294 A TRIP TO MEXICO. 



minutive and lowly organized beings. They live now almost 

 altogether on black beans, which can be produced in unlimited 

 quantities. And one may see these natives any day in Mexico, 

 that have come in from long distances to sell a few cents worth 

 of produce or of wares, making their dinner on a joint of sugar 

 cane which they have brought with them. The females are mar- 

 riageable at an exceedingly early age I was told at a dozen 

 years and they certainly multiply beyond any of the ratios of 

 Malthus or of mathematics. From the large proportion of old 

 and shriveled women that are met with there, one might almost 

 believe what is said of them, that they never die, but dry up and 

 blow away. I certainly never saw anyone who had ever seen an 

 Indian's grave. Unquestionably then, a few score good successive 

 bean seasons might easily have brought out Aztecs enough to fill 

 the roll of the most extravagant historian. 



Wilson says, because he could not find heaps of ruins and 

 building materials on the sites of the populous Indian cities 

 spoken of by Cortez, he does not believe they ever existed, nor 

 the stone built palaces and teocallis. Now nothing is more cer- 

 tain than that the Aztecs were skillful and extensive workers in 

 stone. The relics of their quaint and massive stone carvings lie 

 neglected everywhere in city and in country. They have been 

 so abundant in times past that the Mexicans of to-day do not be- 

 gin to realize the riches they have in the unique remains of Aztec 

 culture. I have seen a sphinx-head carving used for a hitching 

 block on a country road. And in a court-yard of the Govern- 

 ment House they feed a peacock on the top of the sacrificial 

 altar of the great god Mexitli. But go into the undisturbed 

 wildernesses of southern Mexico, to Uxrnal, Palenque, and Mitlan, 

 and there you will find the most remarkable ruins in the world, 

 immense structures, palaces and temples, built of hewn stone, 

 cemented with mortar, covering acres, and scattered over miles 

 of territory, with columns, facades and frontings, sculptured and 

 ornamented as no other ancient remains have ever been found 

 and all this the work of Mexican Indians before the use and 

 knowledge of iron tools. Is it at all probable then that the 

 Aztecs, alone of those semi-civilized races, lived in mud houses, 

 and served their proud Montezumas in palaces of adobe ? 



