However, if it were so plentiful that we could all live in it, it would be so common that its beautiful lustre would probably be debased by ordinary paint. Mining comes down to us through the centuries. The Romans were operating mines in England before the organization of that country into the British Empire. Africa produces the most gold of any country, and the United States next. Colorado produces the most gold of any state in the union. There is but little gold found in the eastern part of the United States and that mostly in Tennessee and North Carolina. It exists in paying quantities in the Black Hills of South Dakota, in the Rocky Mountains, and in California. Gold is found under two conditions: in veins and in placer formations. As the veins in our bodies are almost endless in their ramifications, so imbedded in the rocky fastnesses deep down in the earth, are the veins of gold which are mined and hoisted to the surface through shafts, or brought out through tunnels; the process of smelting sends the gold to the Mint for its refinement. Deep mining is expensive and requires costly machinery. Shafts are sunk down thousands of feet, sometimes through solid rock, and powerful pumping plants are often necessary. Sometimes hundreds of men are at work in one mine. [Illustration: Miners Making a "Clean-up" from Their "Jig-box."] Then there is placer mining, so-called because it is a place on the bank of a river where the gold is found. "Placer" is Spanish and means "pleasure." A prospector's outfit for finding gold by the latter process is very crude. He goes into the mountains with two pack ponies. These pack animals learn to climb over the rocks and along the precipitous mountain sides like Rocky Mountain sheep. On their backs are strapped his tent and simple belongings, among which is a wash basin. The prospector seldom uses it for the purpose for which it was made. He bathes in nature's basin--golden basin; that which a King might envy him--the stream, the rushing, tumbling stream, clear, cold and pure; fortunate man! he bathes in liquid gold. The pan he fills two-thirds full of dirt, then with water, rocks it gently with his hands, letting the water run over the sides, carrying the dirt away and leaving the particles of gold, which are heavy, at the bottom of the pan. When the miner finds it there, he does not call it gold, he calls it "color." This rude device that is simply motion, water, and a receptacle for the particles of gold, is the same process elaborated upon by expensive machinery, that tears up and runs through the mill thousands of tons of material found along streams, and in gulches, where streams ran ages ago, and which, changing their channels, have left their deposits of gold containing the wash from the lump or quartz gold, found in the veins of ore.