Field of the Cloth of Gold

“ What stout quartos! How magnificent were the bindings, wrought often in silver devices, sometimes in gold, and not infrequently in silver and gold, with splendid jewels and precious stones to add their value to that of the precious volume which they adorned. ”

“ Gold and other minerals are found, the gold in quartz and alluvial, and if properly prospected would, from ill information obtained, become a most valuable gold-field; besides the copper and silver that are known to exist in great quantities along the spurs of the mountain. ”

“ Rich ground is denoted by a peculiar vegetation, especially of ferns. Gold is guarded here not by a dragon, but by a monstrous baboon; and when golden dogs are found the finder dies. In 1862 I visited with Major de Ruvignes Great Sankánya, a village west of the Volta, where a large gold-field was reported. As we drew near the spot we were told that the precious metal appears during the 'yam-customs,' and that only prayers, sacrifices, and presents to the fetish will make it visible. ”

“ Most of the colonial governments have a standing offer of a handsome pecuniary reward to anybody who discovers a gold field, provided there are not fewer than two hundred men working in that field six months 184after its discovery. This, you see, bars out all those finds that are exhausted in a few weeks, which is the case with the majority of them. ”

“ I write this to shew what risks the pioneers of a gold-field have to go through, and I may state that I have frequently been detained on the bank of a river for a day or two, without food or blankets, on account of a fresh. But these are common vicissitudes in the adventurous life of the gold-fields, and things that every man expects when starting for a journey across the country, or going on a prospecting expedition. In the month of January, 1865, I supplied a party with provisions to prospect up the Grey River. The party consisted of white men and Maoris. ”

“ It is a sight to madden a man-heaped from floor to roof with blocks of gold! It is the offerings to Shaitan-custom dating from old heathen days. Each year a hundred-weight of gold, levied on the people of the city, is melted and molded in small blocks, and carried and placed in the cave by the imams and the emir. ”

“ But each man dug, or rocked, or bore,
As if salvation with the ore
⁠Of the mine-monarch lay.
Gold strung each arm to giant might,
Gold flashed before each aching sight,
⁠Gold turned the night to day. ”

“ Did not many a common bit of human clay without family or name of the least value make a large fortune in the gold fields? When, then, The O’Melaghlin stooped to seek the ore, would not the earth open wide her bosom of uncounted treasures and lavish gold upon him? ”

“ It is purer, stronger, and is every way a better metal than pure gold. If we cannot get the platina, we must build a temple of pure gold; that is here, I know. But if the Conference want us to build a temple of pure gold, they will have to put into the tithing stores something besides old half-dead stinking cows, and old broken-kneed horses; or if they even put in all the good cattle they possess, will it build a temple of gold, of silver, or of brass? ”

“ Gold, the most precious of all metals, for which men delve and starve and toil and die, still lies hidden in immeasurable masses, in unsuspected places, screened perhaps by a thin sheeting of earth, over which thousands have tramped, never dreaming of the boundless riches just beneath their feet. And rubies and diamonds strew the bottom of the ocean or scintillate within caverns and caves, as they have shone and gleamed through ages, still waiting for the fortunate miner or explorer to bring them to light and the gaze of an admiring world. ”

“ I have found that gold appears here as in other districts, in layers—separated from each other according to the formation of the ground, so that in one spot one might meet with a real treasure, while in its immediate neighborhood nothing would be found. ”

“ Indeed, the value of every product of Mother Earth, of the fields, the forest or the mine has been fixed by its worth in gold. Hence the quest of gold has inspired mankind to acts of heroism, to a search for knowledge, and to a resignation to hardship and privation that have given to the explorer and prospector a character scarcely second to that of the heroes of the battlefield or the leaders of the world's senates. ”

“ They now sometimes actually saw the gold and actually met the men who had found it, as they were returning to the comforts and pleasures of civilization, actually burdened down with the weight of the precious metal they were carrying! And, what if all this gold should all be dug up before they got to the mines! The thought was enough to put the fever of haste into the blood of any man. ”

“ Search, little hill-people, deep in the bowels of the earth for finest gold and choicest jewels; fetch me, O mermaids, from the bottom of the sea the treasures hidden there,—the shells of rainbow tints, the smooth, bright pebbles, and the strange ocean flowers; go, pixies, and other water-sprites, to your secret lakes, and bring me pearls! Speed! speed you all! for many pretty things have we to make for the little ones of earth we love! ”

“ From this time we may say that the Grey district, formerly pronounced useless, has proved to be a first-class gold-field. This is an example of a good diggings being left for a long time unworked, through the inexperience of men who pretend to go prospecting. Several parties, as I before observed, had been up this river for what they chose to call prospecting, and this is a proof of how much faith is to be placed in the opinions and experience of those sort of people, many of whom call themselves practical diggers. ”

“ How easy for you to change that and to produce goldsmiths’ work that would be a joy to all of us. The gold is ready for you in unexhausted treasure, stored up in the mountain hollow or strewn on the river sand, and was not given to you merely for barren speculation. ”

“ Before him, enveloped now in the deep gloom of the northern night, slept a vast unexplored world, a land whose story the passing of ages had left unrevealed. What tragedies of nature had its silent fastnesses beheld? What treasure did they hold? Half a century or more ago the men whose skeletons they had found in the old cabin had braved the perils of those trackless solitudes, and somewhere hundreds of miles out in that black gloom they had found gold, the gold that had fallen as an inheritance to them in the discovery of the old birch-bark map. ”

“ Miners desirous of prospecting for gold may mark off and hold protection areas, ranging according to the distance from a proclaimed gold-field of 150 to 400 yards square. Such areas have to be pegged, registered, and continuously worked. ”

“ And their pockets they are filled with the yellow, yellow gold
That they mined in the mountain ledges.
CHORUS—
Then, hey, lads, hey, for the mining man so bold,
Who comes from the world's far edges!
And hey for the gold, the yellow, yellow gold,
That is stored in the mountain ledges! ”

“ Do you not feel air and space purified? Here is neither labor nor suffering. The soaring arch of gold has reached the summit. From the lowest gutters, where its stream commences, from the little shops where it is stopped by puny coffer-dams, from the heart of the counting-houses and great workshops, where its volume is that of ingots—gold, in the shape of dowries and inheritances, guided by the hands of young girls or the bony fingers of age, courses towards the aristocracy, where it will become a blazing, expansive stream. ”

“ While gold can be found lying within a few inches of the earth’s surface, and the only capital required to extract it consists in the capability to purchase a pick and a shovel, there is no need of combination; but when the hills are to be torn to their very bases, the plains completely uprooted, and the streams, which flow down from the Sierra Nevada to be turned from their channels, individuals must retire from the field, and make room for combined efforts. ”

“ In the beds of the ancient and more modern rivers the gold is much more worn than that found in the ravines or gulches, and the coarser gold will be found at the bottom, the scale gold in the gravel above, and the fine or flour gold in the mixture of clay, gravel and sand nearer the surface. ”

“ Gold is the talisman that transforms with magic power the bleak and sterile wilderness to a region of luxury and wealth. Places where but a few years ago the foot of man had never trod, are now teeming with busy working multitudes, aided by all the new improvements that modern science gives to machinery for turning out the hidden treasures of the soil. ”

“ But even in those last moments of the little cripple's suffering the father struggled to call back the old look into the fading eyes, and the old smile into the dear, white face. He brought treasure from his vaults and held it up before those fading eyes, and promised it all, all, all—everything he possessed, gold, houses, lands—all he had he would give to that little child if that little child would only live. ”

“ When the gold is brought to the light and given to the commerce of the world, we see it shining in the sun. It is now a part of the wealth of the nation. But do not forget that every piece of gold you touch or see, or stand credited with at your bank, cost some brave man blood, life!
This old Forty-nine, years before, when the camp was young, had found a piece of gold-bearing quartz in a ledge on the top of a high, sharp ridge, that pointed down into the canyon. This was before quartz mining had been thought of. ”

“ In the very place where men have gone from this valley, to my knowledge, and hunted weeks and weeks for gold, and could not find it, there is plenty of it now. When you and I can say, "Let there be gold in this valley," and turn round again, and command it to disappear, that it is not to be found; when we can call gold and silver together from the eternity of matter in the immensity of space, and all the other precious metals, and command them to remain or to move at our pleasure ”

“ They cast their proud or kind eyes hither and thither. Once in the intense light of a jeweller’s shop, spangled with pearls, diamonds, and gold, a large red hand, cold and not quite clean, appeared from within, holding in three fearful, careful fingers a brooch of gold and diamonds, which it placed among the others, and then withdrew itself slowly, tremulously, lest it should work harm to those dazzling cressets. ”

“ Only a few days ago I was where they wrench the precious metals from the miserly clutch of the rocks. When I saw the mountains; treeless, shrubless, flowerless, without even a spire of grass, it seemed to me that gold had the same effect upon the country that holds it, as upon the man who lives and labors only for it. It affects the land as it does the man. It leaves the heart barren without a flower of kindness—without a blossom of pity. ”

“ It is the opinion of many who have visited the gold regions the past and present months, that the ground will afford gold for many years, perhaps for a century. From my own examination of the rivers and their banks, I am of opinion that, at least for a few years, the golden products will equal the present year. ”

“ But the old digger was nearer the truth than many who have more felicitous terms in which to express their theories. Though the gold may not ooze from the quartz as water drips from a rock, yet it is there, and often beads from the surface like a tear that has lost its way among the dimples of a lady’s cheek. ”

“ All the things she has about her—tables, chairs, dishes, goblets, bowls, and all her household furniture—are made of gold. You have in your treasure five tons of gold; let the goldsmiths of your kingdom manufacture them into all manner of vases and vessels, into all sorts of birds and game and wonderful beasts ”

“ He would picture himself wandering through the narrow streets of the cities, with vistas of temples ahead—their domes shining in the sunlight, covered with layers of pure gold that had been added to them through the centuries, until, on some of the oldest temples, the gold leaf was a quarter of an inch thick. ”

“ If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. ”

“ With the prosperity of the newer shibboleths, the old-time notion of aristocracy, gentility, and high breeding became more and more a curio to be framed suitably in gold and kept in the glass case of an art museum. The crashing advance of the industrial age of gold thrust all courts and their sinuous graces aside for the unmistakable ledger balance of the counting-house. ”

“ Given a good hot summer's day, flies as numerous as the supply of water is scanty, clouds of dust, little or no breeze, and the same quantity of gold, and a few score of men working within an area of nine or ten acres, one is sometimes tempted to think that gold may be bought too dear. ”

“ It is a sanctuary and also a stupendous hiding-place. All the treasures of the kings, increasing from century to century, all the gold of France, all that they extort from the people, all that they snatch from the clergy, all the booty gathered on the battle-fields of Europe lie heaped up in the royal cave. Old Merovingian gold sous, glittering crown-pieces, doubloons, ducats, florins, guineas; and the precious stones and the diamonds; and all the jewels and all the ornaments: everything is there. Who could discover it? Who could ever learn the impenetrable secret of the Needle? Nobody. ”