Oro

“ 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. ”

“ Silver and gold! Silver and gold! The image and measure of wealth; the shadow, superior to substance, before which throughout the ages all men bow; what magic spells these metals cast upon the destinies of mankind! Without referring to the earlier-mining fields of history, the Ophir of the Jews, the Pactolian placers of the Greeks, and the gold-producing colonies of the Romans, there is enough to command present attention in our Pacific States territory, throughout the length and breadth of which nature strewed liberally the precious metals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some of the silver vases were so large, that a man could not encircle them with his arms. They imitated very nicely the figures of animals, and, what was extraordinary, could mix the metals in such a manner that the feathers of a bird, or the scales of a fish should be alternately of gold and silver. The Spanish goldsmiths admitted their superiority over themselves in these ingenious works.2
They employed another tool, made of itztli, or obsidian, a dark transparent mineral, exceedingly hard, found in abundance in their hills. ”

“ She did not see the black dwarf during that time, and the horror of his presence almost passed. He kept out of her sight, and remaining in front with his imps, led the way.
Gold and silver had been scattered as they travelled, and for each piece that fell there formed later a splendid mine. The precious metal, melting and filtering through the earth in slender veins, reached finally the heart of the deepest mountains. There it spread and grew, until to-day the earth is full of its treasures in gold and silver mines. ”

“ No, no—silver, 'Duke; silver is the one thing needful, and silver is to be found. But listen: you are not to be told that the natives have long known the use of gold and silver; now who so likely to be acquainted where they are to be found as the ancient inhabitants of a country? I have the best reasons for believing that both Mohegan and the Leather-Stocking have been privy to the existence of a mine in this very mountain for many years. ”

“ How the gold came there is one of the mysteries of nature. One theory is, that the Sierra Nevada mountains were once the banks of the Pacific ocean, and all California had been thrown up from the bottom of the sea from that depth where gold was a part of the formation of the earth, in connection with quartz, and as all gold appears in a molten state, which would go to corroborate this theory. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ But failing to transmute the baser metals into gold,—in spite of all my repeated experiments and wearied watchings,—I am fain to take the precious metal, pure as Dame Nature gives it us from Mother Earth; truly in all ages great and marvellous things have been done with it. If we go back to the earliest ages of which we have historic data, gold seems to have been an important factor in daily life. ”

“ The gold is obtained in a variety of ways; some wash it out of the sand with bowls, some with a machine made like a cradle, only longer and open at the foot, while at the other end, instead of a squalling infant, there is a grating upon which the earth is thrown, and then water; both pass through the grating,--the cradle is rocked, and being on an inclined plane, the water carries off the earth, and the gold is deposited in the bottom of the cradle. ”

“ Here are marbles from every part of the world, even Greenland; copper from the slave-worked mines of Siberia, and the prolific pits of the Lake Superior country, in fragments, dust, ingots, and masses; coal bearing the familiar names of our American mines, those of the great English pits, and specimens from China, Japan, Bohemia, and New Zealand; gold in all its curious shapes, as found in rock that showed not its glitter, and in the smooth nuggets from California and Australia; the less precious, but not less useful iron, from every part of the globe; diamonds from Brazil ”

“ The gold lies in quartz veins which traverse a very crumbling reddish granite.
Africa was, with Spain, the source of the greater portion of the gold possessed by the antients. The gold which Africa still brings into the market in abundance is always in dust, showing that the metal is obtained by washing the alluvial soils. ”

“ Since the earth is black and has lodes and veins of quartz of surpassing whiteness, and which excel in brilliancy all those natural objects which are noted for their lustre, those who are in charge of the mining works by the numbers of the labourers prepare the gold. ”

“ Yellow gold, red gold, green gold; gold that is vital, or tarnished; gold that is brilliant, or lustreless; here and there on the friezes and on the exquisite capitals of the columns, a little vermilion, and a little emerald green; very little, nothing but a thin thread of colour, just enough to relieve the wing of a bird and the petal of a lotus, a peony, or a rose. ”

“ As we found the Albanians calling gold by a name derived from the gold coins of Florence, so the Kelts may have adopted the Latin names for gold used by their Roman conquerors. This is made almost certain by the fact that aura, in old Norse, derived from Latin aurum, became the regular word for treasure, although no one will deny that the Teutonic peoples had already gold and its cognates as terms of their own for the metal. ”

“ Sometimes it is ’bedded in quartz when the ore, as it is called, has to be mined and then crushed in a stamp mill to get the gold out; more often it is found as free gold, dust and grains and bits of pure gold mixed with the dirt when it must be panned, that is, put in a pan and the dirt washed away and then the gold, which is the heaviest, falls to the bottom of the pan, and again,” he lowered his voice to make what he was about to tell them more impressive, “nuggets of gold are picked up from bits the size of a pea to chunks as large as my fist! ”

“ Gold and silver, those representatives of all human riches, independently of their stores being hidden in the bowels of the earth, are not in general produced unless in the most rigid temperatures, and in the most deserted soils. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Silver is found in nearly all our provinces, but the finest of all is that of Spain; where it is found, like gold, in uncultivated soils, and in the mountains. Wherever one vein of silver has been met with, another is sure to be found not far off: a fact that has been remarked in the case of nearly all the metals, which have thus derived their Greek name of “metalla.” [202] It is a remarkable fact, that the shafts opened by Hannibal in the Spanish provinces are still worked, their names being derived from the persons who were the first to discover them. ”

“ The former is what we usually call rock-gold, consisting of pieces of quartz more or less intermixed with veins of gold, generally of fine quality, running through it in all directions, and forming beautiful masses, which, being admired by Europeans, are sometimes sold by weight as if the whole were solid metal. The mines yielding this sort are commonly situated at the foot of a mountain, and the shafts are driven horizontally to the extent of from eight to twenty fathoms. ”

“ In the Book of Genesis we hear of the “whole Land of Havilah where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.” Almost everything seems to have been made of gold; lamps, tongs, candlesticks, snuffers, censers, spoons, to say nothing of articles of adornment. “Job” had a quantity of the precious metal, for every one gave him “an ear-ring of gold.” As to Solomon he made the Altars and Tables of gold, 200 targets and 300 shields of gold; and Daniel wore a chain of gold round his neck. Then from most early times rings were made of gold—marriage and betrothal rings. ”

“ Of the various methods of liberating our Yellow Slave from the hard clutches of the earth it would be too long to speak in detail here; but they are broadly divided into two classes, according to the surroundings of the gold itself. Free or “placer” gold—which [155] was for centuries the first known to mankind, and which was the sort that started the great “fever” in California and Australia—is found in beds of sand and gravel, generally the present or former bed of a stream. ”

“ So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. ”

“ The value attached to gold, which is a comparatively useless metal, has always been a fictitious value. As we have seen, it became precious in ancient times, not because of its purchasing power, but for the reason that it had religious associations. The early peoples regarded the precious metal as an “avatar” of the life-giving and [190] life-sustaining Great Mother goddess—the “Golden Hathor”, the “Golden Aphrodite”.
In Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, India, and China the cow- and sky-goddess, the source of fertilizing water, was, in the literal sense, a goddess of gold. ”

“ In Indian Vedic lore gold is a good metal and silver a bad metal. One of the Creation Myths states in this connection:
“He (Prajapati) created Asuras (demons) . That was displeasing to him. That became the precious metal with the bad colour (silver) . This was the origin of silver. He created gods. That was pleasing to him. That became the precious metal with the good colour (gold) . That was the origin of gold.”6
The dragon of the Far East is associated with copper as well as gold. ”

“ The pale color and low quality of various bars of gold are always imputed to the silver, platina, or other metal contained in them. I have seen some as low as sixteen carats, and others as fine as 23-1/2 carats, which is within half a carat of what is denominated pure gold. Twenty-two is the standard, and gold exceeding that receives a premium according to its fineness. ”

“ Slight flaws in the gold itself, or due to bubbles in the glair, may be put right by touching the faulty places with a small brush dipped in rectified spirit and immediately laying on a piece of gold; if the edges had not yet been gone over with the waxed rag, it would be sufficient to breathe on the place, lay on the gold, and burnish under paper. ”

“ Whether the Mine affords any parcels of Metal, that seem to grow like Plants (as I have sometimes seen Silver growing, as it seemed, out of Stone, or Sparre almost like blades of Grass; as also great grains of a Metal, which appear'd to me, and which those, that tried some of it, affirmed to be Gold, abounding in a stony lump, that seemed to consist chiefly of a peculiar kind of Sparre.) ”

“ Ornaments and trimmings of silver are to be preferred to gold, when intended for the fair beauty. The white lustre of the first of these costly metals harmonizes better with delicacy of skin than the glaring effulgence of the gold. By a parity of reasoning, gold agrees better with the brunette, as its yellow and flaming hue lights up the fire of her eyes, and exhibits her complexion in the brightest contrast. ”

“ He is capable, as even the wildest African tribes are, of drawing fine wire. When rings—the favourite form in which the precious metal is carried coastward—are to be made, the gold is run without any flux in a crucible of sun-dried red clay, which is covered over with charcoal or braize. ”

“ 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. ”