The Midases are not dead yet—for the one of ancient fable there are thousands to-day, at whose very touch all turns to gold. Their food does not become metal between their lips—but often it might as well, for all the joy they have of it. And the little Phrygian princess was not the only child to be changed and hardened forever by the “Golden Touch.”
Gold figures largely through all the quaint history-fables of the ancients; and history itself is full of tales hardly less remarkable. The early history of America was made by gold—or rather, by golden hopes which achieved wonders for civilization, but very little for the pockets of the most wonderful explorers the world has ever seen. Had it not been for the presence of gold here—and the supposed presence of even more than has yet been dug—the western hemisphere would be very much of a wilderness still. It was the chase of the golden myths which led to the astounding achievements that opened the New World; and since then, almost to this day, civilization has followed with deliberate march only in the hasty footprints of the gold seekers. No tale was too wild to find credence with the early adventurers.
The fabled ransom of Montezuma is all a fable; but it is a fact that Atahualpa, the head Inca of Peru, did pay to that marvelous soldier Pizarro a ransom of golden vessels sufficient to fill a room twenty-two by seventeen feet to a height of nearly six feet above the floor! While gold was not much in use in Mexico, there was a great deal of it employed in Peru for sacred utensils and idols and for personal ornaments; and to this day the “mummy miners” are taking it out there. The early Spanish discoveries of gold in North America were unimportant, despite the gilded myths which have surrounded them. In Columbus’s time the gold fields of the known world were so “worked out” that their product was barely enough to meet the “wear and tear” of the precious metal in use; so there was crying need of new finds. But they came slowly.
By 1580 there were vague rumors of gold in what is now California. Loyola Casallo, a visiting priest, saw placer gold there, and tells of it in his book written in 1690. In the last century Antonio Alcedo speaks of lumps of California gold, weighing from five to eight pounds. But though its presence was known, and though the rocky ribs of the Golden State hid far more millions than were dreamed of—and perhaps than are dreamed of yet—there was little mining, and that little with scant success.
The first gold discovery in the American colonies was in Cabarrus county, North Carolina, in 1799; and up to 1827 that state was the only gold-producer in the Union. In 1824 Cabarrus county sent the first American gold to the mint in Philadelphia. The Appalachian gold field, which embraces part of Virginia, and stretches across North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, touching also parts of Tennessee and Alabama, was once looked to for great things; but it long ago dropped from all importance.
In 1828 the New Placers were discovered in New Mexico, some fifty miles south of Santa Fé, and for a great many years produced richly. Even to this day they are far from unproductive. Gold had been found in New Mexico many generations before, but never in quantities to come anywhere near paying. A decade later, placer gold was discovered in Santa Barbara county, California, in the vast rancho of that gallant old hidalgo whose home was described by Mrs. Jackson as the home of “Ramona.” These placers have been worked steadily though clumsily by Mexicans ever since; and I have a waxy nugget which was washed out in Piru creek in 1838.
Within half a century the world’s supply of gold had long been inadequate to the growing demand. Russia was the chief producer; and her mines—discovered about 1745—kept the nations from a “famine” which would be most disastrous. There were old mines in China, but little worked; and though Japan’s gold output was large, it was but a drop in the cosmopolitan bucket. Russia at present, by the way, produces an average of twenty millions of gold a year.
The wonderful gold fields of Australia were discovered in 1839 by Count Strzelcki; but the priceless find was concealed, for a curious reason. Australia was already England’s out-door prison; and it was feared that if the golden news were known the 45,000 desperate convicts there would rise in rebellion and annihilate their keepers—as they could well have done. So for a dozen years the mighty secret was jealously guarded; and thousands walked unsuspecting over the dumb gravel that held a million fortunes. In 1848 Rev. W. B. Clark again stumbled upon the dangerous secret, but again the discovery was suppressed; and it was not until California had set the whole world on fire with excitement which nothing could bottle up, that Australia threw off her politic mask. In 1851 E. H. Hargreaves, who had just come from the new mines of California, saw that Australia was geologically a gold country; and his prospecting proved his surmises correct. The news spread in spite of cautious officials; and the wild epidemic of fortune seekers pitted the face of the island-continent, and watered its thirsty sands with blood. Even yet, Australia is producing over $45,000,000 gold a year.
The rich gold fields of New Zealand were first found in 1842, but were not extensively worked until 1856, when the swarming gold hunters had overrun the Australian fields, and the restless sought still easier wealth.