264 HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. 



in wood and stone. It is astonishing to see what they carve with a blunt 

 knife in the hardest wood. They make, principally, pictures and statues 

 of saints ; and for three hundred years have servilely copied the models 

 brought with them by the Spaniards at the beginning of their conquests. 

 In addition to this, they show the same taste for flowers which Cortez found 

 among them in his time. A bouquet was the most valuable present to the 

 ambassadors at the court of Montezuma. This monarch and his forefathers 

 cultivated a great multitude of the rarer plants in the gardens of tstapalapan. 

 Cortez, in his letters to the Emperor Charles V., frequently extolled the 

 industry displayed by the Mexicans in horticulture. No Indian sells any 

 of his products in the great market of Mexico, without having adorned his 

 booth with flowers, which are renewed every day. Every Indian has near 

 his house a Httle garden, in which he raises an abundance of flowers, 

 besides tropical fruits. The Chinampas, or floating gardens, look particu- 

 larly beautiful. They are rafts covered with earth ; some floating about 

 on the lake, others fastened to the shore. 



The dwellings of the Indians are simple and neat, but differ in form. In 

 the hot region of the coast, they are a kind of cages, built of canes, or 

 branches of trees and boards, here and there also of sun-dried bricks, and 

 having flat roofs. Where the Indians are associated with Spaniards, espe- 

 cially in the neighborhood of Mexico, their houses are very similar to those 

 of the latter. A few earthen jugs and bottles, a stone for the preparation 

 of maize bread, and a multitude of representations of saints, constitute the 

 adornment of the dwellings. A mattress spread upon the earth, or a 

 hammock fastened to the ceiling, serves instead of a bed. Their villages 

 and hamlets are often entirely concealed in the woods. Perhaps nowhere 

 is there such a frightful inequality in the distribution of wealth, civilization, 

 the cultivation of the soil, and the population, as in Mexico. In the 

 interior of the table land there are four cities, distant from each other 

 but one or two days' journey, and containing 35,000, 67,000, 70,000, and 

 135,000 inhabitants. The central plateau from Puebla to Mexico, and 

 from thence to Salamanca and Zalaya, is covered quite as thickly with 

 villages and hamlets as the most highly cultivated tracts of Lombardy. 

 On the east and west of this narrow slip extend uncultivated regions, in 

 which the population scarcely amounts to one person to the square mile. 

 The metropolis and other cities have learned institutions, comparable to 

 those of Europe. The style of the architecture of public and private build- 

 ings, the elegance of household furniture, the equipages, the luxury in 

 female dress, the tone of society, in short everything, betrays a refinement 

 strongly contrasting with the nakedness, ignorance, and rudeness of the 

 common people. And this inequality of riches is found not merely among 

 the whites, but amongst the Indians also. In general, the Mexican Indians 

 present the picture of extreme poverty, and yet individuals are met with, 

 who, in spite of the mask of indigence, have great wealth. Persons of the 

 latter class are held in high respect by their countrymen ; but, though 

 wealthy, go barefoot, and wear the Mexican tunic of coarse, brownish stuff*, 

 like the poorest and lowest Indians. In the large towns, however, not only 

 436 



