ASIA. To trace the steps by which com mercial enterprise has successively discovered the various parts of the Asiatic continent, would be little less than to trace the history of the human race; for, from the time when the Phoenician merchants spread their trading ports far and wide, to the clay when the ports of China were laid open to British shipping and manufactures, there has been a continued series of discoveries, which have had com merce and manufactures among their moving impulses.
Nor would it be easy to enumerate the na tural productions which Asia affords to the manufacturer and the merchant. Extending as it does from the burning sands of Arabia to the icy shores of Siberia, from the level plains of Tartary to the lofty heights of the Himalaya, it presents a countless variety of mineral, vegetable, and animal products. The fur -bearing and wool-bearing animals, and those numerous animals which yield flesh for food, milk for drink, and skins for leather, are found in great variety and number. Tim ber trees, plants used in various arts, and plants used for food, are also bountifully sup plied. We need only proceed to any details in noticing the chief mineral products.
Among the mineral products of Asia, pre cious stones are very abundant. Rock-crystal is found in the greatest variety; amethysts in the Altai, Himalaya, and Ural Mountains; carnelians and agates, in western India and in the Gobi desert; casholongs and onyxes, in Mongolia; yu, or oriental jade, in Turkistan; different kinds of jasper, in the Altai moun tains ; pearl-stone, marcasit, on the shores of the Gulf of Okhotzk ; beryl, in the mountains near the Lake of Baikal ; lapis lazuli, in the same mountains, as well as in the Hindu Coosh, and on the banks of the Oxus ; to pazes, in the Ural Mountains ; circony, chry soberyl, sapphires, on the island of Ceylon ; rubies, in Ceylon and in Badakshan ; tur quoises, in Khorasan ; diamonds in Deccan, Borneo, and the Ural Mountains.
Volcanic products are met with on the Sunda Islands, in Japan, and Kamtchatka, in the neighbourhood of Tauris, and many parts of the high-land of Armenia, and in Western Anatolia.
Steatite, earth-flax, asbestus, and kaolin, or the finest porcelain-clay, are found in China and Japan ; talc in Siberia; coals in northern China, and different parts of Hindustan ; rock salt in the Ural Mountains, northern China, the Panjab, Ajmeer, Yemen, Anatolia ; salt in the salt-seas of the steppes, and sometimes on the surface of the ground; sal-ammoniac in the volcanic steppes of Central Asia, not far from the river Ili ; nitre in Hindustan; borax, or tinqual, in Tibet; petroleum, near Baku, on the shores of the Caspian .Sea, on the Euphrates at Hit, and other places, and at Kerkook east of the Tigris ; asphaltum on the Dead Sea, in Palestine. Hot springs are very abundant in the snow-covered mountains of the Himalaya range, especially along the upper branches of the Ganges, and also in the N. W. of Anatolia.
Of the metals, gold is found in Japan, Tibet, Yunnan, Cochin China, Tonkin, Siam, Ma lacca, Borneo, Asam, Ava, and in the Ural Mountains; many rivers bring down gold in their sands ; silver in China, Da-uria, Japan, Armenia, Anatolia, and the Ural Mountains ; tin in Malacca, Anam, the Sunda Islands, and the empire of the Birmans ; mercury in China, Japan, and Tibet; copper in the Ural and Altai mountains, Japan, China, Nepaul, Azerbijan, Armenia, and Mount Taurus ; ma lachite in China and Siberia; iron from the Ural Mountains, through central Asia as far as the Peninsula beyond the Ganges, as well as in Japan and Persia; lead in Da-uria, China, Siam, Japan, Georgia, and Armenia.
Under the names of the principal countries in Asia, the reader will meet with some fur ther information on the industrial resources of the East.