of this expedition,
picturing, among other things, the bags of gold that the three-masted,
thirty-oared ship brought home.

Hiram, King of Tyre, who was engaged by King Solomon to bring
treasures for the Temple at Jerusalem, made a long journey to some
distant land (about B. C. 1000) and, after having been three years
away, brought back gold and silver, as well as ivory, apes, and
peacocks. He certainly went to India and may have visited Peru.[3]

[Footnote 3: For the theory of this early voyage to America, see the
author's "The Quest of the Western World."]

The Phrygians were known not only as miners of gold but also as
workers in the precious metal. The "golden sands of Pactolus" were
washed a thousand years before the Christian era. The proverbial
wealth of Croesus and the legend of the "golden touch of Midas" remain
as historic memories of the gold mines of Asia Minor and Arabia,
worked by the Lydian kings.

When Persia became the mistress of the world, most of this gold was
taken to the courts of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. Some of it, but
not all, came back in the victorious train of Alexander the Great,
when ten thousand teams of mules and five hundred camels were required
to carry the treasure to the new world capital at Susa.

Spain, in addition to Egypt and Arabia, became one of the principal
gold-bearing sources of the ancient world. The Carthaginians,
colonists from Phoenicia, conquered the Iberians, who then populated
Spain, and forced them to work in gold mines. They captured negroes
and shipped them to Spain as slaves in the gold diggings. The
Carthaginians also exploited mines in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.

Then Rome, rising into power, cast covetous eyes on the gold possessed
by Carthage, and sought to seize it by force of arms. As a result of
her victory in the First Punic (Carthaginian) War, Rome secured the
three islands of the Mediterranean, rich in minerals.

The Carthaginians, under the leadership of Hannibal, worked the mines
of Spain and Portugal the harder. The rivers Douro and Tagus were
found to be rich in gold-bearing sands. Rome's envy grew. In the
Second Punic War, she captured Spain. From the gold-mines there,
worked by slave labor, came a large share of the riches and luxury of
the Roman Empire.

To Owens, sitting in his library in an American colliery town, the
long story of civilization seemed to unroll before his eyes and,
everywhere, possession of gold brought power a