INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. 139 



The three circular plates, A, D, H, are respectively three, three and a half, and four inches 

 in diameter, and vary from yV to ^% of an inch in thickness. They are slightly concave on one 

 side, and convex on the other. Two are of copper, and one of hronze. The difference is per- 

 ceptible in their weight — the alloyed one being, of course, the lightest. One is so covered with 

 rust as to resemble iron. I took them for mirrors ; but they do not seem to have been polished. 

 In the catalogue they are named breastplates. They are cast; and marks, when the flasks or 

 two halves of the moulds met, are visible in the holes by which they were suspended. 



F, is one of two plates of silver, two and a half inches by one and a half They were thin, 

 uniform in thickness, and appeared to have been hardened, either with the hammer or an alloy. 

 The edges of one were as sharply defined as if they had been cut with shears, which Garcilasso 

 and other writers state were wholly unknown until introduced by the Spaniards. 



B, C, E, G-, are bronze hair or dress pins. E, the most perfect, is four inches long, with a 

 solid head and a rude wire ring soldered to the shank with silver solder — the first marked 

 example of hard soldering I have met with among old American metal wares. The joints of 

 the moulds are visible on it, as in others ; for the whole were cast, the holes included. 



I, a knife, resembling in its general outlines the one figured on Plate VIII. A cylindrical 

 haft three inches long, and not quite half an inch thick, connects the curved blade with a disc 

 or button, on which a fox or gamba is mounted, with a prey or young one in its mouth. The 

 surface of the haft is dented, to imitate a cord, or something like the plaited covering of a whip 

 handle. In this particular, the engraving does not do it justice. The blade is half an inch 

 deep, and not quite one-eighth of an inch thick at the back. There is positively no soldering — 

 the whole having been cast complete. The alloy is a low one of copper and tin. It approaches, 

 though it does not reach, the composition known as gun-metal, whose ingredients for small 

 articles are, an ounce and a half of tin to a pound of copper, or about 10 per cent. The edge 

 was rather easily cut by a penknife, and yet I think it was harder than gun-metal ; but the 

 difference, if any, in this respect, is satisfactorily accounted for by the well-known impurity of 

 South American copper and tin. Both have to be refined before being used by European and 

 American manufacturers. The former is believed to contain iron. 



This was clearly the common form of the old Peruvian knife, for numbers have been found, 

 all bearing the same general outlines. I have lately seen two, recently brought from Peru, 

 which approach still nearer to the cutting instrument of saddlers — the hafts being equi-distant 

 from the ends of the blades, and the edges curved uniformly. The blade of one is two inches 

 long, three-fourths of an inch wide in the middle, and at the back is a little over Jg of an inch 

 thick; the haft is imperfectly cylindrical, an inch long and ^^ thick, with the head of a llama 

 at the end, and has a small ring for a thread, to suspend it over the wearer's neck. 



J, K. Two views of the same thing — a minute bell, three-fourths of an inch in its longest 

 diameter, with the triangular shank one inch and three-eighths high ; rude in fabrication 

 and much corroded, and consequently its sonorous property very weak. A shapeless hole is in 

 the upper part, from the metal not having been sufficiently fluid at the time of casting. A 

 loose pebble of copper is within and forms the clapper. This interesting article was disinterred 

 near Cuzco in 1821. Hawks' bells, we know, were among the chief presents by which Colum- 

 bus gratified the Indians of the Antilles ; but it is not the less true that the brass-founders on 

 the Pacific possessed the art of making similar things, and this certainly might have been in- 

 ferred from their familiarity in mixing the ingredients. They had but to double the proportion 

 of tin used in the compounds of which their edge-tools were made. 



L. An axe or chopper, four inches deep and three wide at the cutting edge, which is well 

 formed and sharp. It has been used as a chisel, for the upper surface is partly spread out by 

 blows, probably from a wooden mallet. The extension of the head on either side was most 

 likely designed to serve as handles when thus employed. Though harder than copper, the 

 edge yielded readily to a penknife. 



