ago, may have had its origin in the real, and not in the imaginary presence of glittering gold. But to return from this digression. _Second_, The same facts which thus enable us to predict or to suggest inquiry, serve also to test the truth or falsehood of ancient traditions regarding the former fruitfulness in gold of countries which now possess only the fading memory of such natural but bygone wealth. Our geological maps direct us to European countries, in which all the necessary geological conditions coexist, and in which, were the world still young, a geologist would stake a fair reputation on the hazard of discovering gold. But the art of extracting gold from auriferous sands is simple, and easily practised. It is followed as successfully by the black barbarians of Africa as by the whitest savages of California. The longer a country has been inhabited, therefore, by a people among whom gold is valued, the less abundant the region is likely to be in profitable washings of gold. The more will it approach to the condition of Bohemia, where gold prevailed to a great extent, and was very productive in the middle ages, though it has been long worked out, and the very localities of its mines forgotten.[7] Were it to become, for example, a matter of doubtful tradition, which the historian was inclined to pass by, that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth three hundred men were employed near Elvan’s Foot—not far, we believe, from Wanlockhead in Scotland—at a place called the Gold Scour, in washing for the precious metal, who in a few summers collected as much as was valued at £100,000; or that in 1796, ten thousand pounds’ worth of gold was collected in the alluvial soil of a small district in Wicklow—the geologist would come to his aid and assure him that the natural history of the neighbourhood rendered the occurrence of gold probable, and the traditions, therefore, worthy of reliance.