The Mexicans were well acquainted with the usual mining operations for procuring gold, silver, lead, and tin. Iron was unknown to them, and we find bronze fulfilling a variety of uses, just as among the ancient Greeks and Romans. Very perfect tools were made from this compound of tin and copper; vessels of gold and silver were cast and chased, some of them of an enormous size; in the working of ornamental jewelry, and in the cutting of precious stones, their artificers highly excelled. A hard mineral substance--obsidian, furnished the material for their hardest tools--their axes, knives, razors, and swords. Their sculpture still evidences skill in workmanship, though the designs may be barbarous; and the mechanical skill which could raise and transport so large a monument as a porphry stone of fifty tons weight, without the aid of beasts of burden, from a distance of many leagues, cannot have been contemptible. They employed utensils of lacquered wood or of earthenware, and in the art of pottery were so advanced, that it was said by a historical writer of Europe, “There is no fictile vessel among ourselves which in skill of construction excels the vases formed by them.” And this, too, at a time when the fictile art was at a high pitch of excellence in Europe. Cotton was raised abundantly in the suitable localities; was woven into fabrics, sometimes beautifully fine; and these in turn made into a kind of armor by thickly quilting. Or it was interwoven with the “delicate hair of rabbits and other animals, which union produced a cloth of great warmth as well as beauty, of a kind altogether original; and on this they often laid a rich embroidery of birds, flowers, or some other fanciful device.”[16] The reader will remember the feather tapestry to which allusion has been made in the account of Greek and Roman art. It is singular to turn after the lapse of centuries and find this fabric in a more perfect form, and applied to an infinite variety of purposes, among a newly-discovered people, whose very existence was undreamt of by the ancient world. The gaudy plumes of the tropical birds most naturally have suggested their employment for dress or ornament, and the art of working them made so great progress as to have become a characteristic of the industry of the people. Tapestry and mantles of these materials could not be excelled, in brilliancy of hue and softness to the touch, by the most elaborate tissues of the loom. The scenes which everywhere met the eyes of the Spanish invader denoted a state of refinement and luxury, in some points forcibly reminding us of counterparts in Eastern life. One main cause of this development was perhaps the singular contrast which Mexican society offered to that of Greece, Rome, or modern monarchies, in the fact that trade was not only honorable in itself, but a pathway to high political dignity.