Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/541

Rh, unassisted by natives, "with the necessary tools to bring him samples of it." After this a sufficient quantity is procured, though it cost him, he says, "a work of much labor."

But, however much this may indicate the possession of tin among the natives, we know to-day that there is none in Tasco; and though, perhaps, it may be found in Michoacan and Jalisco, the Mexicans have not thought it worth their while to work it. Baron Humboldt, who paid a visit to Tasco, had perhaps the best opportunities for the discovery of a mine, but nowhere does he speak of finding any traces of such ancient works. Though he must have known what Cortes had said concerning Tasco, he tells us that there the natives obtained not tin, but silver. This tin of Tasco, it should be noted, is not mentioned by Bernal Diaz or Gomora, and this, with the tin seen on sale in the Mexican market, both vague and barren of description as to how it was obtained, are the only instances in the authorities upon which our belief is based. Tin, strange to say, is not embraced in that well-known list of tributes which were paid to Montezuma by the subordinate tribes, neither can it claim the distinction accorded to copper and gold to be figured in the ancient paintings. The axes figured therein, we have heretofore seen, could scarcely have been an alloy of copper and tin, for their shape corresponds to the axes in our museums, which are of hammered pure copper.

Our belief, then, in what Cortes has said concerning this metal is somewhat shaken, but additional reason for discrediting him will be hereinafter presented when we come to consider the circumstances that influenced his statements.

The fact that lead is also enumerated is enough to warn us to take these statements cum grano salis. I know of no place in Mexico where lead is worked to-day, though Humboldt tells us that in 1803 it was feebly mined in the extreme northeast. It is found to a limited extent in the States of Oaxaca and Chihuahua, but it is associated with silver; and, if the natives made use of this supply, which is extremely doubtful, they must have possessed the scientific knowledge by means of which the two metals are separated. Cortes is sustained in this statement as to lead only by Gomora; and he, while designedly reasserting what his master and patron had already said about the metals of the market-place, is careful, however, to add the important qualification that "lead was scarce."

The subordinate Cortes, on landing in Mexico, shrewdly saw in its conquest an opportunity for his ambition. He feared that he might in this be superseded by another should he await the forms of Spanish law, so he contrived an election by which he was irregularly made a captain-general, and then boldly undertook a military expedition without a royal charter.

Thus there is hardly a doubt, and his letters plainly indicate it, that his prime object in these reports was to so frame them as to