60 ON SOME ABANDONED GOLDFIELDS, ETC. 



some I believe from Spain, but I camiot give any reference 

 except to Macaulay's Lay of Virginia. So far as I am aware we 

 are in possession of no information as to the locality of the 

 Persian auriferous country eastward of the Halys River. It is 

 quite different however with the sources of the gold-supply of 

 the ancient Greeks and inhabitants of Asia Minor. Herodotus 

 has preserved for us an exact account of the position of at least 

 five ancient goldfields, and it is quite possible that if any one 

 will prospect him more thoroughly than I have been able to do, 

 he will discover more. 



I need hardly point out that these long abandoned fields 

 would be in a sense virgin to the modern miner. The miner of 

 antiquity had no blasting materials nor steam pumps, and was 

 imacquainted with the use of mercury for amalgamation. .Judg- 

 ing therefore from Australian analogy, he must perforce have 

 left behind him many deposits which would yield a rich harvest 

 to his modern and better equipped representative. Indeed the 

 ancient man must have been shut up to alluvial in fairly dry 

 ground and "dolly" reefs. 



Having said so much by way of preface, I will now go on to 

 specify the localities referred to above as having been described 

 by Herodotus. The first on the list is the island of Siphnos in 

 the ^gean, one of the group known as the Cyclades. Speaking 

 of this island as it was about b.c. 525, the Father of History 

 says " The afifairs of the Siphnians were then in a most pros- 

 perous condition, as the island, owing to the gold and silver 

 mines that were being worked there, was the wealthiest of the 

 whole group. The annual yield of gold was tithed in favour of 

 the god at Delphi, and such was the value of this tenth that 

 the wealth of the Siphnian treasury at the Delphic temple 

 rivalled the wealth of the treasuries of the most opulent states. 

 Siphnos, as may be learned from the map, is a small island, and 

 therefore not difficult to prospect " (Herod. Ill, 57). The next 

 locality is another island, Thasos, at the north end of 

 the ^gean, on the continuation of Mount Pangasus, the 

 range that separates Thrace from Macedonia. With the 

 Thasos goldfield may be associated the goldfield of Scapte 

 Hyle on the mainland and opposite to it. Herodotus 

 tells us (vi, 46, 47) that the Thasians with the proceeds of 



