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16
THE RECORDS OF GOLD-WASHING.
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.