542 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



light, at the loss of heat it cools off again and immediately changes 

 into the heaviest substance in existence, its liquid form, for it coagu- 

 lates and drops down again, becoming quicksilver ; but if they apply 

 fire to it, it turns again into vapor at once — an extraordinary and 

 unique transmutation of such a light substance into such a heavy one. 



Chapter LXIX [66] (71) 



Continuing the Preceding Theme, of the Characteristics of Quick- 

 silver. 



1470. The ancients did not appreciate all these characteristics of 

 quicksilver, for Pliny, in book 33, chapter 6, says that mercury yearns 

 only for gold, and embraces it alone ; but experience has demonstrated 

 in our own day that the widest use for quicksilver and its greatest 

 service is with silver ; for such great wealth has been derived from 

 silver at Potosi and the other mines in Peru that in the 59 years 

 during which silver has been extracted by the quicksilver process, 

 from the year of 1571 up to the present year of [1628] 1630, from 

 Potosi alone the quicksilver process has yielded more than 600 

 millions in silver, not counting what has been treated in other Peruvian 

 mines, and from a much earlier period from all the mines in New 

 Spain ; so that I infer that the greatest use of quicksilver has been 

 with silver. 



And so at the rumor of the rich deposits of mercury in the days 

 of Don Francisco de Toledo, in the years 1570 and 1571, they started 

 the construction of the town of Huancavelica de Oropesa in a pleasant 

 valley at the foot of the range. It will contain 400 Spanish residents, 

 as well as many temporary shops of dealers in merchandise and 

 groceries, heads of trading houses, and transients, for the town has 

 a lively commerce. It has a parish church with vicar and curate, a 

 Dominican convent, and a Royal Hospital under the Brethren of 

 San Juan de Dios for the care of the sick, especially Indians on the 

 range ; it has a chaplain with a salary of 800 assay pesos contributed 

 by His Majesty ; he is curate of the parish of San Sebastian de 

 Indios, for the Indians who have come to work in the mines and 

 who have settled down there. There is another parish on the other 

 side of the town, known as Santa Ana, and administered by Domini- 

 can friars. 



1471. Every 2 months His Majesty sends by the regular courier 

 from Lima 60,000 pesos to pay for the mita of the Indians, for the 

 crews are changed every 2 months, so that merely for the Indian 

 mita payment [in my understanding of it] 360,000 pesos are sent 



