GOLD 69 



and that of Asia and Africa was declining, there was, according to his- 

 tory, a very marked decrease in the supply of gold coming into the 

 channels of civilization. The southern African and Indian fields 

 seem to have been deserted, probably because the nation that appears 

 to have conducted operations in these localities (the Phoenician) lost 

 its predominance. Gold gradually became scarce, and its place in 

 business life was largely taken by silver, which came in enormous 

 quantities to the Grecian and Eoman world of the period of 1000 B.C. 

 to 500 B.C., first from the mines of Greece, and later from those of 

 Italy and Spain. 



The placer-mining regions of Asia Minor had either become ex- 

 hausted, or, what is much more likely, the industry was ruined by the 

 continual wars that occurred in the days when Asia and Europe were 

 contending with each other for supremacy in that rich and rugged land. 



During the early centuries of our own era, when Eome was in its 

 prime, we hear very little of gold mining, and it is extremely likely 

 that the greater part of the yellow metal that was accumulated by the 

 Eomans came from the spoliation of older civilizations. When Eome 

 ceased to be a dominating factor in the history of the world, and its 

 vast empire was split into numerous small states, mining as an in- 

 dustry, and particularly gold mining, suffered greatly, and the Grecian 

 and Italian and Spanish silver mines ceased production almost entirely. 



It was this fact that ultimately caused the establishment of the 

 institution of banks in northern Italy, the then commercial center of 

 the world, and it is a curious fact that these banks were not places 

 where coined money was deposited or dealt in, but where credits were 

 established and maintained. Thus the great bank of Venice, which 

 for 600 years (800 a.d. to 1400 a.d.) was really the heart of the com- 

 mercial world of the day, was little more than a great bookkeeping 

 establishment, where the trade between Europe and Asia was kept in 

 balance by a system of transfer of credits, these credits being based 

 upon the actual possession by the principal traders of the time of the 

 merchandise in which they dealt. 



Gold coin in the middle ages almost disappeared from circulation, 

 and silver coins were debased by the governments with lead and zinc 

 and tin until they were current only at enormous discount. In the 

 middle of this period the precious-metal mines of central Europe were 

 discovered, but they yielded mainly silver, and not much of that, so 

 that in the fifteenth century, just before the discovery of the New 

 World by Columbus, commercial Europe was really in great need of 

 coin metal. 



In 1492 the western continent was discovered, and in 1498 the 

 Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, first made the passage to the 

 East Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and almost simulta- 



