Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 15.djvu/32

 I after asked the maner how the Epuremei wrought those plates of golde, and how they could melt it out of the stone; hee tolde mee that the most of the golde which they made in plates and images, was not seuered from the stone, but that on the lake of Manoa, and in a multitude of other riuers they gathered it in graines of perfect gold and in peeces as bigge as small stones, and that they put it to a part of copper, otherwise they could not worke it, and that they vsed a great earthern pot with holes round about it, and when they had mingled the gold and copper together, they fastened canes to the holes, and so with the breath of men they increased the fire till the metall ran and they cast it into moulds of stone and clay, and so make those plates and images. I haue sent your Honors of two sortes such as I could by chance recouer, more to shewe the maner of them, then for the value: For I did not in any sort make my desire of gold knowen, because I had neither time, nor power to haue a greater quantity. I gaue among them manie more peeces of gold, then I receiued, of the new money of 20 shillings with her Maiesties picture to weare, with promise that they would become her seruants thencefoorth.

I haue also sent your Honours of the ore, whereof I know some is as rich as the earth yeeldeth any, of which I know there is sufficient, if nothing else were to bee hoped for. But besides that we were not able to tarrie and search the hils, so we had neither pioners, barres, ledges, nor wedges of yron to breake the ground, without which there is no working in mines: but wee saw all the hilles with stones of the colour of gold and siluer, and we tried them to be no Marquesite, and therefore such as the Spaniards call El madre del oro, or, The mother of gold, which is an vndoubted assurance of the generall abundance: and my selfe saw the outside of many mines of the Sparre, which I know to be the same that all couet in this world, and of those, more then I will speake of.

Hauing learned what I could in Canuri and Aromaia, and receiued a faithfull promise of the principallest of those prouinces to become seruants to her Maiestie, and to resist the Spaniards, if they made any attempt in our absence, and that they would draw in the nations about the lake of Cassipa, and those Iwarawaqueri, I then parted from olde Topiawari, and receiued his sonne for a pledge betweene vs, and left with him two of ours as aforesayd. To Francis Sparrowe I gaue instructions to trauell