"I wonder why the man should choose to use copper," said I. "Though when you come to think of it, Dick," I added, "I don't see why it shouldn't make a pretty good arrow-head. It is soft metal, of course, but it is only soft by comparison with other metals. This wedge of copper weighs two or three ounces, and it is quite hard enough to go through the hide of an animal at twenty or thirty yards' distance when 'fired' with the force that this one was."
"That's true. And I expect the explanation is simple enough why the man uses copper. It is probably from necessity and not from choice. Like nearly all Mexicans of the peon class, he probably never has a cent of money in his possession. Consequently, as he can't buy a gun, he uses a bow; and for the same reason, being unable to procure iron for arrow-heads, he uses copper. I expect he comes from the settlement at the foot of the valley, for copper is a very common metal down there."
"Why should it be more common there than elsewhere?" I asked.
"Well, that's the question—and a very interesting question, too. The professor and I were down in that neighborhood about a year ago, and on going into the village we were a good deal surprised to find that every household seemed to possess a bowl or a pot or a cup or a dipper or all four, perhaps, hammered out of native copper—all of them having the appearance of great age. There were dozens of them altogether."
"How do they get them?" I asked.
"That's the question again—and the Mexicans themselves don't seem to know. They say, if you ask them, that they've always had them. And the professor did ask them. He went into one house after another and questioned the people, especially the old people, as to where the copper came from; but none of them could give him any information. I wondered why he should be so persevering in the matter—though when there is anything he desires to learn, no trouble is too much for him—but after we had left the place he explained it all to me, and then I ceased to wonder."
"What was his explanation, then?"
"He told me that when he was in Santa Fé about fifteen years before, he made the acquaintance of a Spanish gentleman of the remarkable name of Blake——"
"Blake!" I interrupted. "That's a queer name for a Spaniard."
"Yes," replied Dick. "The professor says he was a descendant of one of those Irishmen who fled to the continent in the time of William III, of England, most of them going into the service of the king of France and others to other countries—Austria and Spain in particular."