7 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



neously other navigators of the same nationality landed on the eastern 

 coast of South America and took possession of the country for the 

 throne of Portugal, under the name of Brazil. 



History tells what a marvelous change came over Europe as the 

 spoils from the East Indies, consisting mainly of gold and precious 

 stones, and the silver and gold from Mexico and Peru, began to flow 

 into the channels of trade. This was intensified when the Brazilian 

 gold fields (placers) were opened in 1675, and under the impetus of 

 this fresh and enormous volume of new circulating medium the modern 

 era began. 



But as yet there was no such thing as an established precious-metal 

 mining industry. The millions that had come from Spanish America 

 and the East in the years between 1510 and 1700 were largely spoils, 

 or the result of crude operations on alluvial deposits, and when the 

 flood began to slacken Europe fell on hard times again, like a young 

 rake that had lived beyond his income. This brought on the era of 

 dissatisfaction that caused the beginning of emigration among the 

 French, English and Dutch to North America, resulting in the parti- 

 tion of the continent among these races, and the formation of the 

 American republic and the colony of Canada, where up to the middle 

 of the nineteenth century (less than seventy years ago) gold coin was 

 almost unknown, and the real medium of exchange was mainly the 

 Mexican silver dollar. 



In 1849 the gold fields of California and Australia were almost 

 simultaneously discovered, and during the following ten years more 

 of the precious metal was produced and turned into the channels of 

 trade than had come from the earth for a thousand years previously. 

 But as most of this was derived from alluvial diggings that were 

 quickly exhausted it was really not until 1860 that the modern indus- 

 try of gold mining began. 



Placer or surface mines, where the gold exists in the form of fine 

 grains or dust, are productive and profitable for a time, but are short- 

 lived, while vein or reef mines that extend indefinitely into the earth 

 are permanent, and when these began to be attacked, and machinery 

 was devised to crush the quartz, and quicksilver employed to gather 

 and catch the golden grains, and when finally a smelting industry came 

 into existence, so that the so-called refractory ores could be treated and 

 their precious contents recovered, then and not till then did gold mi- 

 ning become a well-defined business, and the production of the metal 

 fairly constant and regular. 



It is a marvelous tale, this history of gold, and wrapped up with 

 it are clues to many obscure points in the story of civilization. For, 

 as the blood to the human system, so has gold been in the commercial 

 world, the circulating medium carrying life to all parts of the social 

 and political organizations that men have constructed. 



