In this field you dig a hole and in the hole you bury a gold piece.
"So that if I were to bury my five gold pieces," cried Pinocchio with growing wonder, "next morning I should find--how many?"
Hereupon the captain and all the crew set to work, with iron rakes and great hooks and lines, fishing for gold and silver at the bottom of the sea.
It ought to have been left with the skeletons of the ancient Spaniards, who had been drowned when the ship was wrecked, and whose bones were now scattered among the gold and silver.
"But when the Ambassadors had been there a day or two, and saw so great abundance of
gold so lightly esteemed, yea, in no less reproach than it was with them in honour; and, besides that, more
gold in the chains and gyves of one fugitive bondman, than all the costly ornaments of their three was worth; then began a-bate their courage, and for very shame laid away all that gorgeous array whereof they were so proud; and especially when they had talked familiarly with the Utopians, and had learned all their fashions and opinions.
His first pan of the morning washed out over two dollars in coarse gold. It was from the centre of the "V." To either side the diminution in the values of the pans was swift.
The other half was virgin gold. He dropped it into his pan and examined another piece.
His one thought was how to be revenged on that wicked old hag, and for this purpose he had a purse made large enough to contain five hundred
gold pieces, but filled it instead with bits of glass.
He sang and laughed and danced and capered among the
gold, till I threatened to strangle him if he made a sound or wasted time.
"So, not to go into too many details," went on the professor, "I'll just give you a brief outline of this story of the idol of
gold.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of France, his horse was loaded with
gold leaves, according to Brantome, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
When he approached closer to one of these tablets he saw that it was of
gold, and bore many hieroglyphics.