Cortes ordered, says Valentini, eight thousand arrow-heads of copper and they were “made ready for delivery in a single week.” It seems, therefore, the Aztecs were accustomed to handling copper in considerable quantities. It is said they made a mixture of copper and tin which they used for tools, and certain implements and objects are found with a percentage of tin in them, but nevertheless their keenest weapons and their most serviceable tools were made of obsidian, which was also the case with the Mayas. Their hardened copper was useful for some purposes, but they were unable to harden it sufficiently to sustain an edge. For cutting stone in two they used, as the Eskimo does to-day, a thin blade and sand. In their case the blade was copper tempered with tin, and in the Eskimo’s case it was formerly probably a thin blade of bone, while now it is an old steel saw. Silver as well as gold and copper was known to the tribes of the Central regions of America, and lead also was one of their metals, though little was done with it. There is a tendency to exaggerate the mechanical as well as the art skill displayed in objects that were made on this continent, before the whites came, or that were not discovered till recently. The reason for this seems to be that we love mystery and it is too tame to refer the finds to the ordinary “Indian,” who in the popular mind has no ability in any direction, so they are ascribed to that “mysterious” race that we have tried in vain to find some evidence of besides mystery. Daniel Wilson gives an example of how this mystery bubble bursts on the slightest accurate investigation. Some tools were found in the neighbourhood of Brockville, Canada, of which Dr. Reynolds, who exhibited them, stated: “There is also a curious fact, which these relics appear to confirm, that the Indians possessed the art of hardening and tempering copper, so as to give it as good an edge as iron or steel. This ancient Indian art is now entirely lost.”[267] When these Brockville relics were submitted to careful examination it appeared that they were not “different in any material respect from the native copper of Lake Superior.”[268] This was all very well, but Wilson was not satisfied with Reynolds’s ascribing these relics to the “present Indian race” and goes on to say: “The evidences of antique sepulture, however, are unmistakable; and other proofs suggest a different origin,” and he proceeds to call in Squier’s aid and ascribes them forthwith to our fabulous friends, the “Moundbuilders.” One of his proofs was a terra-cotta mask found with the articles, in which he saw a skill beyond that of the “Indians,” but which in reality, judging by the illustration he gives of it, is nothing remarkable. Yet Wilson continues: “It cannot admit of doubt that in them [the mining operations] we look on the traces of an imperfectly developed yet highly interesting native civilisation, pertaining to centuries long