INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. 115 



worksliops, and so little change has time wrought in it, that it might readily be taken for a piece 

 of a carpenter's hone. 



Peruvian cutting-tools of hronze which I have met with have been comparatively little har- 

 dened, the proportions of tin not exceeding from two to three per cent. Now, why was this? 

 Because old workmen preferred keeping them so far malleable that they might be readily 

 thinned by the hammer, and have only the finishing-edge to put on by the hone, to making 

 them brittle and hard, when nothing but tedious abrasion could restore or bring up a jagged 

 or broken blade. From these small amounts of tin, some writers have surmised that the 

 knowledge of giving different degrees of hardness to copper by varying the proportion of tin 

 put in was not known, and that the alloys were natural ones. There are too many facts to 

 overthrow and too few to sustain this hypothesis. The instruments described in this paper are 

 of different degrees of hardness, and are certainly artificial compounds. They have by far the 

 hardest cutting-edges of any I have ever seen, and show clear enough to my mind that the 

 knowledge that copper is hardened in proportion to the quantity of tin mixed with it was pos- 

 sessed in ancient Chile and Peru, in Mexico and Central America ; that it could be made as 

 hard as bell-metal that resists the file; and that brittleness kept pace with the hardness. Bells, 

 we know, were made before the conquest in Peru, Mexico, and Mechoacan, and of alloys of gold 

 as well as of copper. 



I think these tools go far to explain some matters relating to remote American civilization 

 that have hitherto been sore puzzles, though they may be insufficient wholly to account for the 

 dressed stone, the porphyritic and other sculptures of Cuzco, Uxmal, Palenque, &c. 



Plate IX.- — Pottery. 



"With the exception of figures 10, 11, 12, the pottery represented on this plate was taken 

 from a family tomb near Arica, in Peru. Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, were intended to heat as well as 

 to hold liquids. None of them has ever been glazed ; nor have the slightest efforts at ornament 

 been expended on them. In texture, hardness, materials, and rough feeling to the touch, they 

 resemble our sand crucibles, and were possibly as well adapted to endure heat. Their capacities 

 are, respectively, three quarts, one quart, one quart^ a pint and a quarter, two pints and a half. 

 These measures are not minutely accurate, but quite sufficient for the purpose of this description. 



The bottoms of all are convex externally, and somewhat conical. There was a reason for 

 this. The scarcity of fuel led the ancient Peruvians to a device for economizing it identical in 

 principle with that of the classical ancients, and of most of the peoples of the eastern world — 

 one still common to all the Latin nations, and the application of which has become a standing 

 feature in our cooking-stoves and ranges. They confined the fire between two low walls, (which 

 formed, in fact, a shallow, horizontal flue,) and placed upon them a plate of stone, having cut 

 in it a row of two, three, or more openings suited to receive the pots and caldrons, and allow 

 their lower halves to descend into and interrupt the passing flame. Thus, the heat not taken 

 up by the bottom of the first vessel passed on to the second, &c., so that, when the smoke 

 escaped at the end of the flue, the greater part of the heat had been absorbed by the pots. 



Figures 6, 7, 8^ 9. Four stoppers or covers. The vessel to which No. 9 belonged was prob- 

 ably broken in opening the tomb, as it has not been received with the rest. All are hollow, of 

 the same hard material as the vessels, and pretty uniform in thickness — from one eighth of an 

 inch to three sixteenths. Each has a hole at the smallest end, as represented. These covers 

 are in some respects superior to our close-fitting pot-lids, since a vase could never be exploded 

 by an accumulation of steam. Ordinarily, the vapor would escape between the stopper and the 

 cavity in which it rested ; while a sudden evolution of steam would partially, and for a moment 

 only, raise the stopper. It could never be blown out of its seat during the absence or in the 

 presence of the cook. 



The vessels 1 and 5 show marks of having been much used; while the appearance of 2, 3, and 

 4 indicates that they were new, or nearly new, when interred. The loops moulded on 1, 2, and 



