Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/506

490 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF true of temperate regions ? Whatever be the cause, the fact has in all likelihood had its share in hindering or retarding the progress of civiliza- tion in the one as well as in promoting it in the other. Copper ores are known to exist in Sumatra, — in Tiraur, — and have, of late years, been discovered, and wrought in the territory of Sambas in Bor- neo. A copper mine has long been known to be wrought in Limun in Sumatra. Copper is found in its native state more frequently than any other of the useful metals, and hence it has been judi- ciously conjectured, that it was used at a more ear- ly age for economical purposes than any other. In the Indian Islands this may probably be true of the tribes in whose country copper exists, as in Sumatra and Timur, from whence lumps of native copper have been brought, but it can hardly apply to some of the more civilized tribes, in whose country copper is not found at all, as Java. In one or two of the languages, those of the people, I think, in whose country copper is found, the metal is de- signated by a native name, but the general, almost the universal, one, tambaga, is Sanskrit, from which I infer, that the fusing of copper from an ore is probably an art in which the natives were instructed by the Hindus. Almost all the casts of Hindu images, and other relics of Hinduism found in Java, are a mixture of copper and iron j but I