The Wayfarer

Mercury and Apollo himself, has been explained elsewhere by us (as in our Egyptian-Greek Hieroglyphics) quite abundantly: Here by the cattle of Apollo, just as there, we understand the Philosophical matter, which many who are occupied with Chymistry have long desired to know in what mountain it is hidden by Mercury: Others have sought it in diverse places, such as fields, gardens, meadows, camps, rivers, streams, fountains, and valleys (that is, of either vegetables, or animals, or minerals), but they have found it not at all, even if they have labored at it for their entire lifetime: It is not rare that, like that Corydon of Virgil, who searched for the beautiful Alexis,

He boasted of it with vain study in the mountains and woods,

or he has followed Narcissus in vain, like the nymph Echo, who, while she responded to the voices of everyone, hoping now that she would obtain her desired love, and was reduced to impassable ways and the wasting of her body, lost her hope together with her substance, and retained nothing except a hollow VOICE without a body. Very many, while they offered themselves for the love of their country (as once the youths of the Athenians) to do battle with the Minotaur (the philosophical matter), besides the immediate dangers hanging over them from the monster, have fallen into inextricable Labyrinths; of which, so that the reason of the name and the plan might be better recognized, it is said that there were four in the ancient ages: the Egyptian, the Cretan, the Lemnian, and the Italian, and of these the first two were most famous, mentioned by various writers. Concerning the Cretan, thus Virgil in Aeneid book 5.