Note 3 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China
Reading edition
When Columbus crossed the Atlantic he and his followers greatly astonished the unsophisticated natives of the New World by their anxiety to obtain precious metals. They found, to their joy, that “the sands of the mountain streams glittered with particles of gold; these”, as Washington Irving says,3 “the natives would skilfully separate and give to the Spaniards, without expecting a recompense”.