ec times. This is adduced from the discovery of a
vessel containing quicksilver, during the excavations, in 1897, of the
celebrated ruins of Palenque, in Chiapas. The native miners of Mexico
have always won gold from the rocks, it is stated, by the method of
crushing ore and treating it with quicksilver in amalgamation, and it
is considered that the method has not been derived from the white man,
but was handed down from the Mayas. Be this as it may, the early
Mexicans carried on regular mining operations, extracting metals and
metallic ores from the rocks by means of pits and galleries, and these,
in some cases, furnished the Spaniards, after the Conquest, with the
first indication of the existence of mineral-bearing veins. Gold was
taken, however, among these prehistoric people, mainly from the
stream-beds, or _placer_ deposits, where it had been concentrated by
nature. Gold was used more as a decorative or useful material than as a
medium of currency, among the Aztecs, as among the Incas of Peru.
However, in Mexico, transparent quills full of gold-dust were used as
money. Gold ornaments figured largely in the military pomp and domestic
decoration. The wonderful representations of animals and plants which
they fashioned, and the remarkable presents of gold and silver which
Montezuma made to Cortes, among them two great circular plates "as
large as the wheel of a carriage," attest the relative abundance of the
precious metal which the early Mexican possessed. How similar were
these objects to those which figured in the dramatic scenes enacted in
the Andes of Peru nearly three thousand miles away, a few years later,
the student will recollect. Cortes told Montezuma that the Spaniards
"suffered from a disease, which only gold could cure," and the Aztec
monarch sent supplies of the yellow metal to alleviate this!

In addition to the mining and reduction of the ores of the three noble
metals, gold, silver, and mercury, which these people understood and
practised, were similar operations regarding lead, copper, and tin. Of
the two latter they formed an alloy, and made tools of the bronze.
Small T-shaped pieces of tin, moreover, were used as a medium of
exchange or currency. As to iron, it appears to be the case that they
were unacquainted with its use, notwithstanding that the ore of the
metal is exceedingly plentiful. Nevertheless, it is stated that iron
was mined and wrought into use at Tula, the Toltec centre, in the Stat