quest, lead and tin, from the veins of Tlachco
(Tasco, to the north of Chilpansingo) and
İzmiquilpan; and they drew cinnabar, em-
ployed by the painters as a colour, from the
mines of Chilapan. Of all the metals, copper,
was that which was most commonly employed
in the mechanical arts; it supplied the place of
iron and steel to a certain extent; and their
arms, axes, chisels, and all their tools, were
made of the copper which they extracted from
the mountains of Zacotollan and Cohuixco.
In every part of the globe, the use of copper
seems to have preceded that of iron; and the
abundance of copper in its natural state in the
most northern parts of America, may have con-
tributed to the extraordinary predilection which
the Mexican tribes, who issued from those re-
gions, have always shewn for it. Nature exhi-
bited to the Mexicans enormous masses of iron
and nickel; and these masses which are scat-
tered over the surface of the ground, are fibrous,
malleable, and of so great a tenacity, that it is
with great difficulty a few fragments can be
separated from them with steel instruments.
The true native iron, that to which we cannot
attribute a meteoric origin, and which is con-
stantly found mixed with lead and copper, is
infinitely rare in all parts of the globe; con-
sequently we are not to be astonished, that in
the commencement of civilization, the Ameri-

Golden

Sereners

cans, like most other nations, turned their attention to copper in preference to iron. But how did it happen, that these same Americans, who wrought by means of fire* a great variety of minerals, were never led to the discovery of iron by the mixture of combustible substances with the red and yellow ocrest, extremely common in several parts of Mexico? If, on the other hand, this metal was known to them, which I am inclined to believe, how happened it that they never learned to appreciate its just vaiue? These considerations seem to indicate that the civilization of the Aztec nations was not of a very antient date. We know that in the time of Homer, the use of copper still prevailed over that of iron, although the latter had been long known.

Several men of great learning, but unacquainted with chemical knowledge, have maintained, that the Mexicans and Peruvians possessed a particular secret for tempering copper

* According to the traditions collected by me, near Riobamba, among the Indians of the village of Lican, the antient inhabitants of Quito smelted silver ores by stratifying them with charcoal, and blowing the fire with long bambou reeds. A great number of Indians were placed circularly around the hole which contained the minerals; so that the currents of air proceeded at once from several reeds.

+ Yellow ocre, called tecozahuitl, was employed in painting as well as cinnabar. Ocre was part of the objects which composed the list of tributes of Malinaltepec.

meregte of weight in oratals criterion of Monistated.

CHẤP. XI.] KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN.

115

and converting it into steel. There is no doubt
that the axes and other Mexican tools were al-
most as sharp as steel instruments; but it was
by the admixture of tin, and not by any temper-
ing, that they acquired their extreme hardness.
What the first historians of the conquest call
hard or sharp copper, resembled the χαλκος of the
Greeks, and the Aes of the Romans. The
Mexican and Peruvian sculptors executed large
works in the hardest greenstone, (grünstein), and
basaltic porphyry. The jeweller cut and
pierced the emeralds and other precious stones
by using at the same time a metal tool and a
siliceous powder. I brought from Lima an
antient Peruvian chisel, in which M. Vauquelin
found 0.94 of copper, and 0.06 of tin. This mix-
ture was so well forged, that by the condensa-
tion of the particles, its specific gravity was
8.815, while, according to the experiments of
M. Briche, the chemists never obtain this
maximum of density, but by alloying 16 parts of
tin, with 100 parts of copper. It appears, that
the Greeks made use of both tin and iron at the
same time in the hardening of copper. Even à
Gaulish axe found in France by M. Dupont de
Nemours, which cuts wood like a steel axe,
without breaking or yielding, contains according
to the analysis of M. Vauquelin, 0.87 of copper,
0.03 of iron, and 0.09 of tin.

Tin being a metal very little spread over the globe, it is rather surprising that it should have been used on both Continents in the hardening of copper. A single mineral which has been no where discovered but at Wheal Rock, in Cornwall, the sulphuret of tin (tinpyrites) contains both copper and tin in equal parts. We know not whether the Mexican nations worked veins in which copper and oxyde of tin were found united, or if this latter metal, which we found in the alluvial soil in the intendancy of Guanaxuato, under the globulous and fibrous form of wood tin (holz-zinn) was added to pure copper in a constant proportion. However the fact be, it is certain that the want of iron would be much less felt among nations who possessed the art of forming alloys of other metals, in a manner equally advantageous. The edge-tools of the Mexicans, were some of copper and others of obsidian (itztli). The last substance was even the object of great mining undertakings, of which the traces are still to be perceived in an innumerable quantity of pits dug in the mountain of Knives, near the Indian village of Atotonilco el Grande. *

Besides the cocoa bags, each of which contained three riquipilli or 24,000 grains, besides the patolquachtli, or small bales of cotton

* See Vol. ii. p. 66.

cloth, also some metals were used by the antient
Mexicans as money, that is to say, as re-
presentative signs of things. In the great
market of Tenochtitlan, all sorts of goods
were purchased with gold dust, contained in
tubes of the feathers of aquatic birds. It was
requisite that these tubes should be transparent
for the sake of discovering the size of the
grains of gold. In several provinces, pieces
of copper to which the form of a T was given
where used as a currency. Cortez relates that
having undertaken to found cannons in Mexico,
and having dispatched emissaries for the dis-
covery of mines of tin and copper, he learned
that in the environs of Tachco (Tlachco or
Tasco) the natives employed in exchange,
pieces of melted tin*, which were as thin as
the smallest coins in Spain.

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66

* Cortez complains in his last letter to Charles the 5th, that after the taking of the capital, he was left without artillery and without arms. "Nothing", says he, "sharpens the genius of man more (no hay cosa que mas los ingenios de "los hombres aviva) than the idea of danger. Seeing myself on the point of losing what had cost us so much labour in acquiring, I was obliged to fall upon means of making cannons with the materials to be found in the country." 1 shall transcribe here the remarkable passage in which Cortez speaks of tin as money: "Topé entre los naturales de una provincia que se dice Tachco ciertas piecezuelas de estaño, a manera da “moneda muy delgada y procediendo en mi pesquisa hallé que en la dicha provincia y aun en otras, se trataba por moneda." (Lorenzana, p. 379. § XVII.)

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