The First Arcanum or Secret of the Second Century,
SHEWETH,
By what means such Metals as are imperfect, wild, and in a manner unapt for use or sale, may be ripened or bettered by Common Salt and Fire, so as to yield forth Gold and Silver with benefit and advantage.
I have in the foregoing first Century, as also in the [Appendix to the fifth part of the prosperity of Germany], described the incineration or reduction into ashes, which is to be done with Coals in a peculiar Furnace, fit for torrefaction or calcining.
Though this be a laborious way and tedious, yet is it not without its benefit, provided that a great quantity (as I have already oft times said) of the not vendible minerals and metals be thereto used. But that such an incineration may be done after a more easie and compendious manner, the following way may be made use of.
Build an Hearth of good and fitting earth upon a firm foundation, put thereupon a Furnace [or an Arch] of good stones, adjoyn hereto an Oven, [or side Furnace] out of which the fire may play and emit its flame over all the said Hearth, and pass thereout of by a Chimny made for that purpose. Upon this Hearth put those metalline earths being broken in a Mill, and commix them with the Salt, and Coals reduced into powder, and leave them for twenty or twenty four hours, that they may be all well fired and heated red hot: For by this means, the salt makes the fugitive metal in some sort constant and able to brook the fire; and the wild sulphureousness leaves the metalline mineral, and adjoyns it self to the salt, and converteth it into a vitriol or Sal. Mirabilis. This twenty or twenty four hours heat, gets a constancy and fluxibility to those wild metallick veins, and doth withall by that labour so fit and prepare the salt, that it doth afterwards by an easie mutation pass into good salt peter.
After that the said minerals have gotten themselves a better state by the said Cementation, they are to be drawn out of the Fire or Hearth, with iron instruments fit for such a purpose, and new and fresh minerals are to be put in, and to be dealt withall after the same manner as we said but now.
The minerals that are taken forth are to be broken in a Mill, and then the salt to be washed off with common water, and to be afterwards used about making salt peter, the which we have taught in the Appendix.
The light Coals [or Scinders] and unprofitable earth is to be separated by water, from the metalline part, and this metalline part, or heavier limus, being reduced and molten in the Furnace called Stichofen, yields a beautifull or pure and gainfull metal.