The richest auriferous land in Europe was the Iberian peninsula, which for centuries yielded a golden harvest, first to the Carthaginians, then to the Romans, and at a still later period to the Visigoths and the Moors. During the middle ages Bohemia was renowned for its gold, and the accounts that have reached us of the times when her auriferous deposits first began to be extensively worked remind us of the scenes which our own age has witnessed in California or Australia. Bloody conflicts frequently arose between gold-diggers and peasants because the former devastated the fields and meadows and left them permanently sterile. Even now in many parts of the country long ranges of sand hillocks and rubbish mounds remain as memorials of the mediæval gold-diggers. Frequent famines arose in the land, as many of the inhabitants gave up agriculture for mining. A new epoch in the history of gold began with the discovery of America. We all know by what prodigies of valour the Spaniards obtained possession of the treasures of Montezuma and of the Peruvian Incas, and how frequently acts of a fiendish cruelty, inspired by the love of gold, and aggravated by a bloodthirsty fanaticism, tarnished the lustre of their arms. More recently, about the year 1836, rich deposits of auriferous sand were discovered in Siberia, and soon raised the frozen regions of the Jenisei to the rank of the first gold-producing country in the world.[43] But the fame of the Russian mines was soon eclipsed by the eventful discovery of the Californian placers. Footnote 43: ‘The Polar World,’ p. 231. It was in January 1848, a short time after the incorporation of the province with the United States, that one James Marshall, who had contracted to build a saw-mill on the land of Captain Sutter, about sixty miles east of Sacramento, discovered the glittering particles in the mud of the brook on which he was at work. Trembling with excitement, he hurried to his employer, and told his story. Captain Sutter at first thought it was a fiction, or the wild dream of a maniac; but his doubts were soon at an end when Marshall laid on the table before him a few ounces of the shining dust. The two agreed to keep the matter secret, and quietly to share the golden harvest between them. But, as they afterwards searched more narrowly, their eager gestures and looks happened to be closely watched by a Mormon labourer employed about the neighbourhood. He followed their movements, and the secret was speedily divulged. It appears that Marshall did not escape the ordinary lot of discoverers, for a few years later he was wandering, poor and homeless, over the land which was first indebted to him for its enormous development.