during the years of which we have been writing, until in 1882 it amounted to $1,502,607,790.06, of which the receipts for the year, with the balance over from 1881, amounted to $855,793,177.91, and the payments to $735,175,866.38, leaving a balance on hand December 31, 1882, of $120,617,311.53. The cash balance in the Sub-treasury at the present date is about $125,000,000, of which $105,000,000 is in gold and silver coin. This is stored in vaults as inaccessible as the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition. Numerous great iron doors close over the passages to these vaults, embellished with locks that wind up at night, and which no combination keys can open until they run down again. The silver vault is very spacious—some forty-seven feet long by twenty-eight feet wide, and twelve feet high. It is divided by a corridor into two divisions, on one
THE DOOR OF THE GOLD VAULT.
side of which are four large compartments or bins, some twelve by fourteen feet square, separated by iron lattice-work, and on the other side eight smaller bins similarly separated. The entire vault is surrounded by thick walls of solid masonry on a concrete foundation twenty-five feet deep. It contains at present nearly $33,000,000 in silver coin, weighing over nine hundred tons. The gold vaults are built of solid iron, the walls from floor to ceiling covered with tiers of small bins of equal size, in which the
PLAN OF SILVER VAULT
