I have already spoken of the mode in which auriferous lode-stuff was treated in early times—­i.e., by grinding between stones.  This is also practised in Africa to-day, and we have seen that the Koreans, with Mongolian acuteness, have gone a step farther, and pulverise the quartz by rocking one stone on another.  In South America the arrastra is still used, which is simply the application of horse or mule power to the stone-grinding process, with use of mercury.

The principal sources of the gold supply of the modern world have been, first, South America, Transylvania in Europe, Siberia in Asia, California in North America, and Australia.  Africa has always produced gold from time immemorial.

The later development in the Johannesburg district, Transvaal, which has absorbed during the last few years so many millions of English capital, is now, after much difficulty and disappointment—­thanks to British pluck and skill—­producing splendidly.  The yield for 1896 was 2,281,874 ounces—­a yield never before equalled by lode-mining from one field.

In the year 1847 gold was discovered in California, at Sutor’s sawmill, Sacramento Valley, where, on the water being cut off, yellow specks and small nuggets were found in the tail race.  The enormous “rush” which followed is a matter of history and the subject of many romances, though the truth has, in this instance, been stranger than fiction.

The yield of the precious metal in California since that date up to 1888 amounts to 256,000,000 pounds.

Following close on the American discovery came that of Australia, the credit of which has usually been accorded to Hargraves, a returned Californian digger, who washed out payable gold at Lewis Ponds Creek, near Bathurst, in 1851.  But there is now no reason to doubt that gold had previously been discovered in several parts of that great island continent.  It may be news to many that the first gold mine worked in Australia was opened about twelve miles from Adelaide city, S.A., in the year 1848.  This mine was called the Victoria; several of the Company’s scrip are preserved in the Public Library; but some two years previous to this a man named Edward Proven had found gold in the same neighbourhood.

Most Governments nowadays encourage in every possible way the discovery of gold-fields, and rewards ranging from hundreds to thousands of pounds are given to successful prospectors of new auriferous districts.  The reward the New South Wales authorities meted out to a wretched convict, who early in this century had dared to find gold, was a hundred lashes vigorously laid on to his already excoriated back.  The man then very naturally admitted that the alleged discovery was a fraud, and that the nugget produced was a melted down brass candlestick.  One would have imagined that even in those unenlightened days it would not have been difficult to have found a scientist sufficiently well informed to put a little nitric acid on the supposed