Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/609

Rh traversed, Spain was the chief source through which Europe derived the precious metals, yet it could never retain them, in spite of savage laws prohibiting their export; its people were forced to content themselves with a debased coinage, and at times it could scarce procure enough copper to supply even this. Commercial and industrial enterprise was impossible when no one could know from day to day what was to be the value of the money which was due to him, or in which he was to meet his obligations, and consequently the magnificent resources of the land remained undeveloped, while the rest of western Europe was entering on the modern era of industrialism. Once embarked on such a vicious course, return to a permanent standard was too painful a process to be endured, and the efforts made toward it from time to time only aggravated the trouble by increasing the uncertainty, for the distress which they caused was too acute for even Spanish endurance. Thus it dragged on from century to century, while the wealth of the Indies enriched the nations whose commercial instincts taught them the essential necessity of an unvarying standard of value. This was no new discovery, for the long-enduring prosperity of Florentine manufactures and commerce was largely attributable to the jealous care with which the republic preserved the purity and weight of its coinage, so that the florin became a recognized standard throughout Europe, the honesty of which no one ever questioned. Florence had learned the lesson from the Byzantine Empire, whose historian, Mr. Finlay, asserts that its prolonged duration was greatly owing to the wisdom which preserved its coinage unaltered for eight centuries, so that "the concave gold byzants of Isaac II (1185-1203) are precisely the same weight and value as the solidus of Constantino the Great." With the Latin conquest in 1204, barbaric recklessness was introduced from the West, and successive debasements of the coinage accompanied the decay and extinction of the empire of the Cæsars. Spain affords an exceedingly instructive example of the opposite, inasmuch as its trouble arose from a token currency of small denominations which was incautiously allowed to expand until it dominated the whole financial system, to the exclusion of the precious metals.

"Australian Snow Country," as Mr. John Plummer, of Sydney, calls it, includes a region in the neighborhood of Mount Kosciusko and the Munoing Range where fires and blankets are needed, even during the hottest days of that continent of summer torridity. Mount Kosciusko, 7,171 feet high, is the highest peak in Australia, but is remarkably easy of ascent. The climb begins twenty-five miles from the top, and is practicable for a drive all the way. There are no trees within several miles of the top, but gigantic mosses grow there and beautiful flowers.