sterling. Tiberius left at his death a fortune of £21,796,875, which Caligula is said to have squandered in a single year. The sum required for the maintenance of the Roman commonwealth was estimated, at the accession of Vespasian, at £322,916,000 sterling. Cæsar, before setting out for Spain, is said to have been £2,018,000 in debt, and two of the bribes which he lavished for the maintenance of his political power were together more than three quarters of a million sterling.

It would be interesting to inquire into the source from which the ancients drew these immense supplies of the precious metals, but the intricacy of the subject precludes us from venturing more than a few general remarks, in which we shall still avail ourselves of the guidance of Mr. Hunt. Humboldt thinks it probable that large quantities were brought by the Phoenicians from western India and the adjacent coasts of Arabia and eastern Africa. It is probable that gold was found in abundance in the countries bordering on the north-eastern corner of the Black Sea. Here, Herodotus tell us, the Massagetæ had accumulated an immense quantity of gold, and here too the Siberian gold washings have been found so lucrative that whereas they yielded but £8,345 in the year 1830, their value increased more than a hundred fold during the next twelve years, and are now the source of a considerable revenue to the Russian government. Very extensive gold-works, evidently abandoned for

many centuries past, have been discovered on the south-eastern slope of the Ural Mountains. They were worked, in all probability, by the Scythian tribes to whom Herodotus refers. "Their extent shows that the workmen employed in them must have been numerous, while an inspection of them proves that only the rudiments of the science of mining were then known. They seem to have scraped out the gold with boars' fangs, and collected it in leather bags or packets. Some of the pits are twenty fathoms deep. The roots of large firtrees have spread themselves among the heaps of stones which have been raised against the sides of the furnaces." Gold was also procured in large quantities from Ethiopia and Nubia. Belzoni discovered that an extensive tract had been worked in the Sahara Mountains, and Jacobs infers, from a close examination of the subject, that the produce of these mines was not less than £6,000,000 annually, a large proportion of which must have been gold. Hence probably the Pharaohs drew their wealth. Here, perhaps, the gold was produced which was consecrated to the service of God in the Jewish Tabernacle, and that which along with costly spices, constituted the valuable presents which the queen of Sheba offered to king Solomon. The Athenians procured gold from Thrace and the isle of Thasos; Thessaly also produced ores which were rich in the same metal. The Romans drew their enormous wealth from various sources; from Upper Italy

and Spain; the Novi Alps and Illyria. From this last district gold was obtained, partly in large grains on the surface, and partly in mines, in so fine a state that only an eighth part was lost in the process of smelting and refining. Its great quantity caused a decrease of its price by one-third throughout Italy, and induced the proprietors to employ fewer workmen in order to raise its value. We have seen that the wealth of Rome during the Augustan age was immense, but it soon declined very rapidly in consequence of the closing of the mines in Illyria and Spain, and for a long period the world received no addition to its stock of the precious metals.

Coming down to more modern times, it is interesting to notice the traces of gold which have been found on our own soil. It is probable that the Romans were led to invade Britain

in consequence of the reports they had heard of its excessive wealth. It is certain that they worked the Gogofau mines in Caermarthenshire. Small quantities of gold have also been picked up in Cornwall from the earliest times, and in the reigns of Edward 1. and III., extensive works were carried on at Comb Martin, Devonshire; between 300 and 400 miners from Derbyshire were employed in them, and their produce was so considerable as to assist the Black Prince in his wars against France. In 1390, Richard II. granted to John Younge, refiner, all the gold and silver found in any mine in England, on condition of his paying a ninth part to the crown,

a tenth to the church, and an eleventh to the proprietor of the soil. Such was the rage for gold in the middle ages, that it became one of the leading objects of philosophic pursuit. In 1444, a patent was granted to John Cobbe, "that by the art of philosophy he might transform imperfect metals from their own proper nature, and transmute them to gold or silver." In the eighth century, the Hungarian gold mines were first worked, and in the following century those of Sweden and Norway; but during the next five hundred years, the quantity of gold produced from mines was probably not more than sufficient to make up for the annual waste of that already in circulation. The discovery of America in 1492 was soon followed by considerable accession of metallic wealth, though on the whole, the general impression which prevails respecting its amount is probably exaggerated. The extravagant expectations of Columbus and his companions were greatly disappointed. The Indians were strangers to the arts of mining, and the little gold they had in their possession had been picked up on the surface of the earth, or found in the channels of their mountain streamis. The Spaniards, however, soon began to search for the precious metals with the appliances of European skill; extensive works were set on foot; still, to 1519, the annual yield of gold was not more than £52,000. Pizarro landed in Peru in 1527, and during the next twenty-five years America forwarded to Spain, according to the calculation

of Humboldt, £630,000 per annum in gold, which would make the total produce of gold in America from 1492 to 1545, a period of fiftythree years, about £17,058,000 sterling, or a little more than £321,849 annually. In 1545, the celebrated silver mines of Potosi were discovered, the annual produce of which for the next twenty-one years was equal in value to £280,000 sterling.

It is impossible to think of the sufferings inflicted upon the American aborigines, in this merciless struggle for gain, without pity. The unhappy native soon found that the possession of gold was equivalent to a sentence of proscription and massacre. The excesses of the ruthless hordes which followed the banners of Cortes and Pizarro to the New World will ever stand among the most cruel and loathsome tragedies which pollute the historic page. They demonstrate to the world that mammon is as bloodthirsty as ambition, and that the happiness, and the lives of millions are sometimes as cheap at the shrine of money as at the shrine of power. When the natives had yielded to their invaders all the precious metals in their possession, they were straightway reduced to slavery, and forced to ransack the earth for more. Hard labour, prosecuted under the lash of their cruel taskmasters, destroyed those whom the sword had spared; and if the severities at first resorted to had long continued, extinction would soon have covered with its shroud the hapless race of Montezuma. Avarice at length