below
the surface you found gold, and that the diggings generally were not
deeper than fifteen feet. . . . Italians aiding the barbarians in the
working for two months, gold became forthwith one-third cheaper over
the whole of Italy.*
Gold
alluvia are known to exist in various localities in Upper Italy, but
appear to be poor; and at the present time no gold-washing is carried
on, except, perhaps, by a few individual workers. The sands of the
Orco, the Jassin, the Po, and the Serio are estimated to have yielded
three hundred ounces of gold in 1862.f
Spain and France.—The Romans are stated to have washed the sands of streams along the base of the Pyrenees.:]:
—
The Phoenicians obtained gold from the bed of the river Tagus 1100
B.C., and washings are reported along this stream as late as 1833 a.d. The Douro sands were worked for gold by the Arabs until 1147 a.d.
Up to the close of the fifteenth century the deposits of the river
Ariege. yielded annually about one hundred pounds of the precious
metal. As late as 1846 gold-washings are reported along the Rhine
between Strassburg and Phil-ippsburg.
Africa.—At
the present time but little gold is found within the limits of
Abyssinia and Nubia, though the ancient Egyptians mined the precious
.metal in the latter country. The ancient mines described by Lenant Bey
are situated in a district called Attaki, or Allaki, between Berenice
and Suakin, on the Red Sea, one hundred and twenty miles distant from
Ras-Elba. They are spoken of by Diodorus Siculus, and shown on one of
the oldest topographical maps extant, preserved in Turin.
* " Siluria," foot-note, p. 449; also Pliny, book iii. c. 6, on the Great Value of the Mines of Italy.
t " Report on Precious Metals," W. P. Blake, Paris Universal Exposition, 1867.
t Strabo, book iv. p. 290 ; Csesar, " De Bello Gallico," iii. 21 ; Jacob's " Inquiry into the Precious Metals," p. 53.
§
See " Agatharchides de Rubro Mari," in Diodorus, b. iii. c. 12-15", *'
Account of the .Mines in Nubia and Ethiopia" ; also Jacob's " Inquiry
into the Precious Metals," ch. n.
