it is wished, by simply inclining the upper part of the vase." Mr. Blake, whose personal observations, as well as his valuable collections, have furnished interesting materials for various chapters of this work, collected some curious specimens of the ancient potters' art from the Peruvian graves explored by him. One example, measuring twenty-two inches long, is in the form of a fish, with its tail partially turned round, like a salmon in the act of leaping; and another in that of a deer's head carrying a vase between its antlers. A third is modelled as a bird, with long legs like a crane; and when filled with water, and moved gently backward and forward, it emits sounds not unlike the notes of a bird, which most probably were designed to imitate the peculiar cry of the one represented in the form of the vessel. Small spherical vessels are very common, and Mr. Blake, who possesses several of them, conceives that they were probably designed for holding tea made from the leaves of cocoa, or some other plant. Similar vessels, he informs me, are now in use among the Indians; and an infusion of leaves of cocoa is frequently prescribed by their medical men. It is sipped from the cup through a small tube of reed or silver, eight or nine inches long. The apparent reproduction of Etruscan and other antique forms in the Peruvian vases, has been referred to, nor does the correspondence between such relics of the arts of ancient nations of the Old and New Worlds stop here. Mr. Joseph Marryat, while referring with undue disparagement to the products of Peruvian art, consequent on his limited means for its study, remarks, "Though this pottery is generally very uncouth in form and ornament, yet in some specimens the patterns, carved or indented, represent those well known as the 'Vitruvian scroll' and 'Grecian fret.' It is curious that a VOL. II. H people so apparently rude should have chosen ornaments similar to those adopted in the earliest Grecian age, and found on the Lantern of Demosthenes at Athens, 336 B.C., but which, however, it appears the Greeks themselves borrowed from the Assyrians. The 'honeysuckle pattern' is found also upon the earliest known monuments of Buddhist art, and the Etruscan upon the earliest Chinese bronzes."1 But while such coincidences have hitherto been turned to little account in the support of favourite theories of ancient migration, a much simpler ornament has supplied materials for endless speculation. An example of Peruvian black pottery, brought from Otusco, and now in the collection of the Historical Society of New York, measuring seven and a half inches high, is decorated with a row of well-defined Maltese crosses. The same "Cross of the Order of Malta" had already been noted with wonder among the sculptures at Mitla; while the cross at Palenque, detached from numerous accessories which are no less indispensable parts of the elaborate sculptured Tablet, as figured by Catherwood, has been made the basis of the most extravagant deductions from the assumed mission of the Apostle Thomas to Anahuac, which solved all difficulties for the elder Spanish priests, to the Phoenician Hercules, and the Astarte of the Sidonians, which the equally fanciful speculations of later times have substituted for the ecclesiastical legend.3 If indeed we found any general correspondence in forms and details between the ceramic arts of Greece and Peru, or the elaborate symbolism of medieval Christian art was reproduced even to a limited extent on the tablets of Mitla or Palenque, the idea of ancient relations to a common 2 1 Marryat's History of Pottery and Porcelain, p. 398. source would be inevitable. But while the Vitruvian scroll is discernible on pottery in the Collection of the Historical Society of New York, brought from Huarmachuco and Otusco, and the classic fret may be traced alike on the pottery and the sculptures of Central America and Peru, they are associated with a variety of designs bearing no trace of foreign origin, or with cruciform ornaments as little referrible to a Christian source as the constellation of the Southern Cross. Whilst, however, in their highest, no less than in their ruder stages, the arts of the New World are manifestly of native growth, and display in their ornamentation a style essentially peculiar and unique, there are not wanting specimens that challenge a comparison with some of the finer productions of classic art. They combine a grace and beauty of design which amply demonstrate the capacity of their executors for higher attainments, as is the case with two terra-cotta helmeted busts found at Oaxaca, and figured in the Antiquités Mexicaines. Of these Prescott remarks,- They might well pass for Greek, both in the style of the heads and the casques that cover them." The same might be said with nearly equal truth of the ancient vase of the Quichuas of Bolivia, figured in the group, Fig. 42, and also of a gracefully-modelled pendant vase, beautifully painted in patterns executed in red, yellow, and dark brown, which is engraved in D'Orbigny's L'Homme Américain, along with other curious and characteristic specimens of the ancient pottery of Bolivia and Peru.2 66 But the most interesting and valuable examples of the ceramic art of Southern America, are those which illustrate the physiognomy of its ancient civilized popu 1 Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. iii.; Exp. ii. pl. 36; Prescott's Mexico, App. part i. 2 L'Homme Américain, plates v. xiv. メ lation. By means of cranial and other physiological evidence, it has been maintained that the type of red man of the New World, from the Arctic circle to the Straits of Magellan, is so slightly varied, that, as Morton and Agassiz unite in affirming, "All the Indians constitute but one race, from one end of the continent to the other." The crania of the ancient graves are full of interest for us, and their revelations are considered in a subsequent chapter. But here, meanwhile, by means of the ingenious portraitures of the Peruvian potter's art, we find in the sepulchre, along with the fleshless skull, the sacred urn, which preserves for us the living features, the costume, and the familiar habits of the dead; and these features are neither those of the forest Indian, nor of the semi-civilized Mexican, but national features, as replete with a character of their own, as the fictile ware 1 Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 14. which supplies such valuable illustrations of the generations of an ancient and unknown past. One of those Peruvian drinking-vessels, of unusual beauty, from the Beckford Collection (Fig. 41), is placed by Mr. Marryat alongside of a beautiful Greek vessel of similar design, from the Museo Borbonico, Naples, without its greatly suffering by the comparison. In this Peruvian vessel, there is an individuality of character in the head at once suggestive of portraiture; and of the perfection to which the imitative arts had been carried by the ancient workmen, in the modelling perchance of some favourite inca, prince, or noble. A selection of portrait-vases is grouped together in Fig. 42, derived from various sources, but all illustrating a diversity of physiognomy in which we look in vain for the familiar characteristics of the Indian countenance, with its high cheek-bones, its peculiar form of mouth, and strongly-marked salient nose. The group, ranging from left to right, includes a small Mexican vase of unglazed red ware, in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia; an ancient portrait vase of the Quichuas of Bolivia, from D'Orbigny's L'Homme Américain; another of inferior workmanship, in the cabinet of the Historical Society of New York. This was brought from Berue, and re |