Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/74

 and copper are both found in a pure state. We may then on this ground alone infer that mankind was acquainted with gold and copper before they as yet had learned the art of working silver ore. It next comes to be a question of the priority of gold or copper. The probabilities will undoubtedly be in favour of that metal which is most universally found native, and which is the most likely by its hue to attract the eye, and which is the most easily worked. On all these counts gold can claim priority over copper. Still copper is found native in various countries, Hungary, Saxony, Sweden, Norway, Spain and Cornwall.

It is of course quite possible that in a region where gold is not native and copper is, the latter may have been the first metal known to the aboriginal inhabitants. This can be well illustrated from the case of iron and copper in Central Africa. The negroes never had a copper or bronze age, but passed directly into the iron age, for the very sufficient reason that no native copper was found in their country, and consequently they had no metal suited for implements until they had learned to smelt iron. Gold of course on the other hand was known to them from the most remote period. Finally, from a famous modern occurrence we may come to the general conclusion that wherever gold is a natural product of the soil there it has been the first metal to come under the observation of man. The great gold-field of California was first discovered on a memorable Sunday morning, when the eye of a lounger who was smoking his pipe by the side of Captain Sutter's millrace happened to light on some glittering body in the sandy bottom of the stream. This was the first scrap of gold found in California, and whilst that fertile land has produced many natural treasures besides gold within the scarcely more than forty years which have since elapsed, its gold it will be observed was the earliest of its metals, both from the nature of its deposit and from the brilliancy of its colour, to attract the attention of man. In certain parts of Southern Europe, notably parts of Southern Italy and Southern Greece, where copper is found but not gold, copper perhaps may have been known before gold, and certainly before silver. It will be important to bear this in mind with reference to a stage in our future arguments.