nd 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