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 Croesus 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 Phoenicians 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 Phoenician 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 Croesus.

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.

A new epoch in the history of gold began with the discovery of America. We all know by what prodigies of valour the Spaniards obtained possession of the treasures of Montezuma and of the Peruvian Incas, and how frequently acts of a fiendish cruelty, inspired by the love of gold, and aggravated by a bloodthirsty fanaticism, tarnished the lustre of their arms.

More recently, about the year 1836, rich deposits of auriferous sand were discovered in Siberia, and soon raised the frozen regions of the Jenisei to the rank of the first gold-producing country in the world.^[43] But the fame of the Russian mines was soon eclipsed by the eventful discovery of the Californian placers.

It was in January 1848, a short time after the incorporation of the province with the United States, that one James Marshall, who had contracted to build a saw-mill on the land of Captain Sutter, about sixty miles east of Sacramento, discovered the glittering particles in the mud of the brook on which he was at work. Trembling with excitement, he hurried to his employer, and told his story. Captain Sutter at first thought it was a fiction, or the wild dream of a maniac; but his doubts were soon at an end when Marshall laid on the table before him a few ounces of the shining dust. The two agreed to keep the matter secret, and quietly to share the golden harvest between them. But, as they afterwards searched more narrowly, their eager gestures and looks happened to be closely watched by a Mormon labourer employed about the neighbourhood. He followed their movements, and the secret was speedily divulged.

It appears that Marshall did not escape the ordinary lot of discoverers, for a few years later he was wandering, poor and homeless, over the land which was first indebted to him for its enormous development.

The intelligence of the Californian gold treasures soon spread over the world, and a wonderful flood of immigration began into the newly-proclaimed Eldorado. An innumerable crowd of adventurers from every part of the New World, from the Sandwich Islands, from Europe, from Australia, came pouring in over the Rocky Mountains, through Mexico, round Cape Horn, or across the Pacific, all eager to seize fortune in a bound or to perish in the attempt. Every week dispatched its thousands to the diggings, and saw its hundreds of successful adventurers return to dissipate their earnings in the gambling saloons of the infant metropolis. In less than ten years California numbered more than half a million of inhabitants, and San Francisco, from an obscure hamlet, had risen to the rank of one of the great commercial emporiums of the world.

Science had little to do with the discovery of gold in California; but the case was different in Australia. As early as 1844 Sir Roderick Murchison directed attention to the remarkable resemblance between the Australian cordillera and the auriferous Uralian chain. Two years later, his surmises about the hidden treasures of that distant colony were confirmed by some samples of auriferous quartz sent to him from Australia. Relying upon this fact, he advised some Cornish emigrants to choose Australia for their new home, and to seek for gold among the dÉbris of the primitive rocks. His opinion having become known at Sydney, through the newspapers, researches were made, which proved so far successful that in 1848 gold was found in several places in South Australia.

The first important discovery was, however, not made before the year 1851, when Mr. Hargraves made known to Government that rich gold deposits were situated to the north-west of Bathurst, on the Summerhill and Lewis rivulets, which flow into the Macquarie. When the geological Government inspector arrived at Summerhill Creek, on May 19, he found that about four hundred persons had already assembled there, who, without any other mining apparatus than a shovel and a simple tin pot, gained, on an average, from one to two ounces of gold daily.

Soon after, still richer deposits were found near the Turon and the Meroo, two other branches of the Macquarie. Here a native shepherd, in the service of Dr. Kerr, found three quartz blocks, of which the largest contained sixty pounds weight of pure gold. It may easily be supposed that the whole neighbourhood became at once the scene of active researches, which at first proved fruitless, until at length a fourth quartz block was discovered, and publicly sold for a thousand pounds. Other discoveries were made within the bounds of New South Wales; but even the richest of them were soon to be obscured by the treasures of the neighbouring colony.

As late as 1836 Port Philip had remained an unknown land, for it was not until then that its first settlers, attracted by the richness of the pastures, arrived from Tasmania. Soon a small town arose on the Yarra-Yarra, and, though badly chosen as a port, Melbourne soon rose to importance. In 1850 the district was made an independent colony, which received the name of Victoria. Here the traders and sheep-drivers now mourned over the news from Sydney. The best workmen had already left for the gold-fields, and if the exodus went on increasing, nothing remained for them but to follow the example, or quietly to await the ruin of their hopes—a patience which agrees but little with the Anglo-Saxon character.

To prevent the impending evil, a reward of 200 guineas was immediately set upon the discovery of a gold-field within 120 miles from Melbourne, and soon after the world was astonished by the intelligence of the fabulous riches of Ballarat, at the source of the River Lea. The first consequence of this discovery was that the towns of Geelong and Melbourne, both not above sixty miles from Ballarat, were immediately deserted by their inhabitants, and that, within a few weeks, more than 3,000 gold-diggers had collected on the spot, who were gaining, on an average, their ten or twenty pounds a day. But here also there was no definite resting-place, for new prospects of dazzling wealth constantly allured the crowd to new and still more distant fields of enterprise. Twenty thousand people, meeting with fair success, would migrate in a day, abandon their claims, and rush upon the new tract. The passions of human nature were roused by one of the strongest of its instincts; and madness and suicide, arising from excess of joy and wild despair, were far from uncommon occurrences. The whole order of society was inverted, and the labourer became of more importance than the employer of labour. The scum of the adjoining colonies boiled over and deluged the land with vice and crime. Bush-ranging extended over every portion of the country, and even the streets of Melbourne became the scenes of robbery and murder. The diggers were of all nations: Germans, French, Italians, American-Irish, Californians, and Chinese—these last being the best conducted of this motley population, who as early as 1860 numbered 50,000. To this strange people one of the most remarkable of the Australian gold discoveries is due. The immigration-tax, which had been vainly devised to check their influx (for they are objects of the greatest antipathy to the white gold-diggers), drove them to a surreptitious mode of entering the colony; and, landing at Gurchen Bay in South Australia, and taking a course thence over the frontier across the Grampian ranges, they came upon a deposit of marvellous richness, in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. In one of their first encampments, while picking up the roots of grass and prying for gold, they found the celebrated ‘Chinaman’s Hole,’ which yielded 3,000 ounces in a few hours. This led to the greatest rush which had ever been known in the gold-fields, for 60,000 people congregated there in a few weeks, and before a month had elapsed an immense town was systematically laid out. Shops, taverns and hotels, theatres and billiard-rooms, sprang up in the desert, like the mystic trees of Indian jugglers, and were quickly followed by a daily mail and a daily newspaper. Thus, within the space of two months, the magical power of gold converted a wild mountain gorge into a teeming city, where frontages were nearly as valuable as in the heart of London.

The great social disorganisation which distinguished the first few years of the Australian gold discoveries has long since passed away, together with much of the excitement natural to a transition state. Order now universally prevails, and the occupations of life are pursued with as much regularity as in the oldest States. The growth of the colony, which scarcely thirty years since was a mere unknown waste, is not the least marvellous of the many marvels that have been worked by gold. In the year 1851 the population of the province was 77,345 persons, of whom 28,143 were located in Melbourne. In 1860, it had already increased to 462,000, and probably the next few years will find it augmented to a million, while Melbourne already rivals our larger cities in size and wealth.

The wonderful discoveries in California and Australia having made gold the all-absorbing topic of the day, it is not surprising that new Eldorados were now eagerly sought for wherever the geological formation of a country held out the hope of similar treasures.

Fresh and highly-productive gold-fields have, within the last few years, been opened in British Columbia, and, still further to the north, in the Arctic wilds of the infant colony of Stikeen. Numerous diggers are at work in New Zealand, and in the deserts to the north of the Cape. A system of auriferous veins has been discovered in North Wales; the county of Sutherland, the Ultima Thule of our isle, claims to be ranked among the gold-producing regions; and numerous adventurers are on their way to the frozen deserts of Lapland, where the glittering metal is said to abound in the basin of the Ivalo.

At no former period of the world’s history has gold been so eagerly sought for over such extensive areas in all parts of the globe; never have larger quantities of the precious metal been added to the accumulated hoards of ages. No doubt this vast influx of wealth has in many cases been productive of evil consequences; but its beneficial influence upon the progress and happiness of mankind far outweighs the injury it may too frequently have caused by rousing the worst passions of our nature. An astonishing impetus has already been given to commerce and industry; competence and wealth have been diffused over many lands; deserts have been transformed into growing empires; and a vast continent, long despised as the convict’s prison, has been raised in the social scale to a height almost commensurate with its geographical importance.

The mineral formations in which gold originally occurs are the crystalline primitive rocks, the compact transition rocks, and the trachytic and trap rocks, which, by their disintegration have, in the course of ages, enriched large alluvial tracts with particles of the precious metal. Torrents and rivers washed them down from the heights, along with the worthless rubbish of their original matrix, and finally deposited them in the gulleys and ravines of the lower grounds. Hence the alluvial territories have always been the chief sources of auriferous wealth, and this circumstance explains how countries which at one time abounded in gold have long since ceased to be of importance. For the comparative ease with which the metal could generally be obtained by digging and washing, and the greed which stimulated the researches of thousands, could not fail to exhaust even the richest placers. No one now dreams of searching for gold in the sands of the Pactolus or of the Golden Tagus; no modern Argonaut sails to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece; the fields of Bohemia are no longer ransacked by gold-seekers; and a like fate probably awaits many of our modern Eldorados.

A marked difference between the gold deposits of Australia and California deserves to be noticed. The gold of California is found in the midst of, or contiguous to, the existing great mountain ranges, amidst regions of peaked, jagged, irregular crests, and upheaved and distorted strata, the undoubted effects of internal convulsions. It has not, however, selected as its resting-place the smooth levels and hanging slopes of the contiguous hills. The metal, ground finer and finer as it is carried forward by the torrents that year after year tear up the river-beds, finally settles in the form of fine flakes or dust along the banks and at the bottoms of the great streams of the country. Hence the Californian diggers generally find the drifts of the precious metal in the strata immediately under the surface, either associated with the subsoil, or in the holes or ‘pockets’ of water-worn rocks.

In Victoria the most prolific gold-fields are in regions where the old formations are pierced by igneous rocks which have flowed from extinct volcanoes; and some of the richest alluvial deposits have been found on the pipe-clay bottom of flat, wide-spread plains, or settled in great subterranean gutters, under broad, elongated slopes, which the miner can reach only by sinking his shaft through stratum after stratum, from fifty to three hundred feet down, before he reaches the buried treasure. The inference necessarily is that much of the gold-drift of Australia is of an earlier origin than the deposits of California, which are the products of the existing mountain ranges, and therefore will be exhausted in a comparatively brief period.

In Victoria, not seldom three distinct auriferous deposits, the result of successive upheavals and depressions, occur in the same locality; and the miner finds, in the course of his working, a first, second, and third bottom, the last being always on the solid and unmoved palÆozoic rock, from which all the gold has been derived.

Rich as the auriferous drifts of the deep alluvial deposits are frequently found to be, they must be within definite limits, having been deposited by currents and the continuous action of waves not far from the localities where the gold was originally formed. But the alluvial gold of Victoria and New South Wales is not confined to drifts and gutters. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of square miles, where the clay, earth, and sand are impregnated with gold in sufficient quantities to pay well for washing. Besides these deposits of incalculable wealth, there are vast reserves of gold locked up in the great mountain ranges both of Victoria and New South Wales, the hidden wealth of which will eventually be brought to light by systematic mining.

As even the richest auriferous drift would be comparatively worthless without the assistance of water, the diversion of a running stream through a ‘placer’ is often one of the most laborious undertakings of the gold-digger.

Pliny speaks of ‘the bringing of the rivers from the mountains, in many instances for a hundred miles, for the purpose of washing the dÉbris,’ and this method of hydraulic mining is now carried on in California on a stupendous scale. Thus, north of Mariposa County, the thick deposits, often semi-indurated, are now washed down by vast streams of water (thrown by the pressure of a column of water of 150 feet), that do the work of running off the earth and gravel and gathering the gold in an incredibly short time.

The ores of auriferous quartz are treated in a different way from the alluvial dÉbris. After having been crushed and pulverised by powerful machinery, the finely powdered quartz is then treated with mercury, a method well known to the ancients. This metal dissolves out the gold, producing an amalgam, which, by straining and distillation, yields the gold.