(21). Item, a piece of a heavy mineral stone, that looketh like a loadstone, but hath no such attractive virtue; but at Hall, near Insprugg in Tiroll, among the hearts of the Alps, I had the curiosity to be droven in a wheelbarrow almost 2 miles under ground, to see the labourers there in the gold and silver mines belonging to the Archduke of that country. It was horrid to go thither, and more horrid to see, but they told us the Emperor and the Empress, and all the royal family of the house of Austria use out of curiosity to go thither. I and my companion having on canvass frocks to keep us from the wet and filth, we having a mountain of the Alps 3 or 4 mile high over our heads, and a torrent of water under us, and a bridge of boards most of the way. When we came into the vast high vaults, where hundreds and hundreds of men or Vulcans were at work, one of the overseers (a genteel person), out of courtesy, would have let us see their art by blowing up a part of the mine by gunpowder; but we durst not venture it. Another great mystery to me was, that I saw in the several high vaults, about the middle, a coggell of wood hanging in a small rope; and I asking wherefore those bastons or pieces of wood hung there, I wondered the more they told me, that, as the loadstone in the iron mines directed to the veins of iron, so these coggells of wood directed them to the veins of gold and silver; and they seemed to be loth to tell us what sort of wood it was, but at lenght length we were told (whether truly or no I know not), that it was of a ground ash.