CHAPTER IX.

ALLOYS.

THE AGE OF BRONZE—AN INTERMEDIATE COPPER AGE—EUROPEAN COPPER IMPLEMENTS—NATIVE SILVER AND COPPER—TIN AND COPPER ORES—THE CASSITERIDES—ANCIENT SOURCES OF TIN—ARTS OF YUCATAN—ALLOYED COPPER AXE-BLADES—BRONZE SILVER-MINING TOOL—PERUVIAN BRONZES— PRIMITIVE MINING TOOLS—NATIVE METALLURGIC PROCESSES—METALLIC TREASURES OF THE INCAS—TRACES OF AN OLDER RACE—PERUVIAN HISTORY—THE TOLTECS AND MEXICANS—ADJUSTMENT OF CALENDAR— BARBARIAN EXCESSES—NATIVE GOLDSMITH’S WORK—PANAMA GOLD RELICS —MEXICAN METALLIC CURRENCY—EXPERIMENTAL PROCESSES—ANCIENT EUROPEAN BRONZES—TESTS OF CIVILISATION—ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES—THE NATIVE METALLURGIST.

The age of bronze in the archæological history of European civilisation symbolises a transitional stage of very partial development, and imperfect materials and arts, through which the Old World passed in its progress towards the maturity of true historic times; but the Bronze Period of the New World is the highest stage of its self-developed civilisation, prior to the intrusion of European arts. Whether we regard the bronze implements of Britain and the North of Europe as concomitant with the intrusion of new races, or only as proofs of the discovery or introduction of a new art pregnant with many civilising and elevating tendencies, they constitute an important element in primitive ethnology. For a time they necessarily coincide with many monuments and works of art pertaining in character to the stone-period; just as the stone implements and weapons still manufactured by the Indians and Esquimaux are contemporaneous with many products of foreign metallurgy, but nevertheless are the perpetuation of processes developed in a period when metallurgic arts were entirely unknown. The evidence that the British Bronze Period followed a simpler and ruder one of stone is such as scarcely to admit of challenge, independent of the _à priori_ likelihood in favour of this order of succession. The question however suggests itself whether metallurgy did not find its natural beginning there, as elsewhere, in the easy working of the virgin copper, and so intercalate a copper age between Europe’s stone, and its true Bronze Period. On this subject Dr. Latham remarks, in his _Ethnology of the British Islands_, “Copper is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state, no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone first; then bronze, or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get over this hiatus; cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of alloys.” It is a mistake, however, to say that no unalloyed British copper relics have been found. No very special attention was directed till recently to the distinction. Nearly all the earlier writers who refer to the metallic weapons and tools of ancient Mexico and Central America, apply the term “copper” to the mixed metal of which these were made; while among European antiquaries the corresponding relics of the Old World are no less invariably designated bronze, though in many cases thus taking for granted what analysis can alone determine. It is an error, however, that the later nomenclature of archæological periods has tended to strengthen: partly from the lack of appreciation of the importance of the argument in favour of the first use of the metals in a condition corresponding to the most primitive arts, and the discovery of scientific processes at later stages.

This peculiar interest attaches to the metallurgy of the New World, that there all the earlier stages are clearly defined: the pure native metal, wrought by the hammer without the aid of fire; the melted and moulded copper; the alloyed bronze; and then the smelting, soldering, graving, and other processes resulting from accumulating experience and matured skill. But examples of British implements of pure copper have also been noted. In a valuable paper by Mr. J. A. Phillips, on the metals and alloys known to the ancients,[78] the results of analyses of thirty-seven ancient bronzes are given. Among these are included three swords, one from the Thames, the others from Ireland; a spear-head, two celts, and two axe-heads: all of types well-known among the weapons of the “Bronze Period.” Yet of the eight articles thus selected as examples of “bronze” weapons, one, the spear-head, proved on analysis to be of impure but unalloyed copper. Its composition is given as copper, 99·71; sulphur, ·28. In 1822, Sir David Brewster described a large battle-axe of pure copper, found at a depth of twenty feet in Ratho Bog, near Edinburgh, under circumstances scarcely less remarkable than some of the discoveries of works of art in the drift. The workmen dug down through nine feet of moss and seven feet of sand, before they came to the hard black till-clay; and at a depth of four feet in the clay the axe was found. The author accordingly remarks: “It must have been deposited along with the blue clay prior to the formation of the superincumbent stratum of sand, and must have existed before the diluvial operations by which that stratum was formed. This opinion of its antiquity is strongly confirmed by the peculiarity of its shape, and the nature of its composition.”[79] In 1850, my brother, Dr. George Wilson, undertook a series of analyses of ancient British bronzes for me, and out of seven specimens selected for experiment, one Scottish axe-head, rudely cast, apparently in sand, was of nearly pure copper.[80] Of eight specimens of metal implements selected for me by Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of New York, as examples of Peruvian bronze; four of them, on analysis, proved to be of unalloyed copper. The rich collections of the Royal Irish Academy furnish interesting confirmation of this idea of a transitional copper era. Dr. Wilde remarks, in his Catalogue of Antiquities, “Upon careful examination, it has been found that thirty of the rudest, and apparently the very oldest celts, are of red, almost unalloyed copper.” In addition to those there are also two battle-axes, a sword-blade, a trumpet, several fibulæ, and some rudely formed tools, all of copper; and now that attention has been directed to the subject, further examples of the same class will doubtless accumulate.

A very important difference, however, distinguishes the mineral resources of the British and the North American copper regions. Copper, as we have seen, occurs in the trappean rocks of Keweenaw and Ontonagon, in masses of many tons weight; and detached blocks of various sizes lie scattered about in the superficial soil or exposed along the lake shore, ready for use without any preparatory skill, or the slightest knowledge of metallurgy. Nature in her own vast crucibles had carried the metal ores through all their preparatory stages, and left them there for man to shape into such forms as his convenience or simplest wants suggested. The native silver had undergone the like preparation, and is of frequent occurrence as a perfectly pure metal, being found, even when interspersed in the mass of copper, still in distinct crystals, entirely free from alloy with it. But neither tin nor zinc occurs throughout the whole northern region to suggest to the native metallurgist the production of that valuable alloy which is indissolubly associated with the civilisation of Europe’s Bronze age. In Britain it is altogether different. The tin and copper lie together, ready for alloy, but both occur in the state of impure ores, inviting and necessitating the development of metallurgy before they can be turned to economic uses. Tin is obtained in Cornwall almost entirely from its peroxide; and copper occurs there chiefly combined with sulphur and iron, forming the double sulphuret which is commonly called copper pyrites or yellow copper ore. The smelting process to which it has to be subjected is a laborious and complicated one; and if we are prepared to believe in the civilisation of Britain’s Bronze Period as a thing of native growth, the early discovery and use of alloys very slightly affects the question.

The ancient American miner of Lake Superior never learned to subject his wealth of copper to the action of fire, and transfer it from the crucible to the shapely mould. No such process was needed where it abounded in inexhaustible quantities in a pure metallic state. If, in the midst of such readily available metallic resources, he was found to have used tools of bronze or brass, to have transported the tin or zinc of other regions to his furnaces, and to have laboriously converted the whole into a preferable substitute for the simpler metal that lay ready for his use, it would be difficult indeed to conceive of such as the initial stage in his metallurgy industry. But Britain presents no analogy to this in its development of metallurgy arts. Tin, one of the least widely-diffused of metals, is found there in the greatest abundance, and easily accessible, not as a pure metal, but as an ore which is readily reduced by charcoal and a moderate degree of heat to that condition. This was the metallic wealth for which Britain was sought by the ancient traders of Massilia, and the fleets of the Mediterranean; and on it we may therefore assume her primitive metallurgists to have first tried their simple arts. But alongside of it, and even in natural combination with it, as in tin pyrites and the double sulphuret, lies the copper, also in the condition of an ore, and requiring the application of the metallurgist’s skill before it can be turned to account. We know that at the very dawn of history tin was exported from Britain. Copper also appears to have been wrought, from very early times, in North Wales as well as in Cornwall. Both metals were found rarely, and in small quantities, in the native state, but these may have sufficed to suggest the next step of supplying them in larger quantities from the ores. To seek in some unknown foreign source for the origin of metallurgic arts, which had there all the requisite elements for evoking them, seems wholly gratuitous; and, if once the native metallurgist learned to smelt the tin and copper ores, and so had been necessitated to subject them to preparatory processes of fire, the next stage in progressive metallurgy, the use of alloys, was a simple one. It might further be assumed that, with the discovery of the valuable results arising from the admixture of tin with copper, the few pure copper implements—excepting where already deposited among sepulchral offerings,—would for the most part be returned to the melting-pot, and reproduced in the more perfect and useful condition of the bronze alloy. There seems, however, greater probability in the supposition that if Britain had a copper period, or age of unalloyed metals, it was of brief duration.

The _cassiteron_, or tin which made the British Islands famous among Phœnician and Greek mariners, long before the Roman legions ventured to cross the narrow seas, was derived, as has been noted, from the same south-western peninsula, where copper is still wrought. The name of Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, bestowed on Cornwall and the adjacent isles, seems to imply that tin was the chief export, and was transported to the Mediterranean, to be mixed with the copper of the Wady Maghara, and other Asiatic mines, to form the Egyptian, Phœnician, and Assyrian bronze. Tin, therefore, the easiest of all metals to subject to the requisite processes, first engaged the skill of the British metallurgist; and that mastered, the proximity of the copper ore in the same mineral districts, inevitably suggests all the subsequent processes of smelting, fusion, and alloy.

The practical value of the alloy of copper and tin was well-known both to the Phœnicians and the Egyptians. Tin occurs in considerable abundance, and in the purest state, in the peninsula of Malacca, and thence, probably, it was first brought to give a new impetus to early eastern civilisation. Britain is its next and its most abundant source; and since America was embraced within the world’s sisterhood of nations, Chili and Mexico have become known as productive sources of the same useful metal. But the mineral wealth of Mexico and Peru was familiar to nations of the New World long before it was made to contribute to European commerce; and to a proximity of the metals best suited for the first stages of human progress, corresponding in some degree to that to which Britain’s ancient metallurgy has been traced, the curious phases of a native and purely aboriginal civilisation may be ascribed, which revealed itself to the wondering gaze of the first European adventurers who followed in the steps of Columbus. Whatever doubts may arise relative to the native origin of British metallurgy, and the works of art of the European Bronze Period, in consequence of their most characteristic illustrations being preserved in the mixed metal, bronze, and not in pure copper: there is no room for any such doubts relative to the primitive metallurgy of the New World. The American continent appears to have had its two entirely independent centres of self-originated metallurgic arts: its greatly prolonged but slight progressive Copper Period; and apart from this, and in part at least contemporaneous with it, a separate Bronze Period, with its distinct centres of more advanced civilisation and better regulated metallurgic industry, in which the value of metallic alloys was practically understood.

The great copper region of North America lies along the shores of Lake Superior, and on its larger islands between the 46th and 48th parallels of north latitude; and from thence its metallic treasures were diffused by primitive commercial exchanges, throughout the whole vast regions watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries: including also the Atlantic states, and the shores of the great lakes. But southward and westward of this area of diffusion, the Rio Grande and its tributaries, with the Rio Colorado, drain a country modified by very diverse conditions of climate, and having a totally distinct centre of metallurgic wealth and civilising influences. In this central region of the twin continents of America, as well as independently in tropical Peru, native civilisation had advanced a considerable way, before it was arrested and destroyed by the aggressions of foreign intruders. The peculiar advantages derivable from the proximity of the distinct metals had been discovered, and metallurgy had been developed into the practical arts of a true American Bronze Age.

When Columbus, during his fourth voyage, landed on one of the Guanaja islands, before making the adjoining mainland of Honduras, it was visited by a large trading canoe, the size and freight of which equally attracted his notice. It was eight feet wide, and in magnitude like a galley, though formed of the trunk of a single tree. In the centre a raised awning covered and enclosed a cabin, in which sat a cacique with his wives and children; and twenty-five rowers propelled it swiftly through the water. The barque is believed to have come from the province of Yucatan, then about forty leagues distant, through a sea the stormy violence of which had daunted the most hardy Spanish seamen. It was freighted with a great variety of articles of manufacture, and of the natural produce of the neighbouring continent; and among them Herrara specifies “small hatchets, made of copper, small bells and plates, _crucibles to melt copper_, etc.” Here, at length, was the true answer to that prophetic faith which upheld the great discoverer, when, peering through the darkness, the New World revealed itself to his eye in the glimmering torch, which told him of an unseen land inhabited by man. Here was evidence of the intelligent service of fire. Well indeed might it have been for Columbus had he been obedient to the voice that thus directed his way. All the accompaniments of the voyagers furnished evidence of civilisation. They were clothed with cotton mantles. Their bread was made of Indian corn, and from it also they had brewed a beverage resembling beer. They informed Columbus that they had just arrived from a country, rich, populous, and industrious, situated to the west; and urged him to steer in that direction. But his mind was bent on the discovery of the imaginary strait that was to lead him directly into the Indian seas, and it was left to Cortez to discover the singular seats of native civilisation of Mexico and Central America.

When at length the mainland was reached, the abundance and extensive use of the metals became apparent; and as further discoveries brought to the knowledge of the Spaniards the opulent and civilised countries of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru, they were more and more astonished by the native metallic wealth. When the Spaniards first entered the province of Tuspan, they mistook the bright copper or bronze axes of the natives for gold, and were greatly mortified after having accumulated them in considerable numbers to discover the mistake they had made. Bernal Diaz narrates that “each Indian had, besides his ornaments of gold, a copper axe, which was very highly polished, with the handle curiously carved, as if to serve equally for an ornament, as for the field of battle. We first thought these axes were made of an inferior kind of gold; we therefore commenced taking them in exchange, and in the space of two days had collected more than six hundred; with which we were no less rejoiced, as long as we were ignorant of their real value, than the Indians with our glass beads.”

Ancient Mexican paintings show that the tribute due by certain provinces of the Mexican empire was paid in wedges of copper; and Dupaix describes and figures examples of a deposit of two hundred and seventy-six axe-heads, cast of alloyed copper, such as, he observes, “are much sought by the silversmiths on account of their fine alloy.” The forms of these, as well as of the chisels and other tools of bronze, are simple, and indicate no great ingenuity in adapting the moulded metal to the more perfect accomplishment of the artificer’s or the combatant’s requirements. The methods of hafting the axe-blade, as illustrated by Mexican paintings, are nearly all of the same rude description as are employed by the modern savage in fitting a handle to his hatchet of flint or stone; and, indeed, the whole characteristics of the metallurgic and artistic ingenuity of Mexico and Peru are suggestive of immature development; though, from the nature of Peruvian institutions, the civilisation of the latter, like that of China, may have long existed, with slight and intermittent manifestations of progress. It was indeed, in many respects, the transitional Bronze Period of the New World, in which not only the arts of an elder stone-period had been very partially modified by metallurgic influences, but in which the sword, or _mahguahuitl_, made of wood, with blades of obsidian inserted along its edge, the flint or obsidian arrow-head, the stone hatchet, and other weapons, were still in common use, along with those of metal.

Yet such traces of primitive arts are accompanied with remarkable evidence of progress in some directions. Humboldt remarks, in his _Vues des Cordillères_, on the surprising dexterity shown by the Peruvians in cutting the hardest stones; and, after reference to the observations of other travellers, he adds:—“I conjectured that the Peruvians had tools of copper, which, mixed with a certain proportion of tin, acquires great hardness. This conjecture has been justified by the discovery of an ancient Peruvian chisel, found at Vilcabamba, near Cuzco, in a silver mine worked in the time of the Incas. This valuable instrument, for which I am indebted to the friendship of the Padre Narcisse Gilbar, is four and seven-tenth inches long, and four-fifths of an inch broad. The metal of which it is composed has been analysed by M. Vauquelin, who found in it 0·94 of copper, and 0·06 of tin.” Unfortunately, the composition of Mexican and Peruvian bronzes has hitherto attracted so little attention, that it is impossible to obtain many accurate records of analyses, or to procure specimens to submit to chemical tests. Dr. J. H. Gibbon, of the United States Mint, favoured me with the analysis of another chisel or crowbar, brought from the neighbourhood of Cuzco by his son, Lieutenant Lardner Gibbon, who formed one of the members of the Amazon Expedition. Through the kind services of Mr. Thomas Ewbank, of the American Ethnological Society, I also obtained, in addition to results determined by himself, eight specimens of such Peruvian implements, though only a portion of them proved to be of metallic alloys. They were submitted to careful analysis by my colleague, Professor Henry Croft, and the results in reference to the bronzes are given on a subsequent page. Mr. Squier, in the Appendix to his _Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York_, engraves an implement found with various Peruvian knives and chisels, about the person of a mummy, taken by Mr. J. H. Blake, of Boston, from an ancient cemetery near Arica. On analysis, it proved to contain about four per cent. of tin. More recently I inspected a valuable collection of antiquities brought by Mr. Blake from Peru, including a variety of bronze implements; and he has favoured me with the following results:—“Many years ago, I made a series of analyses of bronze instruments, knives, chisels, hoes, etc., which I found in ancient cemeteries in Peru in connection with embalmed bodies. I have not been able to find my notes made at the time; but I know that they consisted of copper and tin only, and that the proportion of the latter varied from upwards of two to four per cent. After receiving your last letter, I made an analysis of a small knife found by me, with many other articles, with the body of a man, in the ancient cemetery near Arica, in South Peru. The handle is of the same metal as the blade, and at right angles with it, being joined at the middle. The end is fashioned to represent the head of a llama. On analysis, the composition proves to be: Copper, 97·87; tin, 2·13.” Dr. C. T. Jackson communicated another analysis of a “Chilian bronze instrument, probably a crowbar,” to the Boston Natural History Society. It contained 7·615 parts of tin, and is described by him as a bronze, well adapted for such instruments as were to be hammer-hardened.[81] The general results indicate a variable range of the tin alloy, from 2·130 to 7·615 per cent.; which, in so far as any general inference can be drawn from so small a number of examples, shows a more indeterminate and partially developed metallurgy than the analyses of primitive European bronzes disclose.

Such is all the evidence I have been able to obtain relative to the composition of Peruvian alloys, and the progress indicated thereby in scientific metallurgy. It accords with other evidence of their mining operations. During a recent visit to Peru Mr. James Douglas obtained for me a set of primitive stone mining implements recovered from an ancient shaft, exposed in working the Brillador mine, in the Province of Coquimbo, Chili. They consist of a maul of granite, eight inches long, with a groove wrought round the centre and over the thicker end; one of diorite, also with a groove about one-third from the thicker end; a conical hammer of granite; and another implement made of diorite, apparently designed for pounding the copper ore. It has indentations worked in the sides for the fingers and thumb; and when found was covered at one end with green oxide of copper, as if from use in pounding the ore. Near the mine are ancient graves indicated by circles of stones; within which the skeletons are disposed in a sitting posture, accompanied by conical bones and rude pottery. Such mining implements were, no doubt, supplemented with others of metal; but so far as they illustrate the progress of the ancient miners of Chili, the evidence fully accords with the ideas otherwise formed of the Peruvians as a people who had discovered for themselves the rudiments of civilisation, but who had as yet very partially attained to any mastery of the arts which have been matured in modern centuries for Europe. This agrees with the description furnished by Dr. Tschudi of some of the metallurgic processes still practised in Peru. “The Cordillera, in the neighbourhood of Yauli,” he remarks, “is exceedingly rich in lead ore containing silver. Within the circuit of a few miles above eight hundred shafts have been made, but they have not been found sufficiently productive to encourage extensive mining works. The difficulties which impede mine-working in these parts are caused chiefly by the dearness of labour and the scarcity of fuel. There being a total want of wood, the only fuel that can be obtained consists of the dried dung of sheep, llamas, and huanacos. This fuel is called _taquia_. It produces a very brisk and intense flame, and most of the mine-owners prefer it to coal. The process of smelting, as practised by the Indians, though extremely rude and imperfect, is adapted to local circumstances. All European attempts to improve the system of smelting in these districts have either totally failed, or in their results have proved less effective than the simple Indian method. The Indian furnaces can, moreover, be easily erected in the vicinity of the mines, and when the metal is not very abundant the furnaces may be abandoned without any great sacrifice. For the price of one European furnace the Indians may build more than a dozen, in each of which, notwithstanding the paucity of fuel, a considerably greater quantity of metal may be smelted than in one of European construction.” At the village of Yauli, near the mines referred to, situated at an elevation of 13,100 feet above the sea, from twelve to fourteen thousand Indians are congregated together, chiefly engaged in mining, after the fashion handed down to them from generations before the Conquest. Their processes correspond with the imperfect results disclosed by the analysis of native alloys; as well as by other proofs that the Peruvians were also accustomed to work the native copper into tools and personal ornaments for common use, very much in the same fashion as the ancient metallurgists of the Ohio valley.

The contrast which the civilisation alike of Mexico and Peru presents, when compared with the highest arts pertaining to any of the tribes of North America, is well calculated to excite admiration. But the wonder of the Spanish conquerors at their gems and gold, the ready credulity of the missionary priests in their anxiety to magnify the gorgeous paganism which they had overthrown, and the patriotic exaggeration of later chroniclers of native descent, have all tended to overdraw the picture of the beneficent despotism of the Incas of Peru; or the crueller but not less magnificent rule of the Caciques of Mexico. With a willing credulity Spanish historians perpetuated what the Peruvian Garcilasso and the Mexican Ixtlilxochitl related, in their adaptations of native history and traditions to European conceptions. Religious, political, and social analogies to European ideas and institutions, accordingly, strike the modern student with wonder and admiration; nor has the gifted author of the _Conquests of Mexico and Peru_ always sufficiently discriminated between the glowing romances begot by an alliance between the barbarous magnificence of a rude native despotism and the associated ideas of European institutions. The metallic treasures of the Incas of Peru are probably not exaggerated; and if so, the precious metals with which their palaces and temples were adorned would have been the index, in any European capital, of a wealth sufficient to employ the merchant-navies of Venice, Holland, or England in the commerce of the world. But in Peru this was the mere evidence of the abundance of the precious metals in a country where they were as little the representatives of a commercial currency as the feathers of the coraquenque, which were reserved exclusively for the decoration of royalty.

The Peruvians occupied a long extent of sea-coast, but no commercial enterprise tempted them to launch their navies on the Pacific, excepting for the most partial coasting transit. The great mass of the people patiently wrought to produce from their varied tropical climates and fertile soil the agricultural produce on which the entire community depended; resembling in this, as well as in the vast structures wrought by a patiently submissive people at the will of their absolute rulers, the great oriental despotisms when in their earliest and least licentious forms. Their own traditions traced the dawn of their government no further back than the twelfth century; and the characteristics of their imperfect and unequally developed civilisation confirm the inference that they have not in this respect departed from the invariable tendency of historic myth and tradition to exaggerate the national age. Extensive ruins still existing on the shores of Lake Titicaca are affirmed by the Peruvians to have existed before the Incas arrived. But slight importance can be attached to the traditions of an unlettered people concerning events of any kind dating four or five centuries back. The authority of Bede is of little value relative to Jute or Anglo-Saxon colonisation less than three centuries before his time; and the modern New Englander, with deeds and parchments, as well as abundance of printed history to help his tradition, cannot make up his mind as to whether the famous Newport Round Tower was built by a Norse viking of the eleventh, or a New England miller of the seventeenth century. “No account,” says Prescott, “assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes before the Conquest. But this number is altogether too small to have spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations of the monarchy, on any probable computation, beyond two centuries and a half—an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico.” Humboldt, in his _Vues des Cordillères_, indicates the borders of Lake Titicaca, the district of Callao, and the high plains of Tiahuanaco, as the theatre of ancient American civilisation; and Prescott, in view of the apparently recent origin of the Incas, assumes that they were preceded in Peru by another civilised race, which, in conformity with native traditions, he would derive from this same cradle-land of South American arts. Beyond this, however, he does not attempt to penetrate into that unchronicled past. Who this people were, and whence they came, may afford a tempting theme for inquiry to the speculative ethnologist; but it is a land of darkness lying beyond the domain of history. The same mists that hang round the origin of the Incas continue to settle on their subsequent annals; and so imperfect were the records employed by the Peruvians, and so confused and contradictory their traditions, that the historian finds no firm footing on which to stand till within a century of the Spanish conquest.

In reality only a very small portion of what is called Peruvian history prior to that conquest can be regarded as anything but a historical romance; and the exaggerated conceptions relative to the completeness and consistent development alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation, are based on the old axiom which has so often misled the archæologist, _ex pede Herculem_.

Viewed, however, without exaggeration, the progress in mechanical skill and artistic ingenuity attained by both of the semi-civilised American nations, is very remarkable; and seems to find its nearest analogy among the modern Chinese and Japanese. Small mirrors of polished bronze now in use in Japan exactly reproduce some of those found in the royal tombs of Peru. These tombs of the Incas, and also their royal and other depositories of treasure, have disclosed many specimens of curious and elaborate metallurgic skill: bracelets, collars, and other personal ornaments of gold, vases of the same abundant precious metal, and also of silver; mirrors of burnished silver and bronze, as well as of obsidian; polished masks, rings, and cups of the same intractable material; finely adjusted balances made in silver; bells both of silver and bronze; and numerous commoner articles of copper, or of the more useful alloy of copper and tin, of which their tools were chiefly made.

But while the arts of civilisation were being fostered on those southern plateaux of the Andes, another seat of native American civilisation had been founded on the corresponding plateaux of the northern continent, and the Aztecs were building up an empire even more marvellous than that of the Incas. The site of the latter is among the most remarkable of all the scenes consecrated to such memories. On the lofty table-land which lies between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet, the valley of Mexico lies engirdled by its ramparts of porphyritic rock, like a vast fortress provided by nature for guarding the infancy of American civilisation. Here was the scene of the heroic age of Toltec Art, where the foundations of all later progress were laid, and architecture achieved its earliest triumphs in the New World on the temples and towers of Tula, the ruined remains of which attracted the attention of the Spaniards at the time of the Conquest. But the history of the Toltecs and their ruined edifices stands on the border lines of romance and fable, like that of the Druid builders of Carnac and Avebury. To them, according to tradition and such historical evidence as is accessible, succeeded their Aztec or Mexican supplanters, along with the Acolhuans, or Tezcucans, as they were latterly called from their capital Tezcuco. Mr. Edward B. Tylor describes an ancient arch which still stands there. It is a skew-bridge of twenty feet span, built with slabs of stone set on edge in the form of a roof resting on two buttresses; and is an ingenious approximation to the true arch.[82] On the opposite shores of the same Mexican lake, the largest of five inland waters that diversified the surface of that great table-land valley, stood Tezcuco and Mexico, the capitals of the two most important states within which the native civilisation of the North American continent developed itself. From the older Toltecans, the encroaching Tezcucans are believed to have derived the germs of that progress, which is best known to us in connection with the true Aztec or Mexican state. Legends of the golden age and heroic races of Anahuac abound, and have been rendered into their least extravagant forms by the patriotic zeal of Ixtlilxochitl, a lineal descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco. But the true Mexicans are acknowledged to be of recent origin, and the founding of Mexico is assigned to A.D. 1326. Among the special evidences of their civilisation is their calendar. By the unaided results of native science the dwellers on the Mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time, so nearly correct that when the Spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning, according to the unreformed Julian calendar, was nearly eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilisation they so speedily effaced. But the difference thus noted represented in the European calendar the accumulated error of upwards of sixteen centuries; so that the approximation of Mexican computation to true solar time is probably only a proof of the recent adjustment of their calendar; and so confirms the probability of the founding of the Mexican capital within two centuries of its overthrow. But the founders of Tenochtitlan, as the new capital was called, were a vigorous, enterprising, and ferocious race. The later name of Mexico was derived from the Aztec war-god Mexitli, whose favours to his votaries enabled them to form a powerful state by conquest, to enrich themselves with spoil, and to replace the rude structures of their city’s founders with substantial and ornate buildings of stone.

Whatever gloze of mild paternal absolutism may linger around our conceptions of the prehistoric chronicles of Peru, a clearer light illuminates the harsh realities of Mexican sovereignty. The god of war was the supreme deity of the Aztecs, worshipped with hideous rites of blood. Their civil and military codes, according to the narrative of their conquerors, were alike cruel as that of Draco; and their religious worship was a system of austere fanaticism and loathsome butchery, which seemed to refine the cruelties of the Red Indian savage into a ritual service fit only for the devil. But besides their hideous war-god, the Mexican mythology was graced by a beneficent divinity, named Quetzalcoatl, the instructor of the Aztecs in the use of metals, in agriculture, and in the arts of government. This and similar elements of Mexican mythology have been regarded as traces of a milder faith inherited from their Toltecan predecessors. The idea is one supported by many probabilities, as well as by some evidence. The early history of the Northmen, however, in which we witness the blending of a rich poetic fancy, wherein lay the germ of later Norman romance and chivalry, with cruelties pertaining to a creed little less bloody than that of the Mexican warrior, shows that no such theory is needed to account for the incongruities of the religious system of the Aztecs. In truth, the ferocity of a semi-barbarous people is often nothing more than its perverted excess of energy; and, as has been already noted in reference to the Caribs, is more easily dealt with, and turned into healthful and beneficent action, than the cowardly craft of the slave. It is only when such hideous rites are consciously engrafted on the usages of a people already far in advance of such a semi-barbarous childhood, as in the adoption of the Inquisition by Spain at the commencement of its modern history, that they prove utterly baneful; because the nation is already past that stage of progress in which it can naturally outgrow them.

Hideous, therefore, as were the human sacrifices, with their annual thousands of victims; the offerings of infants to propitiate Tlaloc, their rain-god; and the loathsome banquets on the bodies of their sacrificed victims:—if indeed this be not an exaggeration of Spanish credulity and fanaticism;—it is nevertheless difficult to concur in the verdict of the gifted historian of _The Conquest of Mexico_, that “it was beneficently ordered by Providence that the land should be delivered over to another race who would rescue it from the brutish superstitions that daily extended wider and wider, with extent of empire.” The rule of the conquerors, with their Dominican ministers of religion, was no beneficent sway; and its fruits in later times have not proved of such value as to reconcile the student of that strange old native civilisation of the votaries of Quetzalcoatl, to its abrupt arrestment, at a stage which can only be paralleled by the earlier centuries of Egyptian progress.

Metallurgic arts were carried in some respects further by the Mexicans than by the Peruvians. Silver, lead, and tin were obtained from the mines of Tasco and Pachuca; copper was wrought in the mountains of Zacotollan, by means of galleries and shafts opened with persevering toil where the metallic veins were imbedded in the solid rock; and there, as at the Lake Superior copper regions, the traces of such ancient mining have proved the best guides to modern searchers for the ores. The arts of casting, engraving, chasing, and carving in metal, were all practised with great skill. Vessels both of gold and silver were wrought of enormous size: so large, it is said, that a man could not encircle them with his arms; and the abundant gold was as lavishly employed in Mexico as in Peru, in the gorgeous adornment of temples and palaces. Ingenious toys, birds and beasts with moveable wings and limbs, fish with alternate scales of silver and gold, and personal ornaments in great variety, were wrought by the Mexican goldsmiths of the precious metals, with such curious art, that the Spaniards acknowledged the superiority of the native workmanship over anything they could achieve. When Cortes first entered the capital of Montezuma in 1513, the Mexican ruler received him in the palace built by his father Axayacatl, and hung round his neck a decoration of the finest native workmanship. The shell of a species of craw-fish, set in gold, formed the centre, and massive links of gold completed the collar, from which depended eight ornaments of the same metal, delicately-wrought in imitation of the prized shell-fish.

The arts thus practised on the great plateau extended to the most southern limits of the North American continent. The ancient graves of the Isthmus of Panama have been ransacked by thousands in recent years, from the temptation which the gold relics they contain hold out to their explorers. Those include representations of beasts, birds, and fishes, frogs, and other objects, imitated from nature, often with great skill and ingenuity. One gold frog which I examined had the eyes hollow, with an oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, which appeared to have been executed in a single casting. This insertion of detached balls is frequently met with in the pottery, as well as in the goldsmith’s work of the Isthmus, and is singularly characteristic of a peculiar phase of local art. Human figures, and monstrous or grotesque hybrids wrought in gold, with the head of the cayman, the eagle, and other animals, attached to the human form, are also found in the same graves; but, so far as my own opportunities of observation enable me to judge, the human figure generally exhibits inferior imitative skill and execution to the representations of other animate subjects. But all alike display abundant metallurgic art. Soldering as well as casting was known to the ancient goldsmith, and the finer specimens have been finished with the hammer and graving-tool. Judging from the condition of the human remains found in those huacas of the peninsula, they are probably of a much higher antiquity than the era of Mexican civilisation; and lying as they do in the narrow isthmus between the twin continents, they suggest the probability of a common source for the origin of Peruvian and Aztec arts.

But while the Mexicans wrought their ingenious toys, lavished their inexhaustible resources of gold and silver in personal decoration, and adorned their public edifices with scarcely less boundless profusion than the Peruvians, they had learned to some extent the practical value of gold and other metals as a convenient currency. By means of this equivalent for the gold and silver coinage of Europe, the interchange of commodities in the great markets of Mexico was facilitated, and an important step in the progress towards a higher stage of civilisation secured. This metallic currency consisted of pieces of tin cut in the form of a =T= or stamped with a similar character, and of transparent quills filled with gold dust. These were apparently regulated to a common standard by their size: for the use of scales and weights, with which the Peruvians were familiar, appears to have been unknown in Mexico.

The nature of the Mexican currency accords with the knowledge and experience of a people among whom metallurgic arts were of comparatively recent origin. The easily fused tin, and the attractive and accessible gold-dust, supplied ready materials for schooling the ingenious metallurgist in the use of the metals. Copper was probably first employed when found in a pure metallic state, as among the old miners of Lake Superior; while the art of fusing, taught by the Aztec Tubal-Cain, was tried only on the readily-yielding tin. By this means the arts of smelting and moulding the ores would be acquired, and applied to copper, silver, and gold, as well as to tin. Accident might suggest the next important stage, that of metallic alloys; but under the circumstances alike of Peruvian and Mexican civilisation, progressing in regions abounding with the most attractive and easily-wrought metals, it is not difficult to conceive of the independent discovery of the useful bronze alloy. Yet by the standard composition of their bronze, far more than by the ingenious intricacy of their personal ornaments, utensils, and architectural decorations, the actual progress of the Incas or of the Aztecs may fairly be tested. The delight of the savage in personal adornment precedes even the needful covering of his nakedness, and the same propensity long monopolises the whole inventive ingenuity of a semi-barbarous people; while the useful bronze tools embody the true germs of incipient civilisation. Tested by such a standard, the metallurgic arts of Peru furnish evidence of very partial development.

The alloy of copper and tin, when destined for practical use in manufacture, is found to possess the most serviceable qualities when composed of about ninety per cent. of copper to ten of tin; and so near is the approximation to this theoretical standard among the bronze relics of the ancient world, that the archæologists of Europe have been divided in opinion as to whether they should assume a Phœnician or other common origin for the weapons, implements, and personal ornaments of that metal found over the whole continent; or that the mixed metal, derived from a common centre, was manufactured in various countries of Europe into the objects of diverse form and pattern abounding in their soil, or deposited among their sepulchral offerings.

But the approximation to a uniform alloy is no more than would inevitably result from the experience of the extreme brittleness resulting from any undue excess of the tin. Accident, or the natural proximity of the metals or ores, as they occur in the mineral regions of England, may have furnished the first disclosure of the important secret. But that once discovered, the subsequent steps were inevitable. Having ascertained that he could produce a harder and more useful compound than the pure copper by alloying it with tin, the native metallurgist would not fail to vary the proportions of the latter till he had obtained a sufficiently near approximation to the best bronze, to answer the purposes for which it was designed. No interchange of experience was necessary to lead the metallurgists of remote regions to similar results; nor would a closer correspondence between the proportionate ingredients of the native American and European bronze than has yet been detected, indicate more than common aims, and the inevitable experience, consequent on the properties of the varying alloy, leading to corresponding results.

The following table of analyses of ancient European bronze relics will suffice to show how little foundation there is for the assumption of any common origin for the alloy of which they were made; and the corresponding evidence of proportionate ingredients disclosed by analyses of native American bronzes, disproves the theory of any European or other foreign source for the metallurgic arts of the New World.

ANALYSES OF ANCIENT BRONZES.

No.│ │Coppe│Tin. │Lead.│Iron.│Silve │ │ r. │ │ │ │ r. 1.│Caldron, Berwickshire, │92·89│ 5·15│ 1·78│ │ 2.│Sword, Duddingston, │88·51│ 9·30│ 2·30│ │ 3.│Kettle, Berwickshire │88·22│ 5·63│ 5·88│ │ 4.│Axe-head, Mid-Lothian, │88·05│11·12│ 0·78│ │ 5.│Caldron, Duddingston, │84·08│ 7·19│ 8·53│ │ 6.│Palstave, Fifeshire, │81·19│18·31│ 0·75│ │ 7.│Vessel, Ireland, │88·00│12·00│ │ │ 8.│Wedge, ” │94·00│ 5·09│ │ 0·01│ 9.│Sword, ” │88·63│ 8·54│ 2·83│ │ 10.│Sword, ” │83·50│ 5·15│ 8·35│ 3·00│ 11.│Lituus, Lincolnshire, │88·00│12·00│ │ │ 12.│Roman patella, ” │86·00│14·00│ │ │ 13.│Spear-head, ” │86·00│14·00│ │ │ 14.│Scabbard, ” │90·00│10·00│ │ │ 15.│Axe palstave, Cumberland, │91·00│ 9·00│ │ │ 16.│Axe-head, ” │88·00│12·00│ │ │ 17.│Vessel, Cambridgeshire, │88·00│12·00│ │ │ 18.│Axe-head, Ireland, │91·00│ 9·00│ │ │ 19.│Sword, Thames, │89·69│ 9·58│ │ 0·33│ 20.│Sword, Ireland, │85·62│10·02│ │ 0·44│ 21.│Celt, ” │90·68│ 7·43│ 1·28│ │ 22.│Axe-head, ” │90·18│ 9·81│ │ │ 23.│Axe-head, ” │89·33│ 9·19│ │ │ 24.│Celt, ” │83·61│10·79│ 3·20│ 0·58│ 25.│Celt, King’s Co., Ireland,│85·23│13·11│ 1·14│ │ 26.│Drinking-horn, ” ” │79·34│10·87│ 9·11│ │ 27.│Celt, Co. Cavan, ” │86·98│12·57│ │ │ 0·37 28.│Celt, ” │98·74│ 1·09│ │ 0·08│ 0·06 29.│Celt, Co. Wicklow, ” │88·30│10·92│ 0·10│ │ 30.│Celt, Co. Cavan, ” │95·64│ 4·56│ 0·25│ │ 0·02 31.│Spear-head, ” │86·28│12·74│ 0·07│ 0·31│ 32.│Spear-head, ” │84·64│14·01│ │ │ 33.│Scythe, Roscommon, ” │95·85│ 2·78│ 0·12│ 1·32│ 34.│Sword-handle, ” │87·07│ 8·52│ 3·37│ │ 35.│Sword, ” │87·94│11·35│ 0·28│ │ 36.│Dagger, ” │90·72│ 8·25│ 0·87│ │ 37.│Chisel, ” │91·03│ 8·39│ │ │ 38.│Caldron, ” │88·71│ 9·46│ 1·66│ 0·03│ 39.│Sword, France, │87·47│12·53│ │ │ 40.│Spear-head, Northumberland, │91·12│ 7·97│ 0·77│ │

Nos. 1-6. Dr. George Wilson. 7-8. Dr. J. H. Gibbon, U.S. Mint. 9-10. Professor Davy. 11-18. Dr. Pearson, _Philosoph. Trans._ 1796. 19-24. J. A. Philips, _Mém. Chem. Soc._, iv. p. 288. 25, 26. Dr. Donovan, _Chem. Gazette_, 1850, p. 176. 27-38. Mr. J. W. Mallet, _Transactions R. I. A._ vol. xxii. p. 325. 39. Mongez, _Mém. de l’Institut_. 40. Dr. E. Macadam, _Proceed. S. A. Scot._ viii. 300.

In No. 31 is also Cobalt, ·09; in No. 37, Antimony, ·04; and in No. 41, Arsenic, ·03.

From the varied results which so many analyses disclose, ranging as they do from 79 to 98 per cent. of copper; as well as from the diversity of the ingredients: it is abundantly obvious that no greater uniformity is traceable, than might be expected to result from the operations of isolated metallurgists, very partially acquainted with the chemical properties of the standard alloy, and guided for the most part by the experience derived from successive results of their manufacture. It is thus apparent that the various exigencies of the metallurgist, under the control of a very ordinary amount of practical skill, would lead to the determination of the best proportions for this useful alloy; though it would only be after the accumulated fruits of isolated experiment had been combined, that anything more than some crude approximation to the best composition of bronze would be determined. Hence the value of analytical evidence in determining the degree of civilisation of Mexico and Peru, as indicated by their metallurgic arts. For the general requirements of a tool, or weapon of war, where a sufficient hardness must be obtained without any great liability to fracture, the best proportions proved to be about 90 per cent. of copper to 10 of tin; or with a small proportion of lead in lieu of part of the tin: which, as further experience taught the primitive worker in bronze, communicates to the cutting instrument a greater degree of toughness, and consequently diminishes its liability to fracture. But where great hardness is the chief requisite, as in certain engraving, carving, and gem-cutting tools, the mere increase of tin in the alloy supplies the requisite quality: until the excessive brittleness of the product gives warning that the true limit has been exceeded. In this, I doubt not, lies the whole secret of Mexican and Peruvian metallurgy, which has seemed so mysterious, and therefore so marvellous to the most sagacious inquirers.

The following table furnishes the results of analyses of various ancient American bronzes. Few as the examples are, they afford definite illustration of the subject under review, and supply some means of comparison with the data already furnished relative to the ancient bronzes of Europe.

ANALYSES OF ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES.

No.│ │Copper. │ Tin. │ Iron. 1.│Chisel from silver mines,│94· │6· │ │Cuzco, │ │ │ 2.│Chisel from Cuzco, │92·385 │7·615 │ 3.│Knife from grave, │97·87 │2·13 │ │Atacama, │ │ │ 4.│Knife ” ” │96· │4· │ 5.│Crowbar from Chili, │92·385 │7·615 │ 6.│Knife from Amaro, │95·664 │3·965 │0·371 7.│Perforated axe, │96· │4· │ 8.│Personal ornament, │95·440 │4·560 │ │Truigilla, │ │ │ 9.│Bodkin from female grave,│96·70 │3·30 │ │do., │ │ │

Nos. 1. Humboldt. 2. Dr. J. H. Gibbon. 3, 4. J. H. Blake, Esq. 5. Dr. T. C. Jackson. 6, 7. Dr. H. Croft. 8, 9. T. Ewbank, Esq.

The comparison of this with the previous table indicates a smaller amount of tin in the American bronze than in that of ancient Europe. For some Egyptian spear-heads Gmelin gives, copper 77·60, tin 22·02; and the composition of ancient weapons, armour, vessels, and coins, seems to indicate such a systematic variation of proportions as implies the result of experience in adapting the alloy for the specific purpose in view. A much larger number of analyses would be desirable as data from which to generalise on the metallurgic skill developed independently by native American civilisation; but the examples adduced seem to show that there is no lost secret for Europe to discover.

The native metallurgist had learned the art of alloying his ductile copper with the still softer tin, and producing by their chemical admixture a harder, tougher metal than either. But he does not appear to have carried his observation so far as to ascertain the most efficient proportions of the combining metals; or even to have made any very definite approximation to a fixed rule, further than to use with great moderation the alloying tin. He had discovered, but not entirely mastered, a wonderful secret, such as in the ancient world had proved to lie at the threshold of all higher truths in mechanical arts. He was undoubtedly advancing, slowly but surely, on the direct course of national elevation; and the centuries which have followed since the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro might have witnessed in the New World triumphs not less marvellous in the progress of civilisation than those which distinguish the England of Victoria from that of the first Tudor. But native science and art were abruptly arrested in their progress by the Spanish conquistadors; and it is difficult to realise the conviction that either Mexico or Peru has gained any adequate equivalent for the loss which thus debars us from the solution of some of the most interesting problems connected with the progress of the human race. Amid all the exclusiveness of China, and the isolation of Japan, there is still an unknown quantity among the elements of their civilisation derived from the same sources as our own. But the America of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was literally another world, securely guarded from external influences. Nevertheless while all appears to have been self-originated, we meet everywhere with affinities to the arts of man elsewhere, and trace out the processes by which he has been guided, from the first promptings of a rational instinct to the intelligent development of many later steps of reason and experience.

[78] _Méms. Chemical Society_, vol. iv. p. 288.

[79] _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, vol. vi. p. 357.

[80] _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_ (2d ed.), vol. i. p. 319.

[81] _Proceedings_, _B. N. H. S._, vol. v., p. 63.

[82] Anahuac, p. 153.