CHAPTER V. 

 The Fabulous Islands: Islas del Armenio, Rica de Oro, and Rica de Platå. 



We can trace back to the very earliest times the idea that gold, silver and other 

 of the most valuable things had their origin in the extreme limits of the known world. 

 It was above all the Far East to which the Mediterranean peoples directed longing eyes 

 in quest of these riches that were so härd to gain; and India became the native land, 

 spöken of with all the glamour of the fairy-tale, not only for the valuable spices, but also 

 for the precious metals. It was in the regions beyond the mouth of the Indus that the 

 ancient geographers, Pomponius Mela and Pliny, placed the gold and silver islands, 

 Chryse and Argyre; and in the maps of Ptolemy we see on the East Indian Peninsula, 

 not only Aurea and Argentea Regio, but also its extreme part, the Malay Peninsula, is 

 marked with the long famous name Aurea Chersonesus. Concerning the isle of Taprobana 

 (Ceylon), Ptolemy says that it "abounds with all sorts of metals, gold and silver"; to 

 the east of it he places Iabadii Insula, also a place where gold is produced, and the 

 seat of a town with the attractive name of Argentea Metropolis. These representations, 

 which clearly refer to commercial centres on the Indian Ocean from which the metallic 

 treasures found their way to the peoples of the ancient world through many intermediate 

 hands, were reshaped by the imagination of mediaeval Christendom to islands of solid 

 gold and silver; and with the tales about these was associated the name of Ophir, the 

 land from which King Hiram's fleets brought back to King Solomon gold which could 

 be measured in hundreds of tons. 1 



It is generally known that the thirst for gold formed the most powerful incentive 

 to explorers at the beginning of modern times; but although more and more extensive 

 regions were brought to light by them, they sought in vain in America for El Dorado, in 

 the Great Ocean for the Isles of Solomon, and in the East Indian Archipelago for the Gold 



1 Concerning the conceptions of Antiquity and the Earlier Middle Ages see Oscar Peschel's interesting 

 artide Goldene Berge und goldene Inseln, in his Abhandlungen zur Erd- und Völkerkunde, herausg. von J. 

 Löwenberg, Lpz. 1877, pp. 35—44. — On the names Chryse and Argyre in the authors and cartographers of 

 Antiquity and the Middle Ages see quotations in Ivar Hallberg, L'extréme Orient dans la littérature et la 

 cartographie de VOccident, Göteborg 1907, pp. 44, 144. 



K. Sv. Vet, Akad. Handl. Band 57. N:o 4. 9 



