In the hazardous voyages of the Phœnicians, 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 substitute 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 habitations 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 bronze crowbar, or long-bandied chisel, from an ancient mine of silver in Peru. An exact analysis has been delayed, but of from ten to twelve per cent. of tin are understood to be combined with the copper.
This alloy is employed for casting of bell-metal and cannon, for the touch-hole of muskets, mirrors, or specula, for astronomical observations, musical instruments, and formerly for coats of impenetrable armor.
These affinities in the manufactures of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and ancient Peruvians, offer some suggestions of very remote intercommunication between portions of civilized Asia and the natives of the Andes, further elucidated by reference to other similarities in their mode of agriculture by irrigation, and the employment of manures; the construction and suspension of bridges; their causeways and aqueducts; the working of mines, knitting, netting, spinning, weaving, and dyeing; their roads, posts, inns, and grainaries, arms and armor.