ce 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.