southern districts grow hemp and flax, and a few kinds of vegetables. The forests produce very fine timber. Salt and bog.iron form the chief mineral wealth.
The manufacturing and mechanical industry of the people is principally confined to ship building, the preparation of pitch and tar, and the weaving of linen, which latter occupation fills up the leisure hours of the peasant's wife in the circles of Kholmogory and Arch angel, and constitutes a lucrative branch of their commerce with St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian marts. Pitch, tar, timber, tallow, train-oil, hemp, flax, mats, canvas, skins, and furs, are the chief exported pro duce.
But the town of Archangel (the chief place in the province), is notable in a commercial point of view. It is the most northern empo rium of trade, and the oldest port, in the Russian dominions. It is now the chief mart of the Russian northern trade, as it was for merly of all the traffic between Muscovy and foreign parts. The exports consist of lin
seed, rye, oats, wheat, barley, flax, tow, talloiv, train-oil, mats, deals, battens and ends, pitch, and tar. The imports, which are generally confined to the town and neighbourhood, are sugar, coffee, spices, salt, woollens, hard ware, ctc. In 1840 there were 634 vessels cleared, of which 368 were British, the car goes being valued at 1,063,7001. The port is connected by canals with the Volga and the Neva. The navigation is open generally from May to the end of September, and during this period the river is covered with vessels and boats of all sizes ; the quays and shores are peopled with multitudes, variously and actively employed; and the great road from Siberia is covered with travellers and loaded carts and waggons. An association called the ' White Sea Company; was formed at Archangel in 1803 ; it despatches a fleet of vessels every year on fishery expeditions to the coast of Nova Zembla, Kalguiew, and Spitzbergen, at the last of which the crews sometimes winter.