72 The First Technical Use of Gold 



were very unwilling to part with; snch as images of the 

 chief and his wife, in a sitting posture, made of gold, about 

 ten inches high, and sixteen ounces weight, and some other 

 imitations of various animals, which were used as ornaments 

 in the dwellings of the chiefs, and were regarded as superior 

 articles of art. These were the cause of the first attack on 

 the property of the inhabitants. In revenge for the outrages 

 they suffered from their oppressors, when gold ornaments 

 became scarce, they refused to show where they obtained this 

 metal in its natural state. 



The ornaments obtained by the first visitors being regarded 

 merely as articles of commerce, they were mostly melted 

 into ingots, so that very few of those specimens of early art 

 remain ; but as they were in the habit of burying some of 

 their ornaments in the tombs of the caciques, and as some 

 of these burial-places are occasionally discovered, samples of 

 these ancient ornaments have been secured, which furnish 

 interesting illustrations of the first attempt in this branch of 

 industry. We shall, therefore, proceed to describe 



THE INDIAN TOMBS. 



Burials were performed by the Peruvians in two different 

 ways, above and below ground. The still existing elevated 

 mounds remind us of the Egyptian catacombs, though those 

 of the Peruvians are smaller, and constructed of stone and 

 earth. These monuments of the Incas are of a pyramidal 

 form and different dimensions, some being more than one 

 hundred and fifty feet high, and are known by the name 

 1 ' Cucara." They are built in subdivisions formed of large 

 slabs of slate. In one of these divisions the body was placed, 

 and in another the utensils and ornaments. Sometimes gold in 

 its natural state was left in an earthenware vessel, mixed with 

 pounded charcoal. Where the chief or governor was interred, 

 an imitation of the sun or the moon -was placed in the tomb. 

 The sun was represented by a flat round plate of gold, or 

 alloy of copper, about an eighth of an inch thick, and some- 

 times more than twenty inches in diameter. The moon was 

 made of a silver plate, showing the half moon. A neck ring 

 and bracelets, a waistband and ankle rings, made of gold, 

 sometimes alloyed with copper, were also left with the body 

 of a chief. These rings are from one and a quarter to two 

 inches in width, and opened and closed as a spring. They 

 are thin, and perfectly equal in width and thickness through- 

 out. In fact, they are so perfect that it is difficult to imagine 



