loose In a forest would root up ground nuts. Some
get eight or ten ounces a day, and the least active one
or two. They make most who employ the wild In-
dians to hunt it for them. There is one man who has
sixty Indians in his employ ; his profits are a dollar a
minute. The wild Indians know nothing of its value,
and wonder what the pale faces want to do with it;
and they will give an ounce of it for the same weight
of coined silver, or a thimbleful of glass beads, or a
glass of grog. And white men themselvos often give
an ounce of it, which is worth at our mint eighteen
dollars or more, for a bottle of brandy, a bottle of
soda powders, or a plug of tobacco."
Then streams began to form in every quarter; in- land streams and ocean currents, social tricklings and oozings from scattered and far distant homes, gather- ing into rivulets, and expanding into human rivers, increasing in strength and volume as they neared that worshipful gold. Bands of devotees were organ- ized for pilgrimages, in which Christendom and pagandom might join alike, in which all the sons of men might join and bow before one common shrine.
In vain we search the annals of mankind for a similar flockino;. The nearest akin to it were the Christian crusades made in the ninth century, and subsequently, for the recovery from profane hands of the tomb of Christ — wild fanaticism, folly incredible, yet under providence working out for civilization the grandest results, bringing together antagonistic socie- ties, forcing oppugnant elements to coalesce, and melt- ing and moulding humanity into more useful and comelier forms. But the world was smaller then than now, and although the numbers were large they comprised comparatively few nationalities, and the dis- tance travelled was less. In the nineteenth century there were cosmopolitan crusades for gold wherewith to make rich the finder, and add volume to the world's circulatinsf medium. Was the gold sous^ht in these modern pilgrimages essential to human well-being,
