78 ANTIQUITY OF ANCIENT DAYS. 



sea, are stated by tradition to have introduced agriculture, manufactures, 

 arts, letters, architecture, and civilization, to the aborigines of Europe 

 and of Africa, in "the antiquity of ancient days." 



The colonies of Sidan and Tyre in Asia, of Carthage in Africa, and 

 some on the European, shores, in Greece, Italy, and Spain, have been 

 attributed , to these remote people. They are described in our venerated 

 records as the merchants, navigators, and wise men of their distant age. 



To pass the stormy Bay of Biscay, and encounter the boisterous seas 

 of the Northern ocean, these explorers must have possessed vessels with 

 officers and equipments, experienced pilots, and competent seamen, to 

 authorize- suspicion of enterprise, intelligence, and powers quite sufficient 

 to lead them " to compass the earth." 



The three years' voyages described in the Scriptures to have been 

 undertaken by Tyrian seamen, and the valuable productions enumerated 

 as portions of their cargoes, illustrate the mercantile character of that 

 age, confirmed by curious modern discoveries in Egypt and Assyria. 



In the hazardous voyages of the Phoenicians, in search of tin, we 

 discover some proof of its importance in the arts and manufactures of 

 antiquity, more than equivalent to its uses at the present day. 



The comparative absence of steel and iron tools among the relics of 

 ancient nations, may be explained by the fact that they possessed a sub- 

 stitute in the easy combination of tin with copper, which, by accident or 

 their accurate acquaintance with these metals, enabled them to produce 

 results in the arts which still astonish us. 



The immense rocks removed, ornamented, and elevated upon ancient 

 temples and pyramids, or carved in their natural positions for habita- 

 tions of the living and cemeteries for the dead, have long believed to 

 have been wrought without the employment of iron tools. - Bronze was 

 certainly fabricated at very distant periods for the same uses as steel 

 and iron now. 



Layard describes ornaments, weapons, tools, and armor of the ancient 

 Assyrians of copper "hardened, as in, Egypt, by an alloy of tin." 



The natives of Peru executed some significant works in porphyry and 

 granite, hewn by similar implements of bronze or copper, tempered by 

 a small alloy of tin. 



By means of such tools, they wrought hard veins of silver, and- are 

 supposed to have engraved the emerald. 



M. de Humboldt carried with him to Europe a chisel, from a silver 

 mine opened by the Indians, not far from Cuzco, which, upon analysis, 

 was found to contain ninety-four parts of copper, united with .06 of tin. 



The writer has been enabled to procure the partial examination of a 



