HOUSE IN COUNTRY NEAR CORDOBA 



Perhaps three-fourths of Mexico's population has no more of this world's goods than 

 the family in the picture, whose all is contained in this thatched hut and the patch of ground 

 that answers for a garden. Nor does the vast majority know any more than they of creature 

 comforts. Some one has observed that it is no compliment to the well-fed, sleek ox on the 

 Alexican hacienda to say that the half-starved peon drudge is a brother to him. 



They gradually increased, however, in 

 numbers, and strengthened themselves 

 yet more by various improvements in 

 their polity and military discipline, while 

 they established a reputation for courage 

 as well as cruelty in war, which made 

 their name terrible throughout the Val- 

 ley. In the early part of the fifteenth 

 century, nearly a hundred years from the 

 foundation of the city, an event took place 

 which created an entire revolution in the 

 circumstances and, to some extent, in the 

 character of the Aztecs. 



A REMARKABLE MILITARY AELIAXCE 



Then was formed that remarkable 

 league, which, indeed, has no parallel in 

 history. It was agreed between the States 

 of Mexico, Tezcuco, and the neighboring 

 little kingdom of Tlacopan that they 

 should mutually support each other in 

 their wars, offensive and defensive, and 



that in the distribution of the spoil one- 

 fifth should be assigned to Tlacopan and 

 the remainder be divided, in what pro- 

 portions is uncertain, between the other 

 powers. 



What is more extraordinary than the 

 treaty itself, however, is the fidelity with 

 which it was maintained. During a cen- 

 tury of uninterrupted warfare that en- 

 sued, no instance occurred where the par- 

 ties quarreled over the division of the 

 spoil, which so often makes shipwreck of 

 similar confederacies among civilized 

 States. 



The allies for some time found suffi- 

 cient occupation for their arms in their 

 own valley ; but they soon overleaped its 

 rocky ramparts, and by the middle of the 

 fifteenth century, under the first Monte- 

 zuma, had spread down the sides of the 

 table-land to the borders of the Gulf of 

 Mexico. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, 



