The natives showed a skill in other mechanical arts similar to that displayed by their manufactures of cloth. Every man in Peru was expected to be acquainted with the various handicrafts essential to domestic comfort. No long apprenticeship was required for this, where the wants were so few as among the simple peasantry of the Incas. But, if this were all, it would imply but a very moderate advancement in the arts. There were certain individuals, however, carefully trained to those occupations which minister to the demands of the more opulent classes of society. These occupations, like every other calling and office in Peru, always descended from father to son." The division of castes, in this particular, was as precise as that which existed in Egypt or Hindostan. If this arrangement be unfavorable to originality, or to the development of the peculiar talent of the individual, it at least conduces to an easy and finished execution, by familiarizing the artist with the practice of his art from childhood."

The royal magazines and the huacas or tombs of the Incas have been found to contain many specimens of curious and elaborate workmanship. Among these are vases of gold and silver, bracelets, collars, and other

manta. Para hazer estas ropas, tuuiero y tienen tan perfetas colores de carmesi, azul, amarillo, negro, y de otras suertes, que verdaderamente tienen ventaja á las de España." Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap 114.

14 Ondegardo, Rel. Prim. et Seg., MSS.-Garcilasso, Com. Real. Parte 1, lib. 5, cap. 7, 9, 13.

15 At least, such was the opinion of the Egyptians, who referred to this arrangement of castes as the source of their own peculiar dexterity in the arts. See Diodorus Sic., lib. 1, sec. 74.

G*

ornaments for the person; utensils of every description, some of fine clay, and many more of copper; mirrors of a hard, polished stone, or burnished silver, with a great variety of other articles made frequently on a whimsical pattern, evincing quite as much ingenuity as taste or inventive talent." The character of the Peruvian mind led to imitation, in fact, rather than invention, to delicacy and minuteness of finish, rather than to boldness or beauty of design.

That they should have accomplished these difficult works with such tools as they possessed is truly wonderful. It was comparatively easy to cast and even to sculpture metallic substances, both of which they did with consummate skill. But that they should have shown the like facility in cutting the hardest substances, as emeralds and other precious stones, is not so easy to explain. Emeralds they obtained in considerable quantity from the barren district of Atacames, and this inflexible material seems to have been almost as ductile in the hands of the Peruvian artist as if it had been made of clay." Yet the natives were un

16 Ulloa, Not. Amer., ent. 21.-Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., MS.-Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 114.-Condamine, Mém. ap. Hist. de l'Acad. Royale de Berlin, tom. ii. pp. 454-456.—The last writer says that a large collection of massive gold ornaments of very rich workmanship was long preserved in the royal treasury of Quito. But on his going there to examine them he learned that they had just been melted down into ingots to send to Carthagena, then besieged by the English! The art of war can flourish only at the expense of all the other arts.

17 They had turquoises, also, and might have had pearls, but for the tenderness of the Incas, who were unwilling to risk the lives of their people in this perilous fishery! At least, so we are assured by Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 8, cap. 23.

acquainted with the use of iron, though the soil was largely impregnated with it. The tools used were of stone, or more frequently of copper. But the material on which they relied for the execution of their most difficult tasks was formed by combining a very small portion of tin with copper." This composition gave a hardness to the metal which seems to have been little inferior to that of steel. With the aid of it, not only did the Peruvian artisan hew into shape porphyry and granite, but by his patient industry accomplished works which the European would not have ventured to undertake. Among the remains of the monuments of Cannar may be seen movable rings in the muzzles of animals, all nicely sculptured of one entire block of granite. It is worthy of remark that the Egyptians, the Mexicans, and the Peruvians, in their progress towards civilization, should never have detected the use of iron, which lay around them in abundance, and that they should each, without any knowledge of the other, have found a substitute for it in such a curious composition of metals as gave to their tools almost the temper of steel; " a secret that has been lost- or, to

21

18 "No tenian herramientas de hierro ni azero." Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., MS.-Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 5, lib. 4, cap. 4.

19 M. de Humboldt brought with him back to Europe one of these metallic tools, a chisel, found in a silver-mine opened by the Incas not far from Cuzco. On an analysis, it was found to contain 0.94 of copper and 0.06 of tin. See Vues des Cordillères, p. 117.

20 "Quoiqu'il en soit," says M. de la Condamine, "nous avons vu en quelques autres ruines des ornemens du même granit, qui représentoient des mufles d'animaux, dont les narines percées portoient des anneaux mobiles de la même pierre." Mém. ap. Hist. de l'Acad Royale de Berlin, tom. ii. p. 452.

"See the History of the Conquest of Mexico, Book 1, chap. 5.

speak more correctly, has never been discovered--by the civilized European.

I have already spoken of the large quantity of gold and silver wrought into various articles of elegance and utility for the Incas; though the amount was inconsiderable, in comparison with what could have been afforded by the mineral riches of the land, and with what has since been obtained by the more sagacious and unscrupulous cupidity of the white man. Gold was gathered by the Incas from the deposits of the streams. They extracted the ore also in considerable quantities from the valley of Curimayo, northeast of Caxamarca, as well as from other places; and the silver-mines of Porco, in particular, yielded them considerable returns. Yet they did not attempt to penetrate into the bowels of the earth by sinking a shaft, but simply excavated a cavern in the steep sides of the mountain, or, at most, opened a horizontal vein of moderate depth. They were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver—a mineral not rare in Peru-as an amalgam to effect this decomposition." Their method of smelting the ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations, where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains. The subjects of the Incas, in short, with all their patient perseverance, did little more than penetrate below the crust, the outer rind, as it were, formed over those golden caverns which lie hidden in the dark depths of the Andes. Yet what they gleaned aa Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 8, cap. 25.

from the surface was more than adequate for all their demands. For they were not a commercial people, and had no knowledge of money." In this they differed from the ancient Mexicans, who had an established currency of a determinate value. In one respect, however, they were superior to their American rivals, ince they made use of weights to determine the quantity of their commodities, a thing wholly unknown to the Aztecs. This fact is ascertained by the discovery of silver balances, adjusted with perfect accuracy, in

some of the tombs of the Incas.24

But the surest test of the civilization of a peopleat least, as sure as any-afforded by mechanical art is to be found in their architecture, which presents so noble a field for the display of the grand and the beautiful, and which at the same time is so intimately connected with the essential comforts of life. There is no

object on which the resources of the wealthy are more freely lavished, or which calls out more effectually the inventive talent of the artist. The painter and the sculptor may display their individual genius in crea tions of surpassing excellence, but it is the great monu. ments of architectural taste and magnificence that are stamped in a peculiar manner by the genius of the nation. The Greek, the Egyptian, the Saracen, the Gothic,-what a key do their respective styles afford

23 Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 5, cap. 7; lib. 6, cap. 8.— Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., MS.-This, which Bonaparte thought so incredible of the little island of Loo Choo, was still more extraordinary in a great and flourishing empire like Peru,—the country, too, which contained within its bowels the treasures that were one day to furnish Europe with the basis of its vast metallic currency.

24 Jlloa, Not. Amer., ent. 21.

Peru.-VOL. I.—14