This is that well-known place called St. Agnes’ Ball, that is to say, St. Agnes’ pestis, or plague, so named from the hard, deep, and dangerous labour of the tinners there, out of which mountain hath been digged up, for at least 150 years’ space, about ten thousand pounds worth of tin per annum; which keeps daily employed about the same 1,000 persons, who for the most part spend their time in hard and dangerous labours as aforesaid, in order to get a poor livelihood for themselves and families, in the pursuit of which, here and in other places, many of those poor men yearly by sad accidents lose their lives. The natural circumstances of this Ball is a subject as worthy the consideration of the most sage virtuosos, or natural philosophers; for, though it be a stupendous and amazing high mountain, abutting upon the Irish sea, or St. George’s Channel, rising pyramidally from the same at least 90 fathom above the sea and contiguous lands, yet on the top thereof, under those spar-stone graves, or burying-places, is discovered by the tinners, five foot deep, good arable land or earth; under that, for six foot deep, is found a fine sort of white and yellow clay, of which tobacco-pipes have been made; beneath this clay is a laying of sea-sand and nice totty-stones. Two or three hundred fathoms from the sea, and about eighty fathoms above it, under this sand, is to be seen for about five foot deep, nothing but such totty-stones as are usually washed on the sea-shore, and in many of them grains of tin. Under those stones the soil or matter of the earth, for five or six feet deep, is nothing to be seen but _carne-tyer_, id est, spar-stone land or earth, under which spar-stone earth appears the firm rock, through which tin-loads are wrought or pursued by the tinners fifty, sixty, and seventy fathoms deep. This Ball, or lands containing this diversified matter or soil, contains about eighty acres in circumference; which amuseth most men how the earth, clay, sand, totty-stones, or spar-stone land, should yet be so high above the solid rocks to the top of this mountain, unless Noah’s flood was universal, and reached to this island, as the labouring tinners believe and tell us. More sure I am, from ocular demonstration, that a quantity of the white sort of sand in this Ball, or hill, washed in a stream or river of clear water, will instantly turn the same water into a milk-white colour, and not to be discerned from milk, as long as you continue to pour the said sand into the river; but this is to be understood only of such clean white sand as is made use of and prepared for writing sand-boxes. * * * * *