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BOOK VIII.

The Colchians 17 placed the skins of animals in the pools of springs ; andsince many particles of gold had clung to them when they were removed,

a

A— Spring. B— Skin. C— Argonauts.

the poets invented the " golden fleece ” of the Colchians. In like manner,it can be contrived by the methods of miners that skins should take up, notonly particles of gold, but also of silver and gems.

17 Colchis, the traditional land of the Golden Fleece, lay between the Caucasus on thenorth, Armenia on the south, and the Black Sea on the west. If Agricola’s account of themetallurgical purpose of the fleece is correct, then Jason must have had real cause for com-plaint as to the tangible results of his expedition. The fact that we hear nothing of thefleece after the day it was taken from the dragon would thus support Agricola’s theory. Tonsof ink have been expended during the past thirty centuries in explanations of what the fleecereally was. These explanations range through the supernatural and metallurgical, but morerecent writers have endeavoured to construct the journey of the Argonauts into an epic of thedevelopment of the Greek trade in gold with the Euxine. We will not attempt to traversethem from a metallurgical point of view further than to maintain that Agricola’s explanationis as probable and equally as ingenious as any other, although Strabo (xi, 2, 19.) gives muchthe same view long before.

Alluvial mining—gold washing—being as old as the first glimmer of civilisation,it is referred to, directly or indirectly, by a great majority of ancient writers, poets, historians,geographers, and naturalists. Early Egyptian inscriptions often refer to this industry,but from the point of view of technical methods the description by Pliny is practicallythe only one of interest, and in Pliny’s chapter on the subject, alluvial is badly con-