None of the adepts suffered from imprudent exposure of their power more than the subject of this article. He was a native of Scotland, and is supposed to have inhabited a mansion at a village in the vicinity of Edinburgh, and close to the sea-shore.[AB] In the summer of 1601 a Dutch vessel was wrecked upon the coast, and some of the crew were saved through the instrumentality of Sethon, who received them into his house, treated them with great humanity, and provided them with the means to return to Holland. One year later he visited James Haussen, the pilot of the ship, one of the rescued persons, at Erkusen, in that country. The sailor received him with joy, and detained him for several weeks in his house, during which period he beheld with astonishment several transmutations performed by his guest, who confessed that he was an alchemical adept. He was bound in gratitude and friendship to the most inviolable secrecy, but he could not refrain from confiding the wonder which he had witnessed to Venderlinden, the physician of Enkhuysen, who was a man of integrity and prudence, and to whom he presented a piece of gold, which had been transmuted in his presence from lead on the 13th March 1602. This curiosity came into the hands of the doctor’s grandson, who showed it to the celebrated George Morhoff, by whom it was mentioned, with its history, to Langlet du Fresnoy, in an epistle on the transmutation of metals. From Enkhuysen, Sethon proceeded to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, subsequently embarking for Italy, where, after a short stay, he passed into Switzerland, and so entered Germany, accompanied by Wolfgang Dienheim, an adversary of Hermetic philosophy, whom by ocular demonstration he convinced of his error, in presence of several distinguished persons of Basle. To this adversary we are indebted for a description of Sethon, whom he declared eminently spiritual in appearance, short in stature, but very stout, having a high colour, and a beard of the French style. He calls him Alexander Sethonius, and states that he was a native of Molier, “in an island of the ocean.” The lead required for the transmutation was brought by Jacob Zwinger from his own house, a crucible was borrowed from a goldsmith, and common sulphur was purchased on the road to the house where the operation was to be performed. During the whole course of the experiment, Sethon touched nothing, simply supplying the small packet which contained the powder of projection, and which transformed the base metal into gold of the purest quality, equivalent in weight to the original lead. The experiment was repeated on another occasion with the same brilliant success, and, in addition to the testimony of Dienheim, we have also that of Zwinger, a name highly respected by the Germans in the history of medicine.[AC]