Among these are vases of gold and silver,
bracelets, collars, and other ornaments for the person; utensils
of every description, some of fine clay, and many more of copper;
mirrors of a hard, polished stone, or burnished silver, with a
great variety of other articles made frequently on a whimsical
pattern, evincing quite as much ingenuity as taste or inventive
talent. *16 The character of the Peruvian mind led to imitation,
in fact, rather than invention, to delicacy and minuteness of
finish, rather than to boldness or beauty of design.
[Footnote 16: Ulloa, Not. Amer., ent. 21. - Pedro Pizarro,
Descub. y Conq., Ms. - Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 114. -
Condamine, Mem. ap. Hist. de l'Acad. Royale de Berlin, tom. II.
p. 454-456.
The last writer says, that a large collection of massive gold
ornaments of very rich workmanship was long preserved in the
royal treasury of Quito. But on his going there to examine them,
he learned that they had just been melted down into ingots to
send to Carthagena, then besieged by the English! The art of war
can flourish only at the expense of all the other arts.]
That they should have accomplished these difficult works with
such tools as they possessed, is truly wonderful. It was
comparatively easy to cast and even to sculpture metallic
substances, both of which they did with consummate skill. But
that they should have shown the like facility in cutting the
hardest substances, as emeralds and other precious stones, is not
so easy to explain.
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