There is an
anonymous description of the working with xabecas as practiced at
Almaden in 1543, and later accounts in 1557 and 1565. The ore was put
into egg-shaped vessels with a lid, the mineral being covered over
with ashes. The vessels were packed in a furnace heated with wood,
about 60 pounds being used per pound of quicksilver made. This system
was also applied at the Guancavelica mines, discovered in Peru in
1566, where the xabecas were abandoned in 1633, being replaced by the
furnaces invented by Lope Saavedra Barba, which there were called
"busconiles," while in Spain they were named Bustamente furnaces, and
elsewhere aludel furnaces. They were introduced at Almaden thirteen
years after their first use in Peru by Juan Alfonso de Bustamente,
Barba and his son having been lost at sea on their way to the
Peninsula. In 1876, there were at Almaden, at the works at Buitrones,
twenty such aludel furnaces and two Idria furnaces. D. Luis de la
Escosura y Morrogh, from whose work we take the above notes, has
followed the historical details of the growth of Almaden closely, and
from his account of the method of working in 1878 we take some data:
It is not an easy matter to explain the classification of the ore at
Almaden. _Metal_ is there called the richest mineral, composed of
quartz impregnated with crystalline cinnabar.
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