CHAPTER XXIV.
GOLD.
The Golden Fleece—Golden Statues in ancient Temples—A Free-thinking Soldier—Treasures of ancient Monarchs—First Gold Coins—Ophir—Spanish Gold Mines—Bohemian Gold Mines—Discovery of America—Siberian Gold Mines—California—Marshall—Rush to the Placers—Discovery of Gold in Australia—The Chinaman’s Hole—New Eldorados—Alluvial Gold Deposits in California and Australia—Washing—Quartz-crushing.
Gold is probably the metal which has been longest known to man. For as it is found only in the metallic state, its weight and brilliancy most naturally have attracted attention or awakened greed at a very early age. Thus we read in the Bible that one of the rivers flowing from Paradise ‘compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.’ Gold is also mentioned among the riches of Abraham, and when the patriarch’s servant met Rebekah at the fountain of Nahor, he presented the damsel with a ‘golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold,’ undoubtedly the first trinkets on record.
The mythical history of Greece has likewise been thought to point to a very ancient knowledge of gold, and the story of the search for the ‘Golden Fleece’ has by some been explained as an expedition undertaken in quest of the metal; for the use of sheepskins or woollen coverings, to collect and retain the minutest particles of gold during the operation of washing, is common in many auriferous countries. From the great value which the ancient nations attached to its possession, gold was largely used for the decoration of their temples, and many of their idols were made of gold. Such, among others, was the image of Belus, seated on a golden throne in the great temple of Babylon; that of Apollo at Delphi, and the magnificent statue of the Olympian Zeus, composed, by the hand of Phidias, of ivory and gold, and still less remarkable for its costly materials than for the consummate beauty of its workmanship.
Pliny relates that a massive golden statue of the goddess Anaitis was taken by Marc Antony in his war against the Parthians. The Emperor Augustus, dining one day at Bononia with an old veteran who had taken part in the campaign, asked him whether it was true that the sacrilegious soldier who had first laid hands on the goddess had been suddenly deprived of the use of his eyes and limbs, and had thus miserably perished. ‘I myself am the man,’ answered the smiling host; ‘you are dining from off her thigh, and to her am I indebted for all the plate in my possession.’
The wealth of monarchs was estimated less by the extent of their domains than by the gold which they possessed, and as each successive conqueror added to the spoils of vanquished nations, the treasures accumulated by single despots grew to an almost fabulous amount. Every schoolboy knows that the vast treasures of Crœsus fell into the hands of Cyrus, who, according to the rather questionable authority of Pliny, acquired in Asia Minor no less than 24,000 pounds weight of gold, without reckoning the vases and the wrought metal. To this treasure his son Cambyses added the gold of Egypt, and Darius Hystaspis the tribute of the frontier nations of India. Thus the gold of almost the whole known world was accumulated in one single hoard, which, after the taking of Persepolis, fell into the hands of Alexander the Great. Plutarch relates that 10,000 teams of mules and 500 camels were needed for the transport of this wealth to Susa, where Alexander was cheated out of a great part of it by his treasurer. Rome, the subsequent mistress of the world, naturally absorbed the greater part of the riches of Tyre and Carthage, of Asia and Egypt. Sixty-six years after the third Punic war the public treasury contained 1,620,831 pounds weight of gold, and still greater wealth was accumulated under the Cæsars. As the empire declined, the hoards amassed in the times of its increasing power were once more dispersed. A considerable part, however, found its way to Constantinople, and after many a loss, caused by the repeated disasters of a thousand years, the remnant fell at length into the hands of the victorious Turks.
The time when gold was first coined is unknown. The oldest specimen in the Imperial Cabinet at Vienna is from Cyzicus, a town of Mysia, and bears the date of the seventh century before Christ; the next coin in point of antiquity is Persian, and was probably struck under the reign of Cyrus. According to Pliny, gold was first coined by the Romans in the year 547 after the foundation of the city. During the empire of the Chalifes Abuschafar-al-Monsur established a mint at Bagdad, in which silver coins (dirhems) and gold coins (dinars)[[42]] were struck. The Visigoths in Spain likewise had golden coins; but in the other western mediæval States they first appear, after a long interval, under Lewis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, in Venice, in 1290; and in Bohemia, under John of Luxembourg. The gold of the Carolingian monarch probably proceeded from the spoils of the old west Roman Empire; that of the Venetians (zecchins or ducats) was, no doubt, obtained, like that of the Phœnicians of old, by trading with the gold countries of Africa and of the distant East. The Florentines, the rivals of Venice, likewise obtained wealth by trade, and struck gold coins, which, from their being stamped with a flower, the arms of Florence, were called fiorini, or florins.
The coins of the kings of Bohemia were made from indigenous gold. It is hardly necessary to remark that since those times the use of gold coins has been constantly increasing with the progress of trade and civilisation; but even now, in many African and Asiatic countries which possess large quantities of gold, no coins are struck, but the metal is weighed, and thus serves as a medium of exchange, in the same manner as in the times of Abraham or Jacob.
The countries from which the ancients obtained their chief supply of gold were the Indian Highlands, Colchis, and Africa. The seat of Ophir, which furnished this precious metal to the Phœnician and Jewish traders, is unknown. While some authorities place it on the east coast of Africa, others fix its situation somewhere on the west coast of the Indian peninsula; and Humboldt is even of opinion that the name had only a general signification, and that a voyage to Ophir meant no more than a commercial expedition to any of the coasts or isles of the Indian Ocean, just as at present we speak of a voyage to the Levant or the West Indies. The golden sands over which the Pactolus, a small river of Lydia, rolled, gave rise, it has been said, to the wealth of Crœsus.
The richest auriferous land in Europe was the Iberian peninsula, which for centuries yielded a golden harvest, first to the Carthaginians, then to the Romans, and at a still later period to the Visigoths and the Moors. During the middle ages Bohemia was renowned for its gold, and the accounts that have reached us of the times when her auriferous deposits first began to be extensively worked remind us of the scenes which our own age has witnessed in California or Australia. Bloody conflicts frequently arose between gold-diggers and peasants because the former devastated the fields and meadows and left them permanently sterile. Even now in many parts of the country long ranges of sand hillocks and rubbish mounds remain as memorials of the mediæval gold-diggers. Frequent famines arose in the land, as many of the inhabitants gave up agriculture for mining.