the most remarkable nations of antiquity, and the great civilizers
of Italy. In a single tomb in Cerveti, fragments of breastplates,
earrings, and brooches, sufficient to fill more than one basket, were
found crushed beneath a mass of fallen masonry. A gold chain, with a
number of pendant _scaraboei_, was found in a tomb in Vulci,
transcending anything before seen by him. Bieda, Chiusi, Canosa,
Casuccini, Perugia, and Veii belong in the same category." Schlieman
("Ilios" p. 253, et. seq.) states that they had an abundance of gold,
bordering, as they did, on Phrygia, and nearly touching the valley of
the Pactolus, so famous for its auriferous sands. It was very pure and
therefore easily worked. In a tomb a single vase was found containing
eighty-seven hundred small objects of gold. Ornaments of gold are very
abundant in the tombs of Mycenae. In remote antiquity the bulk of gold
was brought by the Phenicians from Arabia, which had twenty-two gold
mines. It was the ancient El Dorado, and proverbial for its wealth of
gold in all antiquity, down to the Middle Ages. "Arabia sends us gold,"
said Thomas A. Becket. Sacred ornaments of gold abound in churches,
temples, pagodas, and tombs, throughout the Eastern hemisphere. The
Homeric poems call Mycenae a city rich in gold. Gold abounded in the
Levant, and it was obtained in considerable quantity in the island of
Siphnos, and also from Pangaeus. It was found in abundance in
Turdeltania in Spain; it was brought down by the rivers Tagus and Duoro;
and it was plenty in Dacia, Transylvania, and the Asturias. Caligula
caused his guests to be helped with gold (which they carried away),
instead of bread and meat. The dresses of Nero were stiff with
embroidery and gold; he fished with hooks of gold, and his attendants
wore necklaces, and bracelets of gold. The Egyptians obtained large
quantities of gold from the upper Nile, and from Ethiopia. Among them it
was estimated by weight, usually in the form of bulls or oxen. In the
centre of the continent, upon which so much light has been recently
thrown by Livingston, Stanley, and others, rocks are to be met with
quartz veins containing gold, and thus auriferous alluvium has been
formed. Western Africa was the first field which supplied gold to
mediaeval Europe. Its whole seaboard from Morocco to the equator
produces more or less gold. This small section of the continent poured a
flood of gold into Europe, and until the mineral discoveries of