136 



INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



taken for small mortars. One was of clay, the other of a species of soapstone. 

 two inches in depth or diameter. 



Neither exceeded 



Impleiiieiils and Utensils in S 



I am not aware of any large sized ancient crucibles having been recovered ; yet it is evident 

 the old founders had them, since they turned out castings of several hundred pounds weight. 

 Examples abound in the early historians. Gomarra mentions basins in a bath belonging to 

 Atabalipa, " one of which weighed eight arrobas of gold, which makes two hundred weight 

 English." In a vault at Cuzco " an entire sepulchre [coffin] of silver was dug up, so thick and 

 massive that it was worth fifty thousand pieces of eight." A vessel of gold was accidentally 

 found, and it weighed between two and three hundred pounds ; "for the Indians make greater 

 or less of these as occasion requires, using them to boil drink or liquors in." Now, as they had 

 no bellows, it may be asked, how such masses of metal were fused? Garcilasso states that in 

 reducing silver from the ore, " they melted it down in earthen or clay pots, which they carried 

 from place to place ;" and that, instead of bellows, they used blow-pipes " made of copper and 

 about a yard long, the ends of which were narrowed that the breath might pass more forcibly 

 by means of the contraction ; and as the fire was to be more or less, so accordingly they used 

 ten or twelve of these pipes at once, as the quantify of metal did require. And still they con- 

 tinue this way, though the invention of bellows much more easier and forcibly raises the fire." 



The instrument represented at F F', I naturally enough took for a smoothing-iron, or an old 

 American substitute for that indispensable implement of our laundresses^ but I was greatly 

 mistaken. It is an ancient plasterer's trowel, cut out of one stone, handle and all. Its 

 dimensions are those of the common sad-iron ; the face being four inches by three and a half, 

 anil a little over half an inch thick. It is pretty well scratched by use. 



This is another of those coincidences of thought in inventors, far separated from each other 

 by distance or by time. Indeed, every discovery of new lands and strange people has shown 

 the uniformity of human efforts at mental and material civilization, a result that has frequently 



