WHOLE VOL. THE WEST INDIES — VAZQUEZ DE ESPINOSA 54I 



for all the others, even a piece of iron or steel, float upon it without 

 sinking, as I have myself witnessed, like a straw on water ; gold 

 alone sinks in it. Its best and most characteristic peculiarity is its 

 affinity for gold wherever it scents it ; it assimilates it from among 

 other metals, seizes it and unites with it, so that fire alone with its 

 powerful force succeeds in breaking up the union and amity, and 

 it leaves the gold transformed into vapor and smoke, as if regretting 

 that the fire has forcibly severed it from its beloved friend the gold, 

 for whom it so yearns. So those who reduce the ore with quicksilver 

 and are acquainted with its characteristics, in order to escape and 

 save themselves from the fatal results of its use, and avoid quick- 

 silver poisoning, use gold as an antidote ; they choose it as godfather 

 so that they may take no harm. So when they have to deal with 

 quicksilver and fire, they usually take a gold piece, say a castellano, 

 and pulverize and swallow it ; and as whatever mercury enters the 

 system as vapor by the mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, settles in the 

 stomach, feeling gold near, it leaves all else for the shelter and 

 embrace of its friend, gold ; and thus the individual escapes any 

 harm it might cause him, and he evacuates it later, combined with 

 the gold, by the ordinary channel ; and then the fire again dissolves 

 the union. 



1469. Next after gold it yearns for silver and embraces it, though 

 not with the haste it shows for gold ; but it separates it from the 

 other metals with which it has combined, and nothing but fire will 

 force them apart, as has been described. Quicksilver shows no affinity 

 for other metals ; in fact, it rather drives them off, corroding and 

 perforating them, for it yearns only for the good and highly esteemed 

 and embraces it, and scorns and drives away all that is not. For this 

 reason they ordinarily put it either in clay vessels or in dressed 

 sheepskins or other animals' skins, for it bores through vessels of 

 copper, bronze or other metal, and ruins them. Hence Pliny called 

 it a poison for everything, for it eats into them and spoils them ; 

 but in itself it is so scatheless that besides its faculty of moving 

 about, which was responsible for its ancient name of argentum vivum 

 (quicksilver), even though it be divided up into a thousand tiny 

 drops, they combine again and form one whole just as if they had 

 not been separated ; and while it segregates gold or silver from copper, 

 it serves also to unite them, for they use it for the process of gilding. 

 And besides all these characteristics mentioned, the thing which most 

 surprises about it is that while it is one of the heaviest substances 

 in the world, in a twinkling it becomes one of the lightest, i.e., vapor, 

 in which form it rises when decomposed ; but though it is now so 



