In due time they reached the Colchian Kingdom, and the king offered to give up the Fleece if Jason would, single handed, yoke to a plow a couple of fire-breathing bulls with brazen hoofs, that he had, and sow the dragon's teeth left by Cadmus the founder of Thebes. Cadmus had been quite a character in his day. He slew the dragon that guarded the well of Mars, and sowed most of its teeth himself. Armed warriors sprang up as the crop and attacked him, but he managed to direct their arms against each other until they were nearly all slain. He left over some of the teeth

in the grove of Mars, and king wanted Jason to sow.

these were what the Colchian

A daughter of the king, Medea by name, looked with favor on Jason, and, upon his promising to take her as his wife, furnished him with secret means to overcome fire and resist steel, and how to kill the armed warriors that would spring up from the teeth when sown. He broke in the bulls, slaughtered the crop, and married Medea. She then gave him magic power to lull the dragon to sleep, and he secured the Golden Fleece. Taking his wife he set sail with the other Argonauts for home. Wind and weather were unfavorable to them, so they called on old Circe on the Island of Eæa, who told their fortunes and favored them with more favorable weather.

Their route now was taken towards the rock of Scylla in the straits of Messina, where the sirens dwelt, whose songs were so sweet and attractive as to draw navigators near the shore, where their vessels would be dashed to pieces against the rocks by rushing waves. But when the sirens began their songs to beguile the Argonauts, Orpheus cleared his throat and warbled so sweetly that the voices of the sirens were drowned, and they safely passed the treacherous place between Scylla and Charybdis. After some other minor adventures the Argonauts in due time arrived in Thessaly with the Golden Fleece, from their prospecting expedition.

As the gold-bearing mountains of distant Asia gradually disintegrated by the chemical agencies in the atmosphere, and tumbled down, forming soils in the gorges and ravines

below, the particles of free gold therein became liberated from the mother rock, and by reason of its density, sought a lower position; and when the rains fell and the floods came they were washed down the rushing currents of the streams, along with the accumulated detritus, into the valleys, and deposited wherever gravity overcame the momentum of the waters. One of the primitive methods of gathering gold was to carpet the beds of streams at favorable times and places, with sheep's pelts, the fleeces uppermost, which caught and retained the golden sands that were hurrying on to a lower level; and when the streams ran down to remove the pelts to vats or tanks containing water, and reversing the position of the fleeces, washed out the gold, which settled to the bottom, and was then secured. The fame of some of these fleeces is supposed to have been the foundation of the Argonautic legend about the Golden Fleece.

While little is to be found in the literature of Greece and Rome that gives much reliable information about the mines of antiquity, or the manner of treating and working ores, enough is known to assure us that water washing was the general process for separating gold from the materials in which it was found. Ores of copper, iron and silver were worked by the smelting process, and the metal was obtained by the application of heat. The remains of old smelters in various parts of the world were found by the legionaries of ancient Rome; and the cinders, charcoal and slag found in the vicinity left no reason to doubt the uses to which they had been put. Some of these were pits sunk on the sloping sides of hills with well burnt sides and bottoms, with apertures reaching from the bottoms horizontally to the surface. Many of these were found in the desert of Sinai, and credited to the Jews; while others that were found were credited to the Egyptians.

In later times known iron mines were worked in Palestine by skilled workmen. In the time of Alexander the Great, gold, silver, copper and iron were obtained in great abundance from Ethiopia. The inhabitants of Arabia had their

mines and minerals, when the Greeks worked the rich silver ores of Attica, and were gathering gold in Thrace. The Phoenicians of that and far earlier times obtained supplies of gold, copper and iron from Sardinia and other islands in the Mediterranean. In their palmy days Thessaly yielded gold, Epirus silver, and Boeotia iron. Before the dagger of Brutus had found a momentary resting place in Cæsar's heart, gold and silver mines were being worked in parts of Western Europe. The Sabines and Eutrurians had many miners among them, and the northern tribes of Italy were successful placer miners.

The tribes of southern Gaul, and the inhabitants of Hispania mined and worked both the precious and baser metals as early as the Christian era. The Carthaginians of Northern Africa carried on mining when Hannibal was seeking to outgeneral Fabius Maximus. Long before Cæsar conquered Britain the descendants of the Kelts in Cornwall mined copper and tin, while their neighbors, the descendants of the Kymri in Wales mined copper and iron for the Phoenician markets. Tin was used by the latter, as by the aborigines of America, to harden copper, but where the latter obtained their supply of it is not certainly known.

The forests of Germany were peopled by silver miners long before Alaric the Goth with his hordes of rude warriors invaded cultivated Italy and sacked imperial Rome. He is said to have carried off immense treasures of silver and gold from that city; but while returning homeward sickened and died. His victorious followers fearing pursuit, made their prisoners turn a river from its bed, buried their chief with all the stolen treasures there, returned the stream to its former course, slew the prisoners of war who did the work, so that the Romans would not learn where the treasures were, and, lightened of this heavy load, moved on to their native woods with celerity.

It would prove tedious if not uninteresting to attempt any detailed account of mining operations in Europe since the victorious eagles of Rome were carried into Northern

Europe by its disciplined troops. The legions of the Cæsars went down finally before the Goths of Europe and the Vandals from Asia, and from the fifth until the fifteenth century, owing to social disturbances in Asia and Europe, the production of the precious metals did not keep pace with the loss.

It is estimated that at the close of the fifteenth century there was not to exceed £40,000,000 or about $200,000,000 in existence in money in the commercial world. Most writers on finance place it at about £37,000,000 or $165,000,000. But since Columbus planted the Cross on the Island of San Salvador, and took possession of the New World, in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, the world's production of gold and silver, for commercial use, has increased.

True, the Genoese navigator, when he projected his scheme to sail around the world to the Archbishop of Seville, and afterwards to the Court of Ferdinand, did not represent it as a prospecting trip for gold. But later on in his contract with the Crown of Castile appears a stipulation that the needy navigator was to be entitled "to receive onetenth of the net value of all pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices and merchandise obtained within the jurisdiction of his admiralty,”—the lands he might discover. No doubt he reveled in mid-day dreams at times of the "faraway Cathay" of Marco Polo, and conceived the possibility of reaching it on his proposed trip.

The Queen of Castile, more credulous than the King, pledged her jewels to raise and outfit one galleon and two caravels for Columbus. The crews were mainly composed of avaricious and unprincipled adventurers, who could be well spared from home. A physician to look after the health of the bodies, and two or three Franciscan friars to look after the health of their souls, joined the expedition. The natives who rushed to see the strangers who landed on their island wore golden ornaments, and the cupidity of the Spaniards was at once aroused. The natives were cajoled and forced to disclose where the gold was obtained, and

numbers of them were enslaved in the mines which they pointed out to the Spaniards, and treated with barbarous cruelty. The worst of these adventurers was Hernando Cortez, a man of ambitious and irregular life. Under Velasquez, the governor of Hispaniola, he obtained an official appointment that enabled him to work Indian slaves with such rigor that hundreds of them died in the mines from the toil they were forced to perform, and the cruelty and neglect bestowed upon them. That good man La Casas labored to mitigate their sufferings, while he was denouncing the wretched slavery imposed upon them.

In 1519, Cortez landed on the coast of Mexico, at what is now Vera Cruz, with a force of less than 600 Spaniards and about 300 Indians. To cut off all hope of return or mode of retreat he burnt his ships, and boldly pushed on to the city of Mexico. He captured by treachery, and made prisoners of, Montezuma the king, and some of his caciques. A price in gold was put upon their heads, but when paid they were not liberated.

A tradition was current that the Temple of the Sun and the Halls of the Montezumas for hundreds of years were literally lined with silver and filled with golden images and ornaments. This man, affecting Christian zeal to abolish idolatrous worship, held forth to the Mexicans the enormity of their religion, while robbing their temples and halls of all the gold and silver he could find in them. He finally died in solitude and abject neglect; but before doing so was the means of spreading the fame of the mines of Mexico throughout Europe.

Another unprincipled Spaniard, Francisco Pizzaro, was the means of making known the wealth of Peru. An illegitimate Estremadurean by birth, and a swindler by occupation, he was a man of remarkable courage and greed. With other adventurers he embarked at Seville for the New World, fought his way into notice by audacity, became an associate of Balboa, crossed the Isthmus of Panama and beheld the Pacific Ocean. He returned to Spain with the news of the rich Empire of Peru, and