Golden Fleece — Trismosin (Splendor Solis Author), 18th-Century MS

recognize what it used to be, changed into various forms and figures externally, of strong stones, high mountains and deep valleys internally, of terrible things and of colors like bronze and other metals. Although all these confused and diverse things are found at present in the body of this earth, they proceed entirely from its first form, when from the very wide, thick, deep, and long state it was before, it was reduced into a great and vast space by the continual operation of the sun, and because the heat was always preserved there, vehement, burning and vaporous, mixing confusedly down to the bottom of this thick mass with the coldness and humidity that it encloses in its body, from which sometimes rise cold, nebulous, and aerial vapors, which are born from the mixture of these two contrary regimens, from which, enclosed and stopped in the earth, several other consecutive vapors are born by the length of time, so strong in the end, that it is often constrained to make a way for them to let them exhale through the opening

of its belly, giving them free passage despite itself, when it had well desired to be able to retain them in the natural dungeons of its deepest caverns, where several in the long run finding themselves together pell-mell, sometimes caused several parts of earth to heap up in one place by the assembled force of its exhalations, and several others in other places. But as the mountains and the valleys have been reduced to their certain end, there principally is also found the earth at the best tempered point of the four qualities: heat, coldness, humidity and dried decoction the process of boiling or heating a substance to extract its essence, boiled or somewhat diminished; and in these places one sees the best and purest bronze. For this reason it is easy to believe that in places where the earth is leveled, there is not so great a quantity of vapors nor so many sulfurous exhalations, which keeps it calmer and at rest. That which is fat, muddy, and where the humidity from above retreats toward the bottom and within, becomes more tender and soft, changing into an extreme whiteness, principally by means of a dryness caused by the heat of the sun, which makes it stronger, more cooked and more hardened after a long space of time. But a