Some of his company brought flowers, some green grass; and one brought a piece of black stone, much like to a sea coal in color, which by the weight seemed to be some kind of metal or mineral. This was a thing of no account in the judgment of the captain at first sight; and yet for novelty it was kept, in respect of the place from whence it came. After his arrival in London, being demanded of sundry his friends what thing he had brought them home out of that country, he had nothing left to present them withal but a piece of this black stone. And it fortuned a gentlewoman, one of the adventurer's wives, to have a piece thereof, which by chance she threw and burned in the fire, so long that at the length being taken forth, and quenched in a little vinegar, it glistened with a bright marquesite of gold. Whereupon the matter being called in some question, it was brought to certain gold-finers in London to make assay thereof, who gave out that it held gold, and that very richly for the quantity.[8] Afterward the same gold-finers promised great matters thereof if there were any store to be found, and offered themselves to adventure for the searching of those parts from whence the same was brought. Some that had great hope of the matter sought secretly to have a lease at her majesty's hands of those places, whereby to enjoy the mass of so great a public profit unto their own private gains. [8] The English assayers all pronounced the stone worthless. An Italian, Giovanni Baptista Agnello, reported it to contain gold. On being questioned as to how it was that he alone was able to produce gold from the stone, he is said to have replied, "_Bisogna safiere adular la natura_" ("Nature requires coaxing "). Agnello's assay necessarily involved the addition of other substances for the purpose of separating the gold; and it has been suggested that the gold produced by him was itself added during this process. There is no good reason for thinking so. Pyrites often contains a minute proportion of gold. Admitting the possibility of trickery in the case of the small specimen submitted to Agnello, it is incredible that the fraud should have been successfully repeated when the two hundred tons of mineral brought back by the second expedition came to be tested. The mineral undoubtedly contained gold, but not enough to pay for the carriage and working.