[8] Afterward the same gold-finers promised great matters
thereof if there were any store to be found, and offered themselves to
adventure for the searching of those parts from whence the same was
brought. Some that had great hope of the matter sought secretly to have
a lease at her majesty's hands of those places, whereby to enjoy the
mass of so great a public profit unto their own private gains.
[8] The English assayers all pronounced the stone worthless. An
Italian, Giovanni Baptista Agnello, reported it to contain gold.
On being questioned as to how it was that he alone was able to
produce gold from the stone, he is said to have replied, "_Bisogna
safiere adular la natura_" ("Nature requires coaxing "). Agnello's
assay necessarily involved the addition of other substances for
the purpose of separating the gold; and it has been suggested that
the gold produced by him was itself added during this process.
There is no good reason for thinking so. Pyrites often contains a
minute proportion of gold. Admitting the possibility of trickery
in the case of the small specimen submitted to Agnello, it is
incredible that the fraud should have been successfully repeated
when the two hundred tons of mineral brought back by the second
expedition came to be tested.
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