ceptors, more than very partially, in mat- we fail to see any reason for leaving them ters of natural science; but of the common to fall into error in that quarter, very facts in history, they were as capable of weighty considerations suggest the imjudging then as we are now, and while portance of their being secured against it. From the London Quarterly. GOLD IN ITS NATURAL SOURCES.* WE are not about to treat of gold as | the passion auri sacra fames, or after the manner of a prize-essay against covetousness; but our aim will be to bring before our readers in one view what we have been enabled to learn from many quarters respecting the natural sources of gold, the geological and mineralogical conditions which appear to govern its deposition, and the mode of its occurrence, together with its geographical distribution in various parts of the world. It is only within the last few years that opinions worthy of scientific name have pre *Remarks on the Production of the Precious Metals, and on the Depreciation of Gold. By M. MICHEL CHEVALIER, Translated by D. FORBES CAMPBELL, Esq. London. 1853. Land, Labor, and Gold; or, Two Years in Victoria, etc. By WILLIAM HOWITT. Two Volumes. London. 1855. Had Pliny been living at the time, he might have competed for Dr. Conquest's prize, since, in commencing a chapter on gold, he speaks thus: "Oh! that the use of gold was clean gone! Would God it could possibly be quite abolished among men, setting them, as it doth, into such a cursed and excessive thirst after it-if I may use the words of most renowned writers-a thing that the best men have always reproached and railed at, and the only means found out for the ruin and overthrow of man kind. What a blessed world was that, and much happier than this wherein we live, when, in all the dealings between men, there was no coin handled, but their whole traffic was managed by bartering and exchanging ware for ware, and one commodity for another, as the practice was in the time of the Trojan war, as Homer, a writer of good credit, doth testify !" vailed on some of these points. These opinions, however, are scarcely known to the general public, nor should we be able to conceive of the wide and gross ignorance of the mass of people on such matters, if we did not see how extensively certain companies just expired have been able to win golden opinions from all sorts of men. Of these companies we shall have a word to say at the end of our paper. It is singular that, out of the numerous recent travelers' books on the Californian and Australian discoveries of gold, scarcely one that we have seen has much scientific information of value. It will be as well, too, to indicate the probable limits of auriferous repositories, so that men may at least know in what kinds of places gold may be found, and where it will certainly not be found. To this we shall add some notices of the modes of extraction from the soil and the rock, and the most reliable statistics of the actual produce of gold in our day, especially from Australia and California. In the present paper, we shall confine our observations to gold, only referring to silver in some statistical statements of the returns of the precious metals collectively. Incidentally, we shall glance at some topics of special interest. And first, it will be interesting to learn how far gold was known to the ancients, and whence they gathered it. Gold, being always found in its native or metallic state, and being remarkable for its beau tiful yellow color, would attract the eye of the most uneducated and thoughtless traveler, while other metallic substances lying in his path would offer no positive attraction to the eye, and would therefore not awaken his observation. In its superficial accumulations, borne as they have been by floods into valleys, and disseminated in minute particles amongst rolled pebbles, the eye of the curious would soon discover the glittering scales and particles, especially where summer heats, by drying up the water, rendered those beds which had formed river channels, and the courses of river torrents, dry paths for the journeys of migratory man. In the first records, therefore, of man's progress, it is indicated as the standard of his social position, as, alas! it is to too great an extent at this day. The sacred historian, in speaking of the river Pison, (probably the Euphrates,) observes that it encompasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of the land is good. Job mentions gold (chap. 28: 1, 15, etc.) five times in one chapter; and further informs us, that the earth hath dust of gold, a phrase which shows that he was acquainted with the distribution of gold in sands and soils. It does not appear that up to this period gold had been employed as money, and we find both it and silver passing from hand to hand by weight; but when, after his trials, the wealth of Job was restored, we are informed that, in addition to the cattle and money which his visitors brought him, each of them also brought an ear-ring of gold, thus proving the early use of this metal for personal ornaments. We also gather from Scripture that gold must have been beaten into thin plates at a very early period, since the ark of shittim wood was covered with gold, both on the outside and the inside, as were also the staves, the wooden table with its staves, the altar of burnt incense, etc. all his drinking-vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver: it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon, and the King made silver to be as stones in Jerusalem. Ninus, the founder of Nineveh, and Semiramis, the founder of Babylon, had abundance of gold and silver. The wealth of Croesus, who lived about 540 years before Christ, is proverbial, and the presents which he made to the temple of Delphi amounted to 4000 talents of silver and 270 talents of gold, nearly equal to £3,000,000 sterling, if our notions of the value of the ancient talent be correct. In a story of Herodotus, Pythias is mentioned as entertaining Xerxes and his whole army, and as stating that he was possessed of money which is estimated at £3,600,000. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, as we are informed by Appian, the Egyptian treasury contained no less than £178,000,000. This was obtained by collecting with an armed force all the silver and gold of the people. The wealth of the Romans was immense, as may be inferred from some historical incidents. When Cæsar was killed in the ides of March, Anthony owed £320,000, which he paid before the Kalends of April out of the public money, and squandered (according to Adams) more than £5,600,000. Cæsar himself, before he set out for Spain, was in debt to the extent of £2,018,000. Lentulus possessed £3,229,166. Claudius, a freedman, saved £2,500,000. Augustus obtained from the testamentary dispositions of his friends (some people will leave their fortunes to their Sovereigns) no less than £32,291,666 sterling. Tiberius left at his death the enormous sum of £21,796,875, which Caligula is said to have squandered in a single year. Vespasian estimated at his accession that the money which the maintenance of the Commonwealth required was £322,916,000. Up to the time of Augustus, the wealth of the world ap In the history of ancient times we remark periods when gold was accumulated in great abundance. The reign of Solo-peared to flow into the treasuries of Rome, mon was apparently the first of these periods, and that Hebrew King selected in a single year six hundred and three-score and six talents, (1 Kings 10:14, etc.,) which we may conjecture to amount in our money to about £300,000. The ships of the King also brought from Ophir 450 talents of gold, or £190,800. His throne was of ivory, overlaid with the best gold; when the production of gold from the Roman mines in Illyria and Spain suddenly ceased, and for a long period the world received no new accession of metallic wealth. Jacob, in his History of the Precious Metals, has computed the quantity of gold and silver in the Roman Empire for several years, and shows the rate of diminution to which the enormous wealth of the Augustan period was subject. The those of the Uralian chain, afforded a highest amounts are as follows: The decline had reached, in the year 806, to the sum of £33,674,256. It is singular that no Grecian or Roman, nor, in fact, any ancient writer, should have left us a treatise on the mines or sources of the precious metals to the ancients. The absence of such a treatise is felt the more when we attempt to realize the vast accumulations just mentioned. Although we have a Columella De Re Rustica, and a Vitruvius on Architecture, yet we have no author De Re Metallica, nor do we read of any such author. Some notices in Pliny's Natural History, and a few scattered sentences in Herodotus and others, are all we have appertaining to the subject. Would that some idle man of the Roman Empire had devoted himself to so interesting a topic; and that Horace, instead of sipping his Chian or Falernian wines, or Martial, instead of penning silly epigrams, had given to all time a serviceable treatise upon it! As it is, the only writer on the Grecian metallic wealth is a modern German, Boeckh, who, to his Public Economy of Athens, has added a learned dissertation on the silver mines of Laurion, in which he has investigated the subject with great critical skill. There were gold mines in Thrace and the island of Thasus. Thessaly produced ores which were rich in gold. The supplies of Solomon were derived from Ophir,* thought to be the modern Sofala in Africa. Pallas describes the remains of very ancient mines, (perhaps of the Scythians,) and Lepechin and Gmelin visited those remains of very early mining works on the eastern borders of the Ural mountains. That gold region still yields some amount of the metal. It is evident that much gold was procured from the mines of Nubia and Ethiopia. These, like * Where Ophir was, has puzzled many geographers to say. Huet and Bruce have placed it at Sofala, South Africa. Some seek it in the land of Yemen, whose capital is Sophar, or Taphar. Calmet places it in Amenia, at the head of the Euphrates. copper which yielded gold, and which the Africans knew how to separate. Belzoni proves that a very extensive tract had been worked in the Sahara mountains. The Pharaohs derived their wealth from these sources at the expense of much human suffering and loss of life. Mr. Jacob infers that not less than £6,000,000 sterling of the precious metals were derived from these mines, and that a large proportion of this must have been gold. Croesus may have derived gold from the auriferous sands of the river Pactolus in Lydia. The Romans obtained their supplies of precious metals from various sources; and in fact monopolized as much of the mining produce of the world as they could. Some of their sources were Upper Italy, the province of Aosta, the Noric Alps, and Illyria. Anciently Spain yielded an abundant supply of the precious metals, which her quicksilver served to refine. According to Pliny, the Asturias, Galicia, and Lusitania yielded £20,000 of gold annually. Silver of the best quality was found in still greater quantities in that country. Both the Carthagenians and the Romans appear to have derived immense supplies from Spain. It is said that the single mine of Belbel yielded to Hannibal £300 aday; and we learn from Strabo, that after Spain had been reduced to complete subjection by the Romans, these proud conquerors drew from it upwards of £110,000 of silver in the space of nine years, or at the rate of about £12,400 annually. Polybius speaks of the silver mines in Spain in the neighborhood of Carthago Nova, which yielded every day 25,000 drachmas to the Roman ærarium; and Pliny mentions, as amongst the most productive mines belonging to the Roman Republic, rich gold mines near Aquileia, a town of Ictimuli, near Vercelli, in which 25,000 men were constantly employed.* When a new world was opened to us by the discovery of America, in 1492, new sources of the precious metals were also presented. From the year 1492 to 1500, America furnished to Europe gold and silver to the value of £52,000. In 1502, Orlando dispatched about £70,000; but *Pliny's "Natural History," 33: 4. The number of men employed must be overstated; at least, if they were employed in mining. From Mexican mines. £364,847,739 273,293,356 68,323,339 Total from Spanish America.. £706,464,434 most of his ships were wrecked, and little | stated, the gross amount from Peru, Coof the wealth reached Spain. Up to lumbia, Chili, and Buenos Ayres, which was 1519, the annual produce of American (for the same period) £273,293,356. This gold was never greater than £52,000. again would, if increased by the amount At this period Cortez acquired Mexico, of the contraband trading, viz., £68,223,339, and he obtained at Chalco presents amount to more than £340,000,000. Thus, amounting to £70,000 sterling. When then, the gross product of the Americas Montezuma took the oath of fidelity to from 1700 to 1809, inclusive, would stand Spain, he paid £65,000 in gold into the thus: chest of the army; and Bernal Diaz reports that, on taking Tenochtitlan, £80,000 fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Pizarro landed in Peru in 1527, and in the twenty years which elapsed between that time and the discovery of the mineral wealth of Potosi, America forwarded to Spain £630,000 of gold every year. Thus the produce of gold in the sixty-three years which followed the discovery of America, amounted to £17,058,000 sterling. Mr. Jacob has calculated that the total gold and silver coin in Europe, at the end of the year 1599, was in value equal to £130,000,000. The entire supply of gold for Europe during the century from 1600 to 1700 was obtained from America,and amounted, in the one hundred years to £337,500,000 of precious metals. Of this amount £33,000,000 were sent to the Philippine Islands, India, and China; and it is estimated that £60,000,000 of gold were employed in decorating churches, and generally for ornamental purposes. If £34,000,000 be allowed for the loss by wear of money, etc., then the amount of coined money in Europe in 1699 was £297,000,000 sterling. The gold-dust of Africa, with the gold and silver of Europe, may be estimated at the annual value of £900,000. The annual value of the precious metals from Spanish and Portuguese America being about £7,000,000, (according to the above view,) the annual increase of the wealth of Europe, during the last century, was at the rate of £8,000,000, as nearly as we can arrive at it. It is not an easy thing to estimate the produce of the precious metals since 1810; but, from the calculations of M'Culloch, who relies on the authority of Humboldt, we may estimate the annual produce of the American mines as equaling £8,700,000. In 1840, the American mines were estimated to yield a produce equal to £5,600,000 per annum. As we have thus arrived at our own days, let us turn aside for a time from mere statistical statements, and, before we return to figures, look at the geological occurrence and geographical distribution of gold. Gold is found, as to geological position, in the primary groups of rocks, including the "transition strata" of earlier writers; which, as they contain the oldest organic remains, have been recently denominated During the sixteenth century, the supply of gold and silver was still mainly derived from the Americas; the great Mexican mine of Valenciana producing £125,000 sterling per annum for forty years, and the district of Zaccatecas adding largely to the amount: these sources were, however, rapidly failing toward the end of the century. A detailed list of these supplies is given by Humboldt, in periods of ten years from 1700 to 1809. The total product for the whole time of 110 years was £304,039,783. Such is the sum of exact returns from the several mints." palæozoic." This series constitutes the But to this must be added the gold and silver of Mexico which did not pay duty, and passed into other channels, equal to £68,000,000. The total amount would thus be for 110 years, £364,847,739. This would give an annual average product of £3,316,706. Furthermore, we must add to the total amount from Mexico, as just dorsal spine of the great mountain chains of both the Old and New World. There are, however, vast regions, amounting, perhaps, to three fourths of all known lands, where no such rocks appear. Experience has shown that it is only in the paleozoic group of rocks, as above defined, (including certain associated igneous rocks,) that gold has been found in quan- other rock containing much gold, would tities sufficient to pay for working. All not be carried far by any imaginable the vein-stones, or rock masses, from which much gold has been derived, (whether by natural catastrophes or by human endeavor,) belong to the primary and transition groups, and especially to those portions of them which have been modified by the eruption of matter in a state of fusion, or at a very elevated temperature. It is now thought that the gold-bearing rocks are not confined to particular geographical zones, as formerly supposed; but they are found protruding more or less as meridional bands in all countries where the primary series of rocks is visible and prominent. Where primeval breakers, waves, and currents acted on the rocks containing gold, whether it were disseminated through the mass of the rock, or confined to the quartz veins traversing it, fragments of the auriferous rock would be detached equally with other pieces. Such fragments, either slightly worn, or altogether broken and ground down, would afterward be found in the drift-clays, sands, and gravels, and would in all probability be much richer in gold than the actual gold-bearing rocks themselves. A current of water having sufficient force to bear down sand, or pebbles of quartz, or any other rock of perhaps 24 specific gravity, might not be able to move along associated fragments of gold, which metal has a specific gravity of 18 or 19. Moving water has, therefore, formerly effected upon the auriferous rocks that which the miner would now effect, namely, has broken them up into fragments, swept away the lighter particles, and left the gold behind. Rivers are great natural cradles, (to use a digger's term,) sweeping off all the lighter and finer particles at once, the heavier ones remaining lodged against any natural impediments, or being left where the current slackened in force or velocity. These are the reasons why the auriferous drift may become richer in gold than the mass of the rock from which it is derived; and there are other reasons, also, why the auriferous drift of a country, first deposited after the formation of gold, should be richer than any subsequent one. In considering the action of currents and rivers, we discover the causes of the condition of gold in alluvium. Very large fragments of gold, or even of quartz, or stream of water. The discovery therefore, of the larger pieces of gold, named nuggets, is equivalent to the discovery of the neighboring parent site; when we find the one, we can not be far from the other, even though we cannot penetrate to its depths. On the contrary, gold dust, in scales or spangles of the metal, may be transported to considerable distances. From such differences may arise a fairly equable distribution of gold over large spaces of drift; for the waters, which had power enough to move the large fragments a few hundred yards, would carry the smaller ones some miles away. In the former case, rich lumps would be deposited sparingly here and there; in the other, scales and spangles would be scattered like broadcast seed from the sower, and cast equally over the wide spaces where the currents began to lose their force and speed. When we find gold in the sands of rivers, we must not conclude that it was detached from the rock by the actual water of those rivers. It may have been thus detached to a small extent, but rivers would scarcely be able to abrade many auriferous spots in these beds of rock. On the contrary, we must look still further back to the older drifts, which would be naturally accumulated in the lowest hollows and depressions of the surface of rocks, or in the preëxisting valleys; and as the rivers of a country naturally follow the same course, it is from these loose and incoherent materials that a river derives its store of gold. We may presume that a river which traverses a country of auriferous drift by its action resifts and reässorts the materials that have once been sifted by the waters in which the drift was formed, carrying forward all the matters that fall into it, but soon depositing the heavier matters, and sweeping off all the lighter particles into distant and lower regions. If we stand upon a hill in our own country, and glance at the windings of some subjacent river, we observe that, as it winds through the valley, it attacks first one bank and then another, eating into the base of a cliff where the full force of the current rolls against it, and causing the continual fall of small portions of it into the water, and then depositing them below, in places where the current is checked by some impediment. It is thus |