Gold is the only poverty; of all glittering ills the direst.

And that man might not impoverish himself thereby, Oro hath hidden it, with all other banes,--saltpeter and explosives, deep in mountain bowels, and river- beds.

But man still will mine for it; and mining, dig his doom .-- Yoomy, Yoomy!--she we seek, lurks not in the Golden Hills!" "Lo, a vision!" cried Yoomy, his hands wildly passed across his eyes.
"A vast and silent bay, belted by silent villages:--gaunt dogs howling over grassy thresholds at stark corpses of old age and infancy; gray hairs mingling with sweet flaxen curls; fields, with turned furrows, choked with briers; arbor-floors strown over with hatchet-helves, rotting in the iron; a thousand paths, marked with foot-prints, all inland leading, none villageward; and strown with traces, as of a flying host.

On: over forest--hill, and dale--and lo! the golden region! After the glittering spoil, by strange river-margins, and beneath impending cliffs, thousands delve in quicksands; and, sudden, sink in graves of their own making: with gold dust mingling their own ashes.

Still deeper, in more solid ground, other thousands slave; and pile their earth so high, they gasp for air, and die; their comrades mounting on them, and delving still, and dying--grave pile on grave! Here, one haggard hunter murders another in his pit; and murdering, himself is murdered by a third.