MERCURY. 
651 
pounds weight of cinnabar were annually transported 
to Rome ; some for the use of the painters, and the 
rest to rouge the ladies. 
This inexhaustible mine is situated in a branch 
of the Sierra Morena, or black mountain, on the 
confines of Andalusia, fifteen leagues to the north 
of Seville, and seven or eight to the south-west of 
the famous silver-mine of Guadalcanal. There are 
two principal veins, from two to fourteen feet in 
thickness ; these throw out a number of branches 
in different directions, but towards the middle of 
the hill they reunite, and form an immense mass of 
mineral. The matrix of the veins is, like the rest 
of the hill, composed of free-stone, and it is observed 
that the cinnabar is most abundant where the stone 
is of the finest texture. 
The veins are coated with a black and rotten kind 
of slate, which, however, often contains good cinna- 
bar, as well as coarse round and flat pyrites, in masses 
of sixty pounds weight, which exhibit spots of cin- 
nabar within. 
The mine of Almaden, before the year 1762, 
furnished annually five or six thousand quintals of 
mercury for the use of the mines in Mexico ; but 
since then, that of Guanca-Velica being almost ex- 
hausted, they have drawn from Almaden the mer- 
cury necessary for the Peruvian mines, and at pre- 
sent the annual produce is said to be increased to 
sixteen or eighteen thousand quintals. 
The mine next in consideration, if not equal to 
that of Almaden, is situated at Idria in Germany . 
