Volltext Seite (XML)
NATIVE COPPER. 101 metallic characters, this opinion may he considered as very probable, especially when supporfed by the account which is given of some of the native tribes of the north western parts of America, who, though little civilised, have applied to domestic purposes the native copper w r ith which their country abounds. It is also known, that, at a very carlv period, domestic utensils, and instruments of war, were made of a compound of this metal and tin : even during the Trojan war, as wc learn trom Homer, the combatants had no other armour but what was made ot bronze, which is a mixture of copper and tin. Macro- bius, who wrote in the- fourth century, informs us, that when the Etruscans intended building a new city, they marked out its limits with a coulter of brass, and that priests of the Sabines were in the habit ot cutting their hair with a knife of the same metal *. The Greek and Homan sculptors executed fine works of art in por phyry, granite, and hard other minerals, by means of their copper instruments. The great hardness ot the ancient copper instruments, induced historians to be lieve, that the ancients possessed a particular secret for tempering copper, and converting it into steel, l'heie is no doubt the axes and other ancient tools were al most as sharp as steel instruments ; but it was by a mixture with tin, and not by any tempering, that they acquired their extreme hardness. Axes, and othei in struments of copper, have been discovered in the tombs of the ancient Peruvians, and also in those of the early inhabitants of Mexico. These were so hard, that the sculptors of these countries executed large works in the hardest greenstone and basaltic porphyry : their jewellers G 3 cut * Macrvbius, Saturnalia, lib. v. cap. 19* p. 29. 512.