Nor must we forget, that the useful arts, and among them the art of working metals, were lost to the generality of mankind, in consequence of that universal calamity. Gold, silver and copper seem to be the metals of which the knowledge and uses were earliest recovered after that period; owing, no doubt, to their being oftener found on the surface of the earth, or in the beds of streams--to their more frequent occurrence in the metallic state, and to the greater ease with which they are separated from their ores. Copper, though greatly inferior to iron, yet possesses considerable tenacity, and sufficient hardness to furnish a substitute in the construction of cutting instruments, and either pure, or alloyed with tin to increase its hardness, constituted the materials of which were formed the swords, hatchets, and artist's tools of many ancient nations. The arms and tools of the American nations were similarly made, and by means of this awkward substitute, the Mexicans and Peruvians made considerable advances in manufactures and the arts--greater perhaps than any other people unacquainted with the use of iron. The inconvenience experienced by these nations from their ignorance of this metal, and the awkward expedients to which in consequence they had recourse, afford an important lesson in teaching us what estimate to make of the value of a substance, which, its very requisiteness to every common purpose of life so familiarizes us with, as to cause us daily to pass by with little or no notice. The evils which we are taught would inevitably follow its loss, make a deeper impression of its importance, than all the advantages, manifold though they be, which in heedless enjoyment, we are continually deriving from its possession. With no better substitute for iron tools in cutting stone, than the sharp edged fragments of flint,--without carriages, or machines of any kind,--how tedious and laborious must have been the work of separating from the quarry, of shaping, of transporting to a distance, and elevating to a proper height, the huge blocks of stone with which the Mexicans and Peruvians contrived to erect their temples and other public edifices!--structures that have commanded the admiration of more modern nations. What toil and what time must have been expended in the operation of dividing a single block, by means of continued rubbing of one rock against another! What pains and what efforts of ingenuity must it have cost the artizans of Montezuma, without the aid of nails, to form the ceilings of his palace, by an arrangement of the planks so artificial, as mutually to sustain each other! With what eagerness the Peruvian would have accepted nails of iron, to fasten together the pieces of timber he employed in building, and have laid aside as worthless, the cords of hemp his necessities compelled him to apply to that purpose! What an acquisition would have been even a common needle, in the place of the thorn, to which, in the fashioning