Iron.—­have seen that the Greek mythological legends asserted that before the submergence of the great race over whom their gods reigned there had been not only an Age of Bronze but an Age of Iron.  This metal was known to the Egyptians in the earliest ages; fragments of iron have been found in the oldest pyramids.  The Iron Age in Northern Europe far antedated intercourse with the Greeks or Romans.  In the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, as I have shown, the remains of iron implements have been found.  In the “Mercurio Peruano” (tom. i., p. 201, 1791) it is stated that “anciently the Peruvian sovereigns worked magnificent iron mines at Ancoriames, on the west shore of Lake Titicaca.”  “It is remarkable,” says Molina, “that iron, which has been thought unknown to the ancient Americans, had particular names in some of their tongues.”  In official Peruvian it was called quillay, and in Chilian panilic.  The Mound Builders fashioned implements out of meteoric iron. (Foster’s “Prehistoric Races,” p. 333.)

As we find this metal known to man in the earliest ages on both sides of the Atlantic, the presumption is very strong that it was borrowed by the nations, east and west, from Atlantis.

Paper.—­The same argument holds good as to paper.  The oldest Egyptian monuments contain pictures of the papyrus roll; while in Mexico, as I have shown, a beautiful paper was manufactured and formed into books shaped like our own.  In Peru a paper was made of plantain leaves, and books were common in the earlier ages.  Humboldt mentions books of hieroglyphical writings among the Panoes, which were “bundles of their paper resembling our volumes in quarto.”

Silk Manufacture.—­The manufacture of a woven fabric of great beauty out of the delicate fibre of the egg-cocoon of a worm could only have originated among a people who had attained the highest degree of civilization; it implies the art of weaving by delicate instruments, a dense population, a patient, skilful, artistic people, a sense of the beautiful, and a wealthy and luxurious class to purchase such costly fabrics.

We trace it back to the most remote ages.  In the introduction to the “History of Hindostan,” or rather of the Mohammedan Dynasties, by Mohammed Cassim, it is stated that in the year 3870 B.C. an Indian king sent various silk stuffs as a present to the King of Persia.  The art of making silk was known in China more than two thousand six hundred years before the Christian era, at the time when we find them first possessed of civilization.  The Phoenicians dealt in silks in the most remote past; they imported them from India and sold them along the shores of the Mediterranean.  It is probable that the Egyptians understood and practised the art of manufacturing silk.  It was woven in the island of Cos in the time of Aristotle.  The “Babylonish garment” referred to in Joshua (chap. vii., 21), and for secreting which Achan lost his life, was probably a garment of silk; it was rated above silver and gold in value.