Produced by Justin Gillbank, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE WEDGE OF GOLD
BY C.C. GOODWIN,
EDITOR DAILY TRIBUNE
1893
TRIBUNE JOB PRINTING COMPANY
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
CONTENTS
I. The Mineral Kingdom
II. Indications
III. Making Money at $4 per day
IV. Smiles and Tears
V. The Voyage
VI. Bonanzas
VII. A Dinner Party
VIII. Ways that are Dark
IX. How Miners are Caught
X. Enchantment
XI. Going to Epsom Downs
XII. Westminster Abbey
XIII. Two Kinds of Sorrow
XIV. Tears and Orange Flowers
XV. Sinister Successes
XVI. A Trip to Africa
XVII. On Their Travels
XVIII. The Soul in Clay
XIX. The Wedge of Gold
XX. The Occident and the Orient Meet
XXI. Shipping a Quartz Mill
XXII. A Lost Trail Discovered
XXIII. Back to England
XXIV. Dealing in Mining Shares
XXV. A Wedge of Gold Indeed
XXVI. Fever Visions
XXVII. Selling Stock Short
XXVIII. Convalescent
XXIX. Springing a Trap
XXX. Grand Opera
XXXI. Marriage Bells
XXXII. Fruition
THE WEDGE OF GOLD.
CHAPTER I.
THE MINERAL KINGDOM.
The splendor of the world is due to mining and to the perfectness of
man's ability to work the minerals which the mines supply. The fields of
the world give men food; with food furnished, a few souls turn to the
contemplation of higher things; but no grand civilization ever came to an
agricultural people until their intellects were quickened by something
beyond their usual occupation.
How man first emerged from utter barbarism is a story that is lost, but
when history first began to pick up the threads of events and to weave
them into a record, the loom upon which the record was woven was made
of gold. One of the rivers that flowed through Eden also "compassed the
whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is
good."
"Tubal Cain was an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."
Abraham and Jacob bought fields with money, and when Pharaoh sought to
make Joseph next in power to himself, he took the ring from his finger
and put it upon Joseph's finger; and he put a chain of gold about
Joseph's neck. Thus the grandchildren of Adam, in Holy Writ, were
artificers in brass and iron, and when civilization in Egypt began to
make an impression upon the world, its sovereigns had already discovered
the omnipotence of gold.
Assyria, that came next to be the concernment of mankind, had men who
could perfectly fuse gold and glass, and their work is still an object
of wonder to the world. Their queens wore raiment which was woven from
threads of gold.
The splendor of the Hebrew nation culminated when the roof of their
great temple was laid with beaten gold, and when all the magnificent
furnishings within the temple were wrought from gold and silver and
brass.
The invincible Greeks had chariots and javelins of iron, helmets of gold
and brass, and now as their tombs are rifled there is found beside where
their bones went back to dust the metal implements with which they
wrought, and the imperishable coins with which they carried on their
commerce.
The power of Rome came when her artisans learned how to fashion the short
sword, and her soldiers learned how to wield it, and her splendor came
when, through conquest, she brought under her dominion the gold fields
of Spain and Asia, and learned the power which money carries with it. Her
civilization began to recede when the money supply began to fall off, and
when it became too precious for the masses to possess it, then the race
degenerated until the men were no longer fit to be soldiers, the women
lost the grace to become the mothers of soldiers, and darkness settled
upon Europe.
England remained little more than a rendezvous for wild tribes until
her people learned mining and began the study of how to reduce the metals
which the mines supplied, and her advancement since can be rated exactly
by the progress she has made in bringing the metals into effective
forms and combinations. When first the rude Saxon acquired the art to
mend the broken links in a knight's armor, and how to temper one of the
old-fashioned two-handed swords, it was possible to comprehend, that from
that germ would expand the brains that would by and by construct a steel
ship or bridge; when the first rude spindle was fashioned, all the
commencement necessary to create and work the world's looms was made.
Out of these accomplishments, commerce was born; foreign commerce
required ships, and so the ships were supplied; with commerce was
developed a financial system, and soon it was discovered that after all
the chiefest power of the world was money; that the swiftest way to win
money was to perfect machinery so that out of raw material forms of
beauty and of use could be wrought, and thus in regular chain the majesty
of England expanded from the first day that an Englishman was able to
convert from the dull iron ore something which the world would want,
until ships laden with her wares reached all the world's ports, and to
barbarous lands she became an iron nation more terrible than the first
iron nation.
The world's highest civilization does not come from the fruitful fields,
but from the darkness of the deep mines. Power and independence come with
the digging and working of the baser metals; full civilization waits upon
the production of enough of the royal metals to give to the people wealth
in a form that enables them to command the best attainable talent and
forces to serve them, and enough of leisure to enable them to put forward
their best efforts.
Below the surface of the story which makes this book is a deeper story of
what may be performed by brave hearts when they leave the fruitful fields
behind them and turn with all their hearts to woo the desert that turns
her forbidding face to them at their coming, and holds, closely hidden
within her sere breast, her inestimable treasures.