Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/181

Rh Cornwall and Wales, again sources of gold and other valuable substances. And it is curious to note that the tales of the Isles of the Blest and of the search for the Grail and kindred cycles are apparently connected with these gold-producing regions, and not with the parts of Britain that are barren of such "givers of life." It looks as if the seekers for the Isles of the Blest in western Europe had already found them.

In Central Asia there is likewise good reason for concluding that the first civilised people were attracted there by the stores of gold. They were irrigators, and the ruins of their irrigation systems are to be found along the banks of the rivers whose gravels contained gold: those rivers barren of gold are devoid of irrigation systems. It is known, also, that these irrigators used gold. So there is reason for believing that the distribution of this precious substance mainly determined their settlements. Unfortunately we know little of these early people, for the Zoroastrian reform seems to have made an almost complete break with the past. But we do know the beliefs of two peoples who came, or claim to have derived their civilisation, from Central Asia, the Chinese and the Indians of Vedic times, and a study of their beliefs shows what an important part has been played by gold in their civilisation. The Chinese themselves are incapable of explaining why heaven is jade and gold, why, that is, jade and gold are identified with the source of life. They apparently did not