148 INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



herb, tree, plant, and fish, as well as human figures. "Many attended to nothing else but to 

 make new inventions and rare works in metals." (Garcilasso, B. 3, cap. 24.) The uniformity 

 and universality of the process of their founding necessarily made them proficients in it. 

 Whatever forms could be modelled in wax were without difficulty reproduced in metal. Peru- 

 vians and Mexicans are still famous for tlieir carving and modelling jjowers. 



The Peruvians had gold, silver, and copper wire, most likely drawn through die-plates of 

 stone, though those of bronze may have been used for the softer materials. Laplanders draw 

 tin wire through perforations made in bone or in reindeer's horns. Garcilasso remarks that 

 his ancient countrymen were expert in boring metals, but certainly not with anything like our 

 drills. The principle was probably that of abrasion— the same as all savages have developed, 

 and in the practice of which most are singularly expert; perforating shells, bones, teeth, stones, 

 and even glass, with a rapidity that would puzzle white artists. A revolving stick of wood, or 

 copper, whose point is supplied with emery, sand, or other natural cutting-powder, is in their 

 hands what a drill is in ours; it is the germ of the lapidary's wheel — its use the origin of 

 his art. 



That iron was employed in remote times in America, may eventually be established. At the 

 advent of Manco Capac, the Peruvians are represented in the lowest depths of bai-barism. Their 

 improvement began with him, and continued under his successors to the arrival of the Spaniards. 

 During that period it is conceded that tools of iron were not used, and yet structures of massive 

 cut stones, weighing several tons each, it is said, were then erected, and the stones so accurately 

 jointed that not the point of a penknife can find entrance. The question naturally arises, with 

 what material were they cut? It has been said, with tempered copper. When we ask how 

 that metal was made sufficiently hard, and at the same time retain other essential properties 

 of a granite-cutting implement, we are told the art has been lost! In thus cutting a knot of 

 their own tying, writers have unnecessarily perplexed themselves and their readers, and without 

 perceiving the contradiction involved. Apj)lied to Americans because they had no iron, the 

 dictum has been oflered to account for similar sculjitures of the Egyptians who had steel, and 

 who had constant intercourse with the oldest city of the earth — or one of the oldest, and memo- 

 rable for its fiabrication of swords that without injury to their edges could chop iron bolts 

 in two. 



It is more reasonable to infer that the old dressed-granite buildings of Central America and 

 Peru date from times anterior to those of the Incas — times in which iron was known. The 

 comparative freshness of such remains presents no difficulty. The advent of Manco Capac is 

 carried back to the twelfth century — only seven hundred years — while architectural and other 

 antiquities equally fresh are extant in Europe and the East, and are known to be from two to 

 three thousand years old. That there was a jirevious epoch of civilization in Peru has always 

 been confirmed by traditions of the natives relating to ancient structures. Ignorant of the 

 origin of these, they did exactly what jjeople of the Old World did under similar circumstances — 

 ascribed them to a race of beings superior to themselves — to the gods. Garcilasso himself refers 

 them to a peojile who had iron. There is one page of his work bearing on the subject of special 

 interest, and the more so since ancient monolithic structures in Peru are no longer a question. 

 They are yet extant. 



Mayta Capac, the fourth Inca, subdued the Indians of Tiahuanaco. " Amongst the mighty 

 works and buildings of that country there is a certain hill or heap of earth thrown up by hand, 

 which is so high that it is a subject of great admiration ; and, lest with time it should settle or 

 sink lower, it is founded on great stones, cemented together ; and to what end this was done 

 no man can conjecture, unless it were, like the pyramids in Egypt, to remain for a trophy of 

 the greatness of that monarch who erected it. On one side of this mighty heap are the statues 

 of two giants, cut in stone, with long robes to the ground, and wreaths or binders about their 

 heads, which being much impaired by time, shows the antiquity of them. There is also a 

 strange wall to be seen, raised with stones of an extraordinary bigness ; and what is most won- 



