THE LURE OF GOLD
In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all
ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores
to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the
borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure,
lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word:
Gold!
Many years had passed since Owens had felt this auriferous fever, many
years since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of the
camps of his youth, but the word had rung again in his ears as of old.
The subtle poison of the lure was in his veins once more. He could not
sleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point of
death in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret of
millions, untold.
He reasoned with himself for his foolishness. Over and over again he
reminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, and
that coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done.
The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat late
in his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had once known
so well, and dreaming avid visions over the pages.
The records of human daring do not reach so far back in the dawn of
history as to show a time when gold was not a goal. In the earliest
laws as yet known--the Laws of Menes in Egypt, B. C. 3000--both gold
and silver were sought and used as standards of value in the royal and
priestly treasuries. Breastplates and ornaments of gold were buried
with the mummies of kings and nobles of Egypt and Mycenae.
There was gold in Chaldea and Armenia. The fable of Tantalus, who kept
unlawful possession of a golden dog which had been stolen from Zeus,
the great All-Father, was a legend of the gold placer deposits near
Mt. Sipylus, north of Smyrna. The earliest records show a knowledge of
gold in the Caucasus, Ural, and Himalaya Mts.
The Phoenicians, most adventurous of all the early races, went on long
expeditions to distant lands in search of gold. Cadmus, the
Phoenician, in B. C. 1594, sent miners to Thrace and established a
regular gold-trade thence. As a curious forecast of what was to happen
on the other side of the world, tens of centuries later, the ancient
historian Strabo tells of a wagon-wheel uncovering a nugget of gold
near Mt. Pangeus, not far from the present Bulgarian frontier.
One of the oldest of all the tales of high adventure was the Quest of
the Golden Fleece, and the fifty heroes who set out on that quest in
the oared ship _Argo_--and hence called the Argonauts--have given
their name to gold-seekers for hundreds of generations. Few tales in
all the world are so wonderful as the old Greek legend of Jason and
the Golden Fleece, a quest of daring, of magic, and of peril.
The Golden Fleece, itself, was a thing of mystery. Its origin harks
back to the earliest days of the Age of Fable. Thus, in its briefest
form, runs the tale:
In a minor kingdom of what is now Northern Greece, there lived a king,
Athamas, son of the god of the sea, who had married Nephele, the
goddess of the clouds. But Athamas proved faithless and fell in love
with Ino, grand-daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and
beauty. The cloud-goddess, indignant at this neglect, disappeared,
leaving behind her two children, Phrixus and Helle.
It was not long before the stepmother conceived a violent hatred for
the children of the first wife. Counting on the spell of her beauty,
she tried to persuade Athamas to get rid of them, but the king
refused. Then Ino fell to base plotting. She brought about a famine in
the land by secretly heating the grains of wheat before they were sown
and thus preventing their growth; then, by a false oracle, she
persuaded the king that the gods were angry and would only be appeased
if he offered his eldest-born, Phrixus, as a sacrifice. For the sake
of his country, the king agreed.
All was in readiness, Phrixus was on the altar, the officiating priest
had the knife raised, when masses of cloud and fog rolled over the
scene and Nephele appeared, leading a ram with a fleece all threads of
gold. So thick was the fog, that, in an instant, it blotted out all
vision; the priest's hand stayed uplifted, for he could no longer see
his victim to deal the fatal blow. Then came a rift in the fog, and,
through the swirl of mist, Athamas and Ino saw Phrixus and his sister
leap upon the back of the gold-fleeced ram.
Down the mountain and across the plain the great ram sped, and plunged
into the waters of the strait that lies between Europe and Asia Minor,
breasting the waves with ease. Helle fell from the back of the ram and
was drowned, so that the strait (now known as the Dardanelles) was
known to the Greeks as the Hellespont.
Phrixus reached the other side in safety. Following the counsel of his
cloud-mother, he sacrificed the ram to the honor of the gods and took
the fleece to Aeetes, king of Colchis. Aeetes at first received him with
honor, but later proved false to his promises of friendship and made
Phrixus a prisoner. The Golden Fleece was hung up on a tree in the
grove of Ares (god of battle and grandfather of Ino), and there the
mystic treasure was guarded by a dragon which never slept.
Now Pelias, brother of Athamas, had usurped the throne of Thessaly.
When Jason, son of the true king, Aeson, had grown to man's estate, he
presented himself before Pelias and challenged him to surrender the
kingdom.
The wily Pelias, knowing well that the people of Thessaly would side
with Jason, did not refuse outright. He demanded, only, that Jason
should show his rightfulness to be deemed a king's son by some act of
heroic bravery. Such a test was not unusual in the Days of Fable, and
Jason agreed.
"This will I do," said Jason, "name the deed!"
Cunningly the king answered,
"Bring me the Golden Fleece!"
Jason, high-hearted, set out on the quest. Since he must cross the
sea, there must be built a ship. Through the advice of the
cloud-goddess, his mother, he appealed for help to Athene, goddess of
wisdom, and a bitter enemy of Ares and his grand-daughter Ino. The
fifty-oared ship Argo was built, and Athene herself placed in the prow
a piece of oak endowed with the power of speaking oracles.
The Quest of the Golden Fleece was a deed worthy of heroes, and none
but heroes were members of the crew. Such men--demigods, most of
them--had never been gathered in a crew before. Orpheus, of the
charmed lyre; Zetes and Calais, sons of the North Wind; Castor and
Pollux, the divine Twins; Meleager, the hunter of the magic boar;
Theseus, the slayer of tyrants; the all-powerful Hercules, son of
Zeus, whose twelve labors were famous in all antiquity; and others of
little lesser fame, were numbered in that gallant company.
Many and strange were their adventures in the _Argo_, of which there
is not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: the
battle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of the
Sirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menace
of the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when a
ship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who used
their feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of the
voyage of the _Argo_ is a story that will never die.
Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the Golden
Fleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months--or it may
have been years--Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought.
There they presented themselves before Aeetes and demanded the Golden
Fleece.
The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knew
that neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He took
refuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason the
performance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame the
bulls of Hephaestus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs of
red-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god of
battle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from
which a host of armed men would spring, and he must defeat that army.
Truly, the task was one to tax a hero. But, as the gods would have it,
Jason found a new but dangerous ally. This was Medea, the
witch-daughter of Aeetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She
loved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her for
sorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, her
dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly
from hatred of Aeetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.
Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the
task Aeetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted
from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof
against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the
bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field
of Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm
among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil,
which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were
slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.
There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept.
Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs
she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the
snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at
last!
Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully
as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their
quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward,
Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the _Argo_, and
she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in
the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words
and could not retract.
The _Argo_ had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that
Aeetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of
battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young
brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The
anguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return them
to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the
Argonauts escaped.
So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to
draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered
at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red
with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing.
At the first land where the _Argo_ stopped, he married her.
At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and
terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands
of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a
quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whose
body was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which they
were saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journey
of the _Argo_ was not less wild and difficult than her coming.
Yet, at the last, Jason brought back the Golden Fleece to Thessaly,
only to find that the false Pelias had slain Aeson and Jason's mother
and brother during the absence of the Argonauts. His crime was not
left unpunished. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut their
father into small pieces and to boil the fragments in a pot with
certain witch-herbs that she gave them, falsely promising that by this
means the old king would regain his youth. Of the later life of Jason
and Medea, there is no need to speak. Misery was their lot, and their
deaths were not long delayed.
Thus, in fanciful guise, appears in the old Greek legend the record of
the European discovery of the alluvial gold deposits of Colchis, and
to the Argonauts was ascribed the honor of being the first to bring to
Greece the gold of Asia Minor. Even in those early days, the gift of
gold was regarded as the favor of the gods.
[Footnote 2: One book that should be in every boy's library is Charles
Kingsley's "The Heroes," in which the "Quest of the Golden Fleece" is
related with a beauty unequaled in the English language. The books of
A. J. Church, also, especially his "Stories from Homer," make the old
Greek demigods live once again.]
There is good reason to believe that the Siege of Troy--the subject of
Homer's Iliad--was not waged alone because of the beauty of Helen of
Troy, but also because the Greeks coveted Mycenaean gold. Excavations
made on the site of ancient Troy have revealed many thin plates of
beaten gold.
[Illustration: DIVINING-RODS.
A, Twig; B, Trench.
_From an Old Print._]
[Illustration: THE WORLD'S OLDEST PICTURE OF GOLD-SEEKERS.
The three ships of Queen Hatshepsut sent to the Land of Punt (possibly
Somaliland) in 1503-1481, B.C.
_From a wall-painting in the Temple of Deir-el-Bahri, near Thebes._]
Nor was the _Argo_ the only ship to set sail to unknown lands for
gold. As early as the fabled voyage of the Argonauts, or even earlier,
Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt--a mighty woman monarch of whom all too
little is known--sent an expedition to Punt (possibly Somaliland) for
incense and for gold. On the walls of the great temples built during
her reign are found paintings telling the story of this expedition,
picturing, among other things, the bags of gold that the three-masted,
thirty-oared ship brought home.
Hiram, King of Tyre, who was engaged by King Solomon to bring
treasures for the Temple at Jerusalem, made a long journey to some
distant land (about B. C. 1000) and, after having been three years
away, brought back gold and silver, as well as ivory, apes, and
peacocks. He certainly went to India and may have visited Peru.[3]
[Footnote 3: For the theory of this early voyage to America, see the
author's "The Quest of the Western World."]
The Phrygians were known not only as miners of gold but also as
workers in the precious metal. The "golden sands of Pactolus" were
washed a thousand years before the Christian era. The proverbial
wealth of Croesus and the legend of the "golden touch of Midas" remain
as historic memories of the gold mines of Asia Minor and Arabia,
worked by the Lydian kings.
When Persia became the mistress of the world, most of this gold was
taken to the courts of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. Some of it, but
not all, came back in the victorious train of Alexander the Great,
when ten thousand teams of mules and five hundred camels were required
to carry the treasure to the new world capital at Susa.
Spain, in addition to Egypt and Arabia, became one of the principal
gold-bearing sources of the ancient world. The Carthaginians,
colonists from Phoenicia, conquered the Iberians, who then populated
Spain, and forced them to work in gold mines. They captured negroes
and shipped them to Spain as slaves in the gold diggings. The
Carthaginians also exploited mines in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
Then Rome, rising into power, cast covetous eyes on the gold possessed
by Carthage, and sought to seize it by force of arms. As a result of
her victory in the First Punic (Carthaginian) War, Rome secured the
three islands of the Mediterranean, rich in minerals.
The Carthaginians, under the leadership of Hannibal, worked the mines
of Spain and Portugal the harder. The rivers Douro and Tagus were
found to be rich in gold-bearing sands. Rome's envy grew. In the
Second Punic War, she captured Spain. From the gold-mines there,
worked by slave labor, came a large share of the riches and luxury of
the Roman Empire.
To Owens, sitting in his library in an American colliery town, the
long story of civilization seemed to unroll before his eyes and,
everywhere, possession of gold brought power and fame. In every case,
also, that same possession led to luxury and decline.
When Rome fell, beneath the impact of the barbarian hordes, the
Byzantine Empire, holding the gold-mines of Macedonia, Thrace, and
Asia Minor, rose to a bought magnificence. It crumbled easily, because
it depended on gold to buy its mercenary armies, even as Carthage had
crumbled before Rome.
The same story was repeated in the Saracenic power, when the
Caliphates of Bagdad and of Damascus rose to that wealth of which the
"Arabian Nights" gives a picture. The mines of Arabia, Egypt, and
Spain were in their hands, and the luxury of such Moorish towns as
Granada was made possible by the final workings of the almost
exhausted alluvial deposits of Spain. It was not until the days of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile that the Moors were conquered, and,
in those days, Cortes tapped the gold-stores of Mexico, and Pizarro,
those of Peru.
As ever, the gold of the Aztecs and the Incas, ruthlessly seized so
soon after the voyages of Columbus, made Spain the mistress of the
world. While the Conquistadores were fighting, Spain remained strong.
When the gold was acquired, Spain began to fall.
England was a frugal country, then. But, like Rome, as soon as her
neighbor began to acquire vast stores of gold, she sought a pretext
for a war. English pirates and privateers commenced to harry the
treasure-ships of Spain, to plunder the Spanish settlements in
America, and to sack every town that was thought to contain American
gold. Upon this stolen treasure, England rose to wealth and power, as
did also Holland and France, the three nations having made a naval
alliance for greed of Spanish gold.
Nor was England content with her ill-gotten gains. Through commercial
companies which only thinly disguised colonization projects, she
sought possession of gold-bearing regions. The gold of India, of
Australia, and of South Africa, changed the Kingdom of England into
the British Empire, during the reign of a single queen. No one will
seriously dispute that the annexation of the Transvaal and even the
Boer War of recent years were based on England's desire to control the
enormous gold resources of the Rand, as well as the diamond fields.
The gold history of the United States is little less striking. The
Louisiana Purchase was based largely on the mineral wealth known to
exist in that territory, the annexation of California and her rise to
statehood were built on gold. The purchase of Alaska in 1867 was
largely due to the discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1857, 1859
and 1860, and to the discoveries on the Stikine River, Alaska, in
1863.
The 146 years of life of the United States may be sharply divided into
two equal periods, that before the discovery of gold in California in
1848 and the period following. The amazing strides forward which the
United States has made during this last period are not to be ascribed
only to her virgin soil, to her geographic isolation, or to her form
of government, but more, a thousand times more, to her mining
development. Coal, iron, silver, copper, and above all--gold, opened
up the continent with passionate swiftness and hurled the United
States into the position of one of the great powers of the modern
world.
So Owens sat a-thinking in his library and racking his brain about
Jim. There, not a stone's throw away, lay a sick man, possibly
possessed of a secret that might change the face of history anew.
How many times it had happened that a lonely prospector, weary, ragged
and hungry, had, with a stroke of a pick or the flick of a pan,
revealed such sources of wealth as to change a burning desert, a fetid
swamp or a bleak mountain range into a hive of industry! What
statesman has ever wrought as many wonders for his country as has that
questing nomad with his shovel and his shallow pan?
The spirit of rugged honesty and of fair play which so sharply
distinguishes the real miner from the mere mining speculator lay deep
in Owens. He had worked in the gold diggings, himself, and his
standards of principle were those of the great outdoors. He scorned to
take advantage of the opportunity given him by his position as owner
of the mine to overhear the delirious ravings of the sick man. That he
might not be tempted, he kept away from the hospital ward, except for
a short daily visit of inquiry.
When Jim grew better, however, and evinced a marked liking for Owens'
company, the mine-owner yielded to his interest in the prospector.
Even then he restrained himself from making so much as an indirect
reference to the secret of his employe, though the matter was seldom
out of his mind.
He had no thought of filching Jim's secret from him. Honest to the
core, Owens' thoughts were on a larger scale. As a mining man, he
thought naturally what personal profit he could turn, should the
secret prove to be worth while; but he thought far more of Jim. He
rejoiced in the hope that, perhaps, he could bring to fulfilment the
prospector's hidden dream. And, most of all, he wished to play a part
in adding another treasure-hunt to the golden glory of the world.