We have in England great plenty of quicksilver, antimony, sulphur,
black lead, and orpiment red and yellow. We have also the finest alum
(wherein the diligence of one of the greatest favourers of the
commonwealth of England of a subject[1] hath been of late egregriously
abused, and even almost with barbarous incivility) and of no less
force against fire, if it were used in our parietings, than that of
Lipari, which only was in use sometime amongst the Asians and Romans
and whereof Sylla had such trial that when he meant to have burned a
tower of wood erected by Archelaus, the lieutenant of Mithridates, he
could by no means set it on fire in a long time, because it was washed
over with alum, as were also the gates of the temple of Jerusalem with
like effect, and perceived when Titus commanded fire to be put unto
the same. Besides this, we have also the natural cinnabarum or
vermillion, the sulphurous glebe called bitumen in old time, for
mortar, and yet burned in lamps where oil is scant and geson; the
chrysocolla, copperas, and mineral stone, whereof petriolum is made,
and that which is most strange, the mineral pearl, which as they are
for greatness and colour most excellent of all other, so are they
digged out of the main land and in sundry places far distant from the
shore.
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