The Wayfarer

This I saw done in Goslar in Saxony from copper and lead ores (taken from the Rammelsberg mountain) that were very sulfurous. But it is done differently now at Schneeberg and not far from Geier in the forest, namely from a sulfurous ore containing nothing metallic, unless perhaps some small amount (which is not regarded), giving simultaneously sulfur, arsenic, vitriol, and "ochre" or the yellow and red color called "mountain root" original: "Bergs root". Sulfur, therefore, while it remains as if inseparable in its parts, ascending by subterranean heat from the center to the circumference—that is, from the more interior parts of the earth toward those more near the surface—and similarly quicksilver ascending in the same way, both in the form of smoke or an airy shape, embrace each other like male and female until they fall into a certain rocky cavity covered above. In this, these two smokes, collected or accumulated by ever-newly ascending vapors, or by the cold of the night, or other accidents, or by their own abundance, are congealed into a hard and metallic mass, which is afterwards recognized and extracted as lead ore. But if the proportion of these two smokes should be different, and the heat different, and the place which contains the matter appropriates it to itself, being imbued with some quality, various kinds of metallic ores arise, of which we add nothing here. For it suffices to have demonstrated with rude unrefined wisdom how, from that liquid and smoky Mercury and also from that most hot and fiery sulfur, imperfect metals are generated in the bowels of the earth, especially lead and tin, as less cooked in their mines.