68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



It is fairly well settled that the gold of the ancients came mainly 

 from three places, namely, Asia Minor, southern India and South 

 Africa. In the first-mentioned locality it was principally obtained 

 by washing the banks and bars, and even the beds of certain streams, 

 while in the last two it seems to have come more largely from crushing 

 the outcrops of auriferous quartz veins. What is known as the Dekkan 

 region of the peninsula of Hindustan, and certain parts of the valleys 

 of the Limpopo and Zambesi, in South Africa, are dotted with the 

 remains of prehistoric excavations on such veins, some of which when 

 cleaned out show that the workers succeeded in penetrating in places 

 as much as two hundred feet into the earth ; while in the same neighbor- 

 hoods we find the relics of human structures whose age is certainly 

 only to be reckoned in terms of thousands of years. In India, after 

 many years of tribulation, a modern gold-mining industry has been 

 successfully reestablished on the basis of the old one, and in South 

 Africa the region now known as Ehodesia, where the ancients conducted 

 very extensive operations, is slowly undergoing the processes of re- 

 habitation. 



Many of the rivers of Asia Minor were noted three to five thousand 

 years ago for the gold washed from their beds. Croesus, one of the 

 kings of Lydia, who became extremely wealthy through the working 

 with slaves of some of the stream beds of his kingdom, was one of the 

 celebrated actual characters of that country and those times, and the 

 river of Pactolus, whose golden sands are mentioned by several ancient 

 historians, was one of the most noted of its metal-bearing streams. 



It is probable that in the prehistoric and early historic periods of 

 ■civilization gold in some quantities (not large) came also from the 

 headwaters of the White Nile in Abyssinia, from southern Persia, from 

 some of the East Indian isles and from China. There is no evidence 

 that the Ural deposits in Eussia were known in those remote days, but 

 it seems very likely that a fair amount of the precious metal was ob- 

 tained from the flanks of the Atlas range of mountains in northern 

 Africa. 



When I mention the ancients I mean that period of the world's 

 history (and all the unknown eras before it) that culminated in 

 Phoenician nationality, covering the Egyptian. Babylonian, Assyrian, 

 Hittite and Persian empires, and the vast but quiet civilization in 

 Hindustan, China and Japan. In the main the people of those days 

 were Asiatics and Africans, and belonged to the Semitic and Turanian 

 races, though the Persians and Hindoos were more or less Aryan in 

 race and language and northern in temperament. 



About 1000 B.C., when Greek nationality began to assume a com- 

 manding position, and when most of the older southern empires had 

 passed their prime, when, in fact, the day of Europe was beginning 



