5 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



speaking of the expeditions sent out by Cortes in search of mines, he 

 says that Gonzalo de TTmbria, who went to Zacatula, reported that 

 there " the natives washed gold out of the sand in small troughs." 



If this were the only means employed, it is improbable that the 

 Spaniards saw it in all the instances and in the great quantity that 

 Cortez and Bernal Diaz describe ; and that their statements in this 

 regard are grossly exaggerated is evident from the fact that, with the 

 exception of a few small trinkets, not a relic of the beautiful things 

 of which they speak remains. Neither do the chronicles record a very 

 great amount actually gathered by the rapacious conqueror, yet all 

 the schemes which his mind could conceive must have been directed 

 to this one object, not for personal greed only, but to meet the expecta- 

 tions of the emperor, to whom, when he had feared that he was to 

 be deprived of his command, he had promised wealth and treasure. 

 Though torture of the most barbaric description was employed to 

 induce the natives to reveal the riches that they were supposed to hide, 

 no more were obtained ; and, in order that the Spanish king and those 

 about his court may afterward understand the absence of the treasure 

 in the kind and quantity which he had led them to expect, Cortes 

 cautiously wrote that it was all lost in that disastrous revolution which 

 first drove him from the city. 



It is not to be supposed either that the half-civilized Aztec was 

 aware of those many complex chemical processes by which silver is 

 separated from the ore. If we are to credit him with this, we must 

 call him a great metallurgist indeed, skilled in an art known even now 

 only to a few, and which demands all the machinery and scientific 

 accomplishments of our modern times. We know to-day that Mexico 

 is richer in silver than any other country in the Avorld, yet the mention 

 of this metal in the records is noticeably infrequent, and it is especially 

 significant that it does not figure in the articles of tribute. Let us, 

 nevertheless, believe the exaggerating Gomora, and we find that all 

 the silver actually collected by the Spaniards was only five hundred 

 marks. These facts can not be reconciled with a knowledge of smelt- 

 ing. The little silver they may have had was doubtless only the native 

 metal which is to be found in Mexico, or that which was obtained like 

 the gold from the placer-washings. 



Bronze, too, is in Cortes's list of metals, and if we accept bronze 

 we must also accept tin, its necessary component. Though Cortes 

 tells us that he saw tin in the market-place of Mexico, we find him 

 shortly afterward deploring its absence when he desires to cast some 

 cannon. He does not ask the natives to show him whence the tin of 

 the market-place was obtained, but sends only his own men "search- 

 ing in all directions" until it was at last found in the form of coins 

 among the natives of Tasco. Then, inconsistent with his past conduct, 

 he does not rob the natives of this very coveted metal, though his 

 "distress for it had reached its highest point," but he sends his Span- 



