The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-04-21
The bulk of scottishgoldsis in this form,


 the largest nugget found weighing only
 twenty-seven ounces, and being at pres
 ent in the Hopetoun collection. q In 1862 there happened to be a great
 gold craze, and a German company ob- tained lease of the district for a period of forty years, it's object being to find gold and other precious metals. This
 company found about one hundred and thirty ounces, which were coined, and | that was about as much as it obtained. | Some years later, after the accession of | James VT, there was another craze, the
 result of which was that the "wisest fool | in Christendom" spent sum of thirty thousand pounds in looking for a fabu- | lous deposit of gold which, according to a book written by man named Atkin- son, was to be found on Crawford Morr He found about three ounces, and those were probably planted" by an enter prising servant who wished to obtain the reward for first blood" After this gold finding was at a discount, until small find of a couple of hundred ounces in the Lanarkshire district revived mat ters, and the coronation medals Of Charles I. were struck from Scottish gold. Then came the Nithsdale rush, which produced nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds worth, and the mines were worked at intervals for a long time-until the reign of George IT., in fact In the reign of Henry III. we find the first mention of Westmore- land gold in a charter granted by that monarch, and directed upon the Kes- wick gold district.
 Most of the writs of early times, how ever, seem to have been directed upon mines further south--those in Devon, Cornwall Essex and Dorset. There is one, however, in the reign of Edward III. which is directed on a couple of mines situated in Gloucester and Shrop- shire The Mines Royal of Elizabeth are we'll known. So soon as Good Queen Bess heard of a mine, of whatsoever kind, she promptly annexed it, on the plea that it might contain gold or silver If it did, she took unto herself the lions share. If not, she granted the mine to one of her favorites to work, probably on commission, for the Virgin Queen had a very good eye for business. Tn this way the Earl of Leicester was the lessee of several copper and lead mines, and the Duke of Northumberland of several others, the major portion of the profits of which probably went into their royal mistress pocket.
 Very little, strangely enough, has been heard of Irish gold. yet Ireland was once a center of civilization far in ad vance of England. Despite the fact that King John squeezed a vast quantity of | gold out of the Irish, and also that the remains ornamented with gold found in bogs, barrows, etc, must have demon- | strated conclusively that there ought to | be large quantity of the precious met al in the country, nobody seems to have given a thought to prospecting it until | the year 1796.
 In that year a sehoolmaster named | Donahoe found a quantity of small mug | gets at Croghan, in County Wicklow, | but was laughed at when he told of his discovery. He did not further attempt to convince the natives, but used to wander abl lut in the early mornings, and considerable quantity of gold, which he sold to a goldsmith At last another man, crossing a brook found a nugget and this, coupled with the fact that the schoolmaster was rapidly rich, convinced the and calMeds rush to the place. Government stepped in then, but little too late, for before they could get o work the peasants and others who lad flocked to the spot had cleared off he bulk of the gold. It was calculated hat in the few months between the inding of the haIf-oilnc nugget mem toned above and the interference of the several million pounds worth of gold was secured by the peas lnts and others and all that the gov- rnment got was 2,666 ounces The big rest nugget found measured four by hree inches, and was about half an inch \ nick, it's weight being twenty-two unces. The government continued to york the deposit but as they obtained nIy four thousand pounds worth in :. wo years the effort was abandoned.- london Evening Standard.