Gold discovery

“ An influence was about to go forth from that narrow ditch which would return again, and bring with it an innumerable multitude, thronging from every quarter of the world, overcoming all difficulties, bringing with them their houses and supplies, and spreading themselves{18} over the hills and valleys of this country. That moment was an epoch in the world’s history. It was the discovery of GOLD; and, which is of far more importance, it was the planting of the Anglo-saxon upon the shores of the Pacific. ”

“ Therefore, it is apparent that in later history gold has been the foundation of discovery, and in order to acquire it people have been drawn from one end of the world to the other, like children in a toy-shop rushing here and there to get its prizes. The American goldfields not only attracted those resident in that continent, but civilised people from every portion of the globe. ”

“ Of course, you and I know that gold cannot be made until we discover the universal atom and learn how to handle it. My discovery is a combination of substances which will defy all the known tests for gold. The dry or the wet method will be powerless confronted with it. The cupel and acid will proclaim it gold. It will scorn the advances of oxygen and remain fixed a thousand years in the snowy heart of the furnace. It will be as flexible as ribbed grass, as ductile as the web of a spider, as malleable as the air between the gold-beater's skins. ”

“ There is much speculation here as to the effects which the late wonderful discovery will produce in the States and the old country. Of course we expect to be inundated with emigrants, coming, I suppose, from every part of the world, and truly, for all I can tell, there will be gold enough for all. ”

“ Presently male captives are found useful both to tend flocks and, as in the East and in the modern Soudan, to guard the harem. With the discovery of gold, ornaments made at first out of the rough nuggets supersede other ornaments, and presently either such ornaments or portions of gold in plates or lumps are added to the list of media, and the same follows with the discovery of silver. ”

“ In § 101 of the book I suggest that the question of the effect on the world of finance of the discovery of an inexpensive method of transmuting base metal into gold on a large scale is one that should appeal to a novelist specially gifted with imagination. ”

“ Besides gold, this country also affords diamonds, as already mentioned. The discovery of these valuable stones is much more recent even than that of gold, as it is scarcely twenty years since the first were brought to Europe.7 They are found in the same manner as gold, in the gullies of torrents and beds of rivers, but only in particular places, and by no means so universally spread throughout the country. ”

“ Paul preached. “The remains of the aqueduct,” he adds, “of which twenty-one 112arches are perfect, are the most splendid I ever beheld, the stones without cement, of the same massy dimensions as the wall.”
83. It should be noted here, that the finding gold or silver coins at a place is not alone sufficient evidence for its name, though such a discovery is a presumption in favour of it. Where, however, a large number of small copper coins are found, the presumption becomes very strong. Obviously, gold and silver coins may, easily, pass from one site to another, simply as objects of commerce. ”

“ Thus navigation, commerce, discovery, invention, economics, finally international wars and policies, have been rooted to a large degree in this primal business. The fur-hunters have held the hunters of gold and precious stones and spicery a close race in the rank of world movers. Indeed it may well be questioned whether results of greater moment to humanity have not proceeded from the quest for furs than from that for gold. ”

“ In any case, therefore, the discoverer ought for many reasons to be well provided for the gold enterprize. First, On account of the first possession of the gold by the crown of Portugal. Secondly, For the facility of discovering the gold. Thirdly, Because of the gold mines being the greatest in the world. Fourthly, Because the discoverer is a learned cosmographer. ”

“ Gold and silver are no doubt subject to fluctuations, from the discovery of new and more abundant mines; but such discoveries are rare, and their effects, though powerful, are limited to periods of comparatively short duration. ”

“ From the commencement of the Christian era to the discovery of America, the amount of gold obtained from the surface and bowels of the earth is estimated to be thirty-eight hundred millions of dollars ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gold-coloured dust fell from the dwarf's file like a thin, down-driven spirt of auriferous vapour.
"Miracle Gold," he thought, "Miracle Gold. All gold is Miracle Gold when one tests it by that only great reagent, the world. The world, the world. In my Miracle Gold there would be found an alloy of copper and silver. Yes, a sad and poisonous alloy. Copper is blood-red, and silver is virgin white, and gold is yellow, a colour between the two, and infinitely more precious than they, the most precious of all metals is gold. ”

“ It is in no way necessary, on account of any intrinsic or inherent quality of gold, that should have that particular metal, and that alone, for money.
It is boasted that gold is a universal measure. Why is it universal? Why is gold accepted in every country of the world? ”

“ And man found gold in these prehistoric, perhaps preglacial, creek beds. However this may be, there was no possible scientific way of knowing how the gold-bearing area would run. A fortune might come out of one claim of a hundred feet and its next-door neighbour might not yield an atom of gold. Only the genii of the hidden earth held the secret; and modern science derides the invisible pixies of superstition, just as these invisible spirits of the earth seem to laugh at man's best efforts to ferret out their secrets. ”

“ Whenever, therefore, we are enabled to trace [Pg 209] the supply of gold to a foreign, as, for example, to a Phœnician source, we can hardly fail to find accompanying relics of silver; and accordingly, in the succeeding, or Iron Period, the gold becomes of rare occurrence, and the silver abundant. One other argument should not be altogether overlooked. The great purity of very many of the gold ornaments found in the tumuli is such as may perhaps add to the probability of its native origin. ”

“ Few subjects in mineralogical science have evoked more controversy than the origin of gold. In the Middle Ages, and, indeed, down to the time of that great philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, who was himself bitten with the craze, it was widely believed that, by what was known as transmutation, the baser metals might be changed to gold; and much time and trouble were expended in attempts to make gold—needless to say without the desired result. Doubtless, however, many valuable additions to chemical science, and also some useful metallic alloys, were thus discovered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why should it not be possible to make gold? Each of the characteristic properties of gold has its forma, its essence, its set of conditions, which if we could discover, and learn how to realize, we could superinduce that particular property upon any other substance, upon wood, or iron, or lime, or clay. If, then, we could effect this with respect to every one of the essential properties of the precious metal, we should have converted the other substance into gold. Nor did this, if once the premises were granted, appear to transcend the real powers of mankind. ”

“ If you come to the second-best results, to the gold so alloyed that you may confidently stamp it your own, do you wish to proclaim it the precious metal without alloy? Do you wish to declare that it is to all intents and purposes quite as good as pure gold, or even better? Do you hold yourself quit of the duty of saying that it is second-best, that it is something mixed with copper or nickel, and of the value of oroide, say? You cannot bring yourself to this extreme of candor, and what right, then, have you to recognize that something else is fine gold when it is really so? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We certainly have sufficient evidence to object to that final explanation which ascribes all these depositions to aqueous action in distant times, and to the abrasion of primitive mountains, the evidence of whose existence is alone and doubtfully afforded by the débris which form the strata of the gold and diamond placers. The ancients long ago noticed the deposition of gold in the beds of rivers ”

“ Can you estimate the complete insignificance of the Phoenicians in this commerce? This small lump of gold has no real value: it is yellow, it is heavy, a man cannot eat it, and that is the end of the matter. A man does not clothe himself with gold and he cannot stop his hunger or thirst with it. If he had a lump of gold as big as the pyramid, he would be as poor at the foot of it as a Libyan wandering through the western desert where there is neither a date nor a drop of water. ”

“ But when we find that a gold ornament has been found in a dwelling of neolithic age, we have a positive proof not simply of the knowledge, but probably of the skill requisite to manufacture the metal. If any upholder of the negative method urges that gold has been found very sparingly in these lacustrine dwellings, let him remember that the existence of one single object of gold in these remains is sufficient to demolish all his argument. ”

“ Gold is dug out of the earth, and, in close proximity to it, chrysocolla, a substance which, that it may appear all the more precious, still retains the name which it has borrowed from gold. It was not enough for us to have discovered one bane for the human race, but we must set a value too upon the very humors of gold.
Alas for the prodigal inventions of man! in how many ways have we augmented the value of things! In addition to the standard value of these metals, the art of painting lends its aid, and we have rendered gold and silver still more costly by the art of chasing them. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The principal value of gold is as a medium of exchange, and its high appreciation is due, first, to the fact that it is in almost universal request; and, secondly, to its comparative scarcity; yet, oddly enough, with the exception of that humble but serviceable metal iron, gold is the most widely distributed metal known. ”

“ Of all the mineral commodities, gold has played perhaps the most important and certainly the most romantic part in the world's history. The "lure of gold" has taken men to the remotest corners of the globe. ”