MINES OF ASIA CHAP. IT. 



the supply of gold. The knowledge of the 

 Greeks in the time of Herodotus was com- 

 prised in an acquaintance with those people 

 who lived to the south of the Altai mountains, 

 which the discoveries^ of the Russians have 

 proved to be the barrier between Bactriana and 

 Siberia. Now it is stated, respecting several of 

 the Nomadic tribes to the north of those moun- 

 tains, that they had gold in abundance. It is not 

 with a design to show the credulity of our author, 

 but to account for the apparent discrepancies 

 which represent gold as an abundant article in the 

 Persian dominions, and yet describe the sources of 

 it so few and feeble, that reference is here made 

 to Herodotus. That writer says, that " in the 

 north there is a prodigious quantity of gold, but 

 how it "is produced I am not able to tell with 

 certainty. It is affirmed indeed that the Ari- 

 maspi, a people who have but one eye, take the 

 gold away by violence from the griffins ; but I 

 can never persuade myself that there are any 

 men who, having but one eye, enjoy in all other 

 respects the nature and qualities of all other 

 human beings V A modern would scarcely 

 give more credit to the story of griffins being 

 the guardians of gold than to that of their plun- 

 derers, the nation of the Arimaspi, having but 

 one eye ! The researches of travellers from 



1 Herodotus, b. iii. cap. 116. 



