22 



INTRODUCTION 



attached to fish as a food extract favourable comment from 

 Cortez.i 



In spite of the pictographs, known as the Mendoza Codex, 2 

 being executed several centuries after the date I have roughly 

 allotted myself, viz. 500 a.d., I cannot resist inserting two of 

 these on account of their fourfold interest. 



They show first, that Mexican lads received early in their 

 teens education in fishing. Second, that the Aztecs were 



0000 

 00000 

 00000 



AZTEC FISHING. 



From the Mendoza Codex, vol. i. pi. 6i, fig. 4. 



familiar with scoop nets. Third — and this surely will go to 

 the heart of our Food Controller — that food was rationed. 



^ Montezuma's table was provided with fish from the Gulf of Mexico 

 brought to the capital within twenty-four hours of capture by means of relays 

 of runners. Some five gods of fishing, of whom the chief seems to have been 

 Opochtli, were worshipped : to him was ascribed the invention of the net 

 and the minacachalli or trident. Cf. de Sahagun, Histoire gM^al des choses 

 de la Nouvelle Espagne, traduite et annotee par D. Jourdanet et Remi Simeon, 

 p. 36, Paris, 1880. De Sahagun, a Franciscan, came to Mexico in 1529 and 

 died there in 1590. See also, C. Rau, op. cit., p. 214, and T. Joyce, op. cit., 

 pp. 165, 221. A not uncommon practice was co-operative fishing, by which, 

 after a portion had been set aside for the feudal lord, the rest of the catch was 

 divided in fixed shares ; see Joyce, p. 300. 



2 These pictographs were made by native artists shortly after the conquest 

 of Mexico, and were sent by the Viceroy Mendoza, with interpretations in 

 Aztec and Spanish, to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. A copy of this Codex 

 in the Bodleian was reproduced by Lord Kingsborough in his first volume of 

 Antiquities of Mexico {1831). 



