A DESCEIPTION OF THE INDIAN ANTIQUITIES BROUGHT EROM CHILE AND PERU, 

 BY THE U. S. NAVAL ASTRONOMICAL EXPEDITION. 



BY THOMAS EWBANK. 



Surprising as are tlie mutations wliicli the earth has undergone in her internal and external 

 features, they are not greater than those to which man is suhject. With him, as with it, noth- 

 ing is intended to he stationary. An upheaving power is always at work on the deep strata of 

 human influences, and hence the ancient elements of his existence are here and there hreaking 

 up and arranging themselves in new forms. Usages and institutions adapted to his infancy are 

 becoming obsolescent. Instead of prostrating his intellect to tradition, and yielding passive 

 submission to puerile errors and old organized wrongs, he is beginning to be agitated by a dif- 

 ferent order of wonders. Miracles are emanating from the workshop, and marvels of science 

 taking the place of legends and legerdemain. A spirit of keen and comprehensive research is 

 inaugurated. Besides contemplating the present and anticipating the future, he looks to the 

 past, and longs to know what his species have been doing on the earth, what parts of it have 

 been occupied, and how long. 



At present we have little more knowledge of the past career of mankind than of that of the 

 planet; not even as much, for history, such as it is, is limited to a fraction of the earth's pojju- 

 lation, goes back but a little way, and is then lost in the void beyond. It is at best like a 

 turbulent geological epoch — a broken record of successive paroxysms of mental darkness and 

 of physical commotions. It is not four centuries since the existence of the red race and of the 

 Western Continent were announced, and not half that time since the Australian and Polynesian 

 regions were made known. Of the early inhabitants of this hemisphere nothing is known. 

 Their origin, epoch, and deeds, are alike shrouded in silence and gloom — in darkness so dense 

 that not a ray of light has been found to penetrate it. Even of their successors or descendants, 

 so late as three centuries back, we have learned but little, and still less of their arts ; much less 

 than ought to be known, considering the opportunities for collecting information that have 

 occurred. But a better feeling is becoming manifest, and numerous and systematic efforts are 

 being made to recover, as far as possible, the history of a people we have superseded, and one 

 apparently on the eve of disappearing forever. 



But can anything be now ascertained of remotely extinct j)eoples whom history does not 

 mention? Certainly. Except unreclaimed savages, few people have passed away without 

 leaving their marks in pottery and in some of the metals, if in nothing else. The earth is 

 more or less charged with such remains, and they are unimpeachable witnesses of the condition 

 of the people who owned them. Since the discovery they have been dug up both in South and 

 North America, and will assuredly abound more and more as civilization sweeps over the forests; 

 nor is it at all improbable that specimens of a higher order than any yet found of these medal- 

 lions of aboriginal arts will be disinterred, and such as may equal in interest those recently 

 found in the debris of Babylon, Nineveh, Sidon, and other oriental cities. 



To gather together the scattered fragments of Indian art is neither useless nor profitless. 

 Could we obtain a knowledge of the means by which the old race of artisans and engineers of 



