Neither is it here any impediment if the Oar of Silver should also contain Copper in it, which will be extracted together with the Aqua Fortis. For the Silver and Gold fall down to the bottom, and the Copper abides in the Aqua Regia, which is again fit to extract more Gold withall, and may indeed be used as many times as any one shall please. The Copper it self is extracted out of the Aqua Regis by Iron Plates, but they tinge the Aqua Regis with a yellow colour, and therefore make it altogether unfit for any farther labours of this kind. Better is it therefore to concentrate it upon the Ashes of Lead, that so that spiritual Iron in the Aqua Regis, may convert some of the Lead into Gold by Gradation, and the Aqua Regis it self having been so often used may be yet again used.
41. Another far easier way of plentifully extracting Gold and Silver out of the poor Minera’s or Oars, Sand and Clay, and the like Minerals without the Fire of melting.
Fill a Glass Cucurbit, or one made of the best Earth, and excellently well luted a little more than half full, with the Minera, Sand, or Stones containing in them, fugitive and fix Gold, and hereupon pour as much of the following Menstruum as is sufficient to moisten them; then presently put on an Alembick (for assoon as ever the dissolving Water is poured on the Oars or Minera’s, it presently works and fumes) and draw off therefrom (in Sand) all the humidity by Distillation: that so in the distilling the Gold it self may be dissolved, and the Aqua Regis it self may by Distillation be recovered; which is again profitable for a new Operation, as we shall tell you by and by. All the moisture being drawn off, let the Cucurbit cool in the Sand, and then take it out, and put in some Water, that the Minera’s and Salt may be softned. Now extract very carefully and diligently, all the Salt out of the Oar, in which said Salt is the Gold that is extracted out of the Oars or Minera’s, and boil it up into a red Salt, to which must be added some Litharge, and so must be molten in such Pots as will not break. The Litharge will imbibe all the Gold, which how it is to be separated from the Lead, we will presently teach in the following discourse.
42. The preparation of the Water necessary to this extraction.
For the extraction of Gold, Salt is to be dissolved in Aqua Fortis, and for the extraction of Silver, you must dissolve Salt-peter in Aqua Fortis. With these Waters, of which you may furnish your self with plenty without any great labour, moisten the Oars and then distill them off again from the said Oars, and they will be always fit for such like Operations, insomuch that you need never to make new Waters. Nay more, in all the several Operations and Extractions of the Oars, they will be more and more augmented, so that if thou usest but at first no more than two pounds of the same Waters, they may suffice thee for infinite extractions.
N. B. By this means, all the Gold, how little soever, may be extracted by thee out of all Flints, Sand, and other Minerals without any expences, the Fire onely excepted.
This also is expedient for me here to show, that sometimes there are to be found fugacious Minera’s of Gold, and coloured Flints which are sufficiently rich with Gold, and are painted as ’twere with delicate colours, viz. green, sky-colour, and red: but in the heating them red hot, those colours vanish, and leave the Flints white. Such as these admit not of heating red hot, like as others do, which retain their colours in a red hot Fire. Therefore such must be reduced into Powder without any previous heating red hot, and you must extract them [as they are] that so the volatile Gold may be attracted by the Aqua Regis, which said Gold being abstracted [again] by the Ashes of Lead commits it self to [or imbibes it self in] the said Ashes, which are to be reduced by the help of the secret Crucible; in which Reduction, the Gold becomes corporeal and admits of being separated from the Lead with profit.
N. B. Such Stones may likewise be mixed with the sharp coagulated Spirits, and these [Spirits] may be forced over by a Retort: For so, the fugitive Spirits of the Salts carry over with them the Volatile Gold, and make a very excellent Gradatory-water, transmuting fugitive Mercury into Gold, with greater profit, than if this very volatile Gold had been made Corporeal with Lead.
This secret is none of the least of those which teach the Extraction of Gold out of colour’d Flints or Stones.
Such a volatile Gold may also pass into other Metals by gentle Cementations, and so become fix, and will bring no small profit, nay rather a greater benefit than if it were gotten out by fusion. In such Cementations, the volatile Gold hath time of getting a body with the other Metals, and of acquiring a fixity, and is as it were a golden Seed, which augments it self into Gold, in, or out of the Metallick Earth.