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BOOK IV
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77
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less
sweet. It varies in odor and while all of it has a pleasant odor and
sometimes may smell like myrrh, the white is the best. When we fumigate
rooms with shavings of amber during the plague the odor will last for
three days. It is rarely soft and although hard it is considerably less
so than stone. All is light but the white is the lightest and they use
this to make the dice with which our people play. It is worked into a
variety of forms. The beads with which we say our prayers are made from
it as well as rings, small dishes, small statues and effigies of many
things especially of men. Those things made from the white are the most
valued today. Once amber was so highly esteemed by the Romans, as Pliny
writes, that any small statue of a man made from the reddish brown or
deep red material was of greater value than a living healthy man. Just
as we value the whiteness and beauty of our statues the Romans
preferred statues of these other colors because of their beauty and
transparency. However dice are made only from the white so that they
will resemble those made from the bones of animals. When placed on a
flame it catches fire readily and burns as do all other genera of
bitumen. For this reason the old Prussians who Cornelius Tacitus calls
Aestii used it in the place of wood for fires.
Having
been warmed by rubbing amber will draw and support feathers, chaff,
balls, leaves and other small light substances in the same manner as
lodestone attracts iron. Although Theophrastus claims this is not true,
it does attract ocimum. It will pick up metal shavings and some writers
attribute this power to the lynx. When the fragments of amber that are
left over from cutting are set on fire they blaze up in the same
fashion as does the powder they use to throw balls from cannons. When a
solid piece is rubbed it takes up some heat from the fingers but it
will become warmer when rubbed with a rough cloth, a piece of wool,
stone, iron or some other hard substance. Recently some gray amber was
dug up on the beach near Puceca on this side of the Vistula which, when
rubbed with iron, would draw leaves that had fallen to the ground even
when held in the hand a distance of two feet above them.
Amber
offers a multitude of uses. Fragments are used in the place of incense
for fumigating and for clearing fetid or contaminated air. It is used
in lamps to make them burn brighter and for a longer time. The African
peoples who burn their dead break pieces from the crude material and
boil them in oil until they form a solid mass. This is then thrown on
the burning pyre. Writers mix fragments with their ink and then warm
it. In medicine it has the property of coating and having been drunk
stops bleeding no matter where it occurs. It will stop vomiting, flux
of the womb, discharge from ulcers, head discharges, and cure
tonsilitis and throat irritations. It strengthens the viscera and
other parts of the body. Since it is sweet smelling it is good for the
heart and will stop heart tremors. The fumes of white amber will drive
away epilepsy. So much regarding European amber.
I shall now take up African amber. Writers are not of one opinion re-
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