se any doubt upon,
but only their being so truly round or near it, though I should never
have doubted the thing neither. He was neither hanged nor burned, the
cheat was thought so ingenious, and being the first time they could ever
trap him in it, and so little hurt to any man in it, the money being as
good as commonly goes. Thence to the office till the evening, we sat,
and then by water (taking Pembleton with us), over the water to the
Halfway House, where we played at nine-pins, and there my damned
jealousy took fire, he and my wife being of a side and I seeing of him
take her by the hand in play, though I now believe he did [it] only in
passing and sport. Thence home and being 10 o'clock was forced to land
beyond the Custom House, and so walked home and to my office, and having
dispatched my great letters by the post to my father, of which I keep
copies to show by me and for my future understanding, I went home to
supper and bed, being late. The most observables in the making of money
which I observed to-day, is the steps of their doing it.

1. Before they do anything they assay the bullion, which is done, if
it be gold, by taking an equal weight of that and of silver, of each a
small weight, which they reckon to be six ounces or half a pound troy;
this they wrap up in within lead. If it be silver, they put such a
quantity of that alone and wrap it up in lead, and then putting them
into little earthen cupps made of stuff like tobacco pipes, and put
them into a burning hot furnace, where, after a while, the whole body is
melted, and at last the lead in both is sunk into the body of the cupp,
which carries away all the copper or dross with it, and left the pure
gold and silver embodyed together, of that which hath both been put into
the cupp together, and the silver alone in these where it was put alone
in the leaden case. And to part the silver and the gold in the first
experiment, they put the mixed body into a glass of aqua-fortis, which
separates them by spitting out the silver into such small parts that you
cannot tell what it becomes, but turns into the very water and leaves
the gold at the bottom clear of itself, with the silver wholly spit out,
and yet the gold in the form that it was doubled together in when it was
a mixed body of gold and silver, which is a great mystery; and after all
this is done to get the silver together out of the water is as strange.
But the nature of the assay is thus: the piece of gol