734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



United States — no better than, and in some respects inferior in artis- 

 tic merit and finish to, many like articles excavated from the Western 

 mounds, or known to have been the work of our historic Indians ; or 

 to the arrow-heads and lance-tips which are still fabricated by the 

 Shoshones and Flatheads on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. In all 

 this large Aztec collection there is not a single metal tool or fabrica- 

 tion, and in only a very few instances have any such articles of un- 

 questionable antique origin ever been found in Mexico. And of the 

 pottery and stone-work in the shape of idols, small and big, masks, 

 and vases, and of which there are many specimens in the museum and 

 throughout the country, it is sufficient to say that it is all of the rudest 

 kind, and derives its chief attraction and interest from its hideous- 

 ness and almost entire lack of anything which indicates either ar- 

 tistic taste or skill on the part of its fabricators. Take any fair 

 collection of what purports to be the products of Aztec skill and 

 workmanship, and place the same side by side with a similar collec- 

 tion made in any of the most civilized of the islands of the Pacific — 

 the Feejees, the Marquesas, or the Sandwich Islands, or from the 

 tribes that live on Vancouver's Sound, and the superiority of the lat- 

 ter would be at once most evident and unquestionable. In all fair- 

 ness, therefore, all controversy with the writer's position, if there is 

 any, ought to be considered as settled ; for there is no more infallible 

 test and criterion of the civilization and social condition of either a 

 man or a nation than the tools which he or it works with ; and stone 

 hatchets and stone arrow-heads are the accompaniments of the stone 

 age and all that pertains thereto, and their use is not compatible with 

 any high degree of civilization or social refinement. But this is not 

 all. It is now generally conceded that the Aztec tribes, that have 

 become famed in history, did not number as many as two hundred and 

 fifty thousand, and that the area of territory to which their rule was 

 mainly confined did not much exceed in area the State of Rhode Isl- 

 and. The first sight of a horse threw them into a panic, and they 

 had no cattle, sheep, swine, dogs, or other domestic animals — save the 

 turkey — of any account. They had no written language, unless the 

 term can be properly applied to rude drawings of a kind similar to 

 those with which the North American Indian ornaments his skin or 

 scratches upon the rocks. It is very doubtful if they had anything 

 which could be regarded as money, and in the absence of beasts 

 of burden, of any system of roads and of wheeled vehicles, or, in- 

 deed, of any methods of transportation other than through the mus- 

 cular power and backs of men, they could have had but little inter- 

 nal trade or commerce. Prcscott assigns to the Aztec city of Mexico 

 a population of three hundred thousand, and sixty thousand houses, and 

 abundant fountains and reservoirs of water ; but a very brief reflec- 

 tion would seem to make it evident that no such population could have 

 been regularly supported, mainly with bulky agricultural food trans- 



