330 



BOOK VIII. 



The Colchians 17 placed the skins of animals in the pools of springs ; and 

 since many particles of gold had clung to them when they were removed, 



A SPRING. B SKIN. C ARGONAUTS. 



the poets invented the " golden fleece " of the Colchians. In like manner, 

 it can be contrived by the methods of miners that skins should take up, not 

 only particles of gold, but also of silver and gems. 



17 Colchis, the traditional land of the Golden Fleece, lay between the Caucasus on the 

 north, Armenia on the south, and the Black Sea on the west. If Agricola's account of the 

 metallurgical purpose of the fleece is correct, then Jason must have had real cause for com- 

 plaint as to the tangible results of his expedition. The fact that we hear nothing of the 

 fleece after the day it was taken from the dragon would thus support Agricola's theory. Tons 

 of ink have been expended during the past thirty centuries in explanations of what the fleece 

 really was. These explanations range through the supernatural and metallurgical, but more 

 recent writers have endeavoured to construct the journey of the Argonauts into an epic of the 

 development of the Greek trade in gold with the Euxine. We will not attempt to traverse 

 them from a metallurgical point of view further than to maintain that Agricola's explanation 

 is as probable and equally as ingenious as any other, although Strabo (xi, 2, 19.) gives much 

 the same view long before. 



Alluvial mining gold washing being as old as the first glimmer of civilisation, 

 it is referred to, directly or indirectly, by a great majority of ancient writers, poets, historians, 

 geographers, and naturalists. Early Egyptian inscriptions often refer to this industry, 

 but from the point of view of technical methods the description by Pliny is practically 

 the only one of interest, and in Pliny's chapter on the subject, alluvial is badly con- 



