CHAPTER V
THE LURE OF GOLD
In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in allages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scoresto die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on theborders 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, manyyears since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of thecamps 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 notsleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point ofdeath in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret ofmillions, untold.
He reasoned with himself for his foolishness. Over and over again hereminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, andthat coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done.The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat latein his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had once knownso well, and dreaming avid visions over the pages.
The records of human daring do not reach so far back in the dawn ofhistory as to show a time when gold was not a goal. In the earliestlaws as yet known--the Laws of Menes in Egypt, B. C. 3000--both goldand silver were sought and used as standards of value in the royal andpriestly treasuries. Breastplates and ornaments of gold were buriedwith the mummies of kings and nobles of Egypt and Mycenae.
There was gold in Chaldea and Armenia. The fable of Tantalus, who keptunlawful possession of a golden dog which had been stolen from Zeus,the great All-Father, was a legend of the gold placer deposits nearMt. Sipylus, north of Smyrna. The earliest records show a knowledge ofgold in the Caucasus, Ural, and Himalaya Mts.
The Phoenicians, most adventurous of all the early races, went on longexpeditions to distant lands in search of gold. Cadmus, thePhoenician, in B. C. 1594, sent miners to Thrace and established aregular gold-trade thence. As a curious forecast of what was to happenon the other side of the world, tens of centuries later, the ancienthistorian Strabo tells of a wagon-wheel uncovering a nugget of goldnear Mt. Pangeus, not far from the present Bulgarian frontier.
One of the oldest of all the tales of high adventure was the Quest ofthe Golden Fleece, and the fifty heroes who set out on that quest inthe oared ship _Argo_--and hence called the Argonauts--have giventheir name to gold-seekers for hundreds of generations. Few tales inall the world are so wonderful as the old Greek legend of Jason andthe Golden Fleece, a quest of daring, of magic, and of peril.
The Golden Fleece, itself, was a thing of mystery. Its origin harksback to the earliest days of the Age of Fable. Thus, in its briefestform, 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, thegoddess of the clouds. But Athamas proved faithless and fell in lovewith Ino, grand-daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love andbeauty. 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 forthe children of the first wife. Counting on the spell of her beauty,she tried to persuade Athamas to get rid of them, but the kingrefused. Then Ino fell to base plotting. She brought about a famine inthe land by secretly heating the grains of wheat before they were sownand thus preventing their growth; then, by a false oracle, shepersuaded the king that the gods were angry and would only be appeasedif he offered his eldest-born, Phrixus, as a sacrifice. For the sakeof his country, the king agreed.
All was in readiness, Phrixus was on the altar, the officiating priesthad the knife raised, when masses of cloud and fog rolled over thescene and Nephele appeared, leading a ram with a fleece all threads ofgold. So thick was the fog, that, in an instant, it blotted out allvision; the priest's hand stayed uplifted, for he could no longer seehis 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 sisterleap upon the back of the gold-fleeced ram.
Down the mountain and across the plain the great ram sped, and plungedinto 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 andwas drowned, so that the strait (now known as the Dardanelles) wasknown to the Greeks as the Hellespont.
Phrixus reached the other side in safety. Following the counsel of hiscloud-mother, he sacrificed the ram to the honor of the gods and tookthe fleece to Aeetes, king of Colchis. Aeetes at first received him withhonor, but later proved false to his promises of friendship and madePhrixus a prisoner. The Golden Fleece was hung up on a tree in thegrove of Ares (god of battle and grandfather of Ino), and there themystic 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, hepresented himself before Pelias and challenged him to surrender thekingdom.
The wily Pelias, knowing well that the people of Thessaly would sidewith Jason, did not refuse outright. He demanded, only, that Jasonshould show his rightfulness to be deemed a king's son by some act ofheroic bravery. Such a test was not unusual in the Days of Fable, andJason 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 thesea, there must be built a ship. Through the advice of thecloud-goddess, his mother, he appealed for help to Athene, goddess ofwisdom, and a bitter enemy of Ares and his grand-daughter Ino. Thefifty-oared ship Argo was built, and Athene herself placed in the prowa piece of oak endowed with the power of speaking oracles.
The Quest of the Golden Fleece was a deed worthy of heroes, and nonebut heroes were members of the crew. Such men--demigods, most ofthem--had never been gathered in a crew before. Orpheus, of thecharmed lyre; Zetes and Calais, sons of the North Wind; Castor andPollux, the divine Twins; Meleager, the hunter of the magic boar;Theseus, the slayer of tyrants; the all-powerful Hercules, son ofZeus, whose twelve labors were famous in all antiquity; and others oflittle lesser fame, were numbered in that gallant company.
Many and strange were their adventures in the _Argo_, of which thereis not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: thebattle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of theSirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menaceof the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when aship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who usedtheir feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of thevoyage of the _Argo_ is a story that will never die.
Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the GoldenFleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months--or it mayhave been years--Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought.There they presented themselves before Aeetes and demanded the GoldenFleece.
The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knewthat neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He tookrefuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason theperformance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame thebulls of Hephaestus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs ofred-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god ofbattle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, fromwhich 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, thewitch-daughter of Aeetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. Sheloved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her forsorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, herdark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partlyfrom hatred of Aeetes, she leagued
herself with the heroes.
Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that thetask Aeetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He acceptedfrom the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proofagainst fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of thebulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the fieldof Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charmamong the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil,which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all wereslain. 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 songsshe charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across thesnaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won atlast!
Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fullyas much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that theirquest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward,Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the _Argo_, andshe took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak inthe bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their wordsand could not retract.
The _Argo_ had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw thatAeetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god ofbattle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her youngbrother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. Theanguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return themto the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, theArgonauts escaped.
So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was todraw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shudderedat the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were redwith 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 andterrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to landsof new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in aquicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whosebody was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which theywere saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journeyof 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 motherand brother during the absence of the Argonauts. His crime was notleft unpunished. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut theirfather into small pieces and to boil the fragments in a pot withcertain witch-herbs that she gave them, falsely promising that by thismeans the old king would regain his youth. Of the later life of Jasonand Medea, there is no need to speak. Misery was their lot, and theirdeaths were not long delayed.
Thus, in fanciful guise, appears in the old Greek legend the record ofthe European discovery of the alluvial gold deposits of Colchis, andto the Argonauts was ascribed the honor of being the first to bring toGreece the gold of Asia Minor. Even in those early days, the gift ofgold was regarded as the favor of the gods.
[Footnote 2: One book that should be in every boy's library is CharlesKingsley's "The Heroes," in which the "Quest of the Golden Fleece" isrelated with a beauty unequaled in the English language. The books ofA. J. Church, also, especially his "Stories from Homer," make the oldGreek demigods live once again.]
There is good reason to believe that the Siege of Troy--the subject ofHomer's Iliad--was not waged alone because of the beauty of Helen ofTroy, but also because the Greeks coveted Mycenaean gold. Excavationsmade on the site of ancient Troy have revealed many thin plates ofbeaten gold.
DIVINING-RODS.
A, Twig; B, Trench.
_From an Old Print._]
THE WORLD'S OLDEST PICTURE OF GOLD-SEEKERS.
The three ships of Queen Hatshepsut sent to the Land of Punt (possiblySomaliland) 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 forgold. As early as the fabled voyage of the Argonauts, or even earlier,Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt--a mighty woman monarch of whom all toolittle is known--sent an expedition to Punt (possibly Somaliland) forincense and for gold. On the walls of the great temples built duringher 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 bringtreasures for the Temple at Jerusalem, made a long journey to somedistant land (about B. C. 1000) and, after having been three yearsaway, brought back gold and silver, as well as ivory, apes, andpeacocks. He certainly went to India and may have visited Peru.[3]
[Footnote 3: For the theory of this early voyage to America, see theauthor's "The Quest of the Western World."]
The Phrygians were known not only as miners of gold but also asworkers in the precious metal. The "golden sands of Pactolus" werewashed a thousand years before the Christian era. The proverbialwealth of Croesus and the legend of the "golden touch of Midas" remainas 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 wastaken to the courts of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. Some of it, butnot all, came back in the victorious train of Alexander the Great,when ten thousand teams of mules and five hundred camels were requiredto carry the treasure to the new world capital at Susa.
Spain, in addition to Egypt and Arabia, became one of the principalgold-bearing sources of the ancient world. The Carthaginians,colonists from Phoenicia, conquered the Iberians, who then populatedSpain, and forced them to work in gold mines. They captured negroesand shipped them to Spain as slaves in the gold diggings. TheCarthaginians also exploited mines in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
Then Rome, rising into power, cast covetous eyes on the gold possessedby Carthage, and sought to seize it by force of arms. As a result ofher victory in the First Punic (Carthaginian) War, Rome secured thethree islands of the Mediterranean, rich in minerals.
The Carthaginians, under the leadership of Hannibal, worked the minesof Spain and Portugal the harder. The rivers Douro and Tagus werefound to be rich in gold-bearing sands. Rome's envy grew. In theSecond Punic War, she captured Spain. From the gold-mines there,worked by slave labor, came a large share of the riches and luxury ofthe Roman Empire.
To Owens, sitting in his library in an American colliery town, thelong 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, theByzantine Empire, holding the gold-mines of Macedonia, Thrace, andAsia Minor, rose to a bought magnificence. It crumbled easily, becauseit depended on gold to buy its mercenary armies, even as Carthage hadcrumbled before Rome.
The same story was repeated in the Saracenic power, when theCaliphates of Bagdad and of Damascus rose to that wealth of which the"Arabian Nights" gives a picture. The mines of Arabia, Egypt, andSpain were in their hands, and the luxury of such Moorish towns asGranada was made possible by the final workings of the almostexhausted alluvial deposits of Spain. It was not until the days ofFerdinand 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 sosoon after the voyages of Columbus, made Spain the mistress of theworld. 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 herneighbor began to acquire vast stores of gold, she sought a pretextfor a war. English pirates and privateers commenced to harr
y thetreasure-ships of Spain, to plunder the Spanish settlements inAmerica, and to sack every town that was thought to contain Americangold. Upon this stolen treasure, England rose to wealth and power, asdid also Holland and France, the three nations having made a navalalliance for greed of Spanish gold.
Nor was England content with her ill-gotten gains. Through commercialcompanies which only thinly disguised colonization projects, shesought possession of gold-bearing regions. The gold of India, ofAustralia, and of South Africa, changed the Kingdom of England intothe British Empire, during the reign of a single queen. No one willseriously dispute that the annexation of the Transvaal and even theBoer War of recent years were based on England's desire to control theenormous gold resources of the Rand, as well as the diamond fields.
The gold history of the United States is little less striking. TheLouisiana Purchase was based largely on the mineral wealth known toexist in that territory, the annexation of California and her rise tostatehood were built on gold. The purchase of Alaska in 1867 waslargely due to the discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1857, 1859and 1860, and to the discoveries on the Stikine River, Alaska, in1863.
The 146 years of life of the United States may be sharply divided intotwo equal periods, that before the discovery of gold in California in1848 and the period following. The amazing strides forward which theUnited States has made during this last period are not to be ascribedonly to her virgin soil, to her geographic isolation, or to her formof government, but more, a thousand times more, to her miningdevelopment. Coal, iron, silver, copper, and above all--gold, openedup the continent with passionate swiftness and hurled the UnitedStates into the position of one of the great powers of the modernworld.
So Owens sat a-thinking in his library and racking his brain aboutJim. There, not a stone's throw away, lay a sick man, possiblypossessed of a secret that might change the face of history anew.
How many times it had happened that a lonely prospector, weary, raggedand 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 fetidswamp or a bleak mountain range into a hive of industry! Whatstatesman has ever wrought as many wonders for his country as has thatquesting nomad with his shovel and his shallow pan?
The spirit of rugged honesty and of fair play which so sharplydistinguishes the real miner from the mere mining speculator lay deepin Owens. He had worked in the gold diggings, himself, and hisstandards of principle were those of the great outdoors. He scorned totake advantage of the opportunity given him by his position as ownerof the mine to overhear the delirious ravings of the sick man. That hemight not be tempted, he kept away from the hospital ward, except fora 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 indirectreference to the secret of his employe, though the matter was seldomout of his mind.
He had no thought of filching Jim's secret from him. Honest to thecore, Owens' thoughts were on a larger scale. As a mining man, hethought naturally what personal profit he could turn, should thesecret prove to be worth while; but he thought far more of Jim. Herejoiced in the hope that, perhaps, he could bring to fulfilment theprospector's hidden dream. And, most of all, he wished to play a partin adding another treasure-hunt to the golden glory of the world.
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