Taxes were paid upon agriculture and manufacture, in goods. These included most of the very varied products of the empire—varying as they did with the wide range of climate and topography, just as the products of the Mexico of to-day vary. Gold and copper utensils, pottery, arms, paper, cochineal, timber, cocoa, grains, fruits, gums, animals, and birds, and the beautiful feather-work in which the people excelled, were among these. Spacious warehouses in the capitals existed (as in Peru) for the storing of these, and any embezzlement or maladministration was rigorously punished.
Another institution of the Aztecs which calls to the traveller's mind a similar one among the coeval Incas of Peru, three thousand miles away in South America, was that of their means of communication. Such were maintained by relays of runners or postmen, who journeyed at great speed over roads which connected the distant parts of the empire; and it is stated that two hundred miles were covered in a day by these trained messengers, each of which performed the two leagues—the distance between the post-houses—within an hour. Just as the Inca Emperor of Peru, at Cuzco, beyond the great Cordillera of the Andes, was served with fish brought in fresh from the Pacific Ocean, so Montezuma, the Aztec monarch, also ate it, straight from the Gulf of Mexico, at his capital of Tenochtitlan beyond the maritime Cordillera of Anahuac. Striking and of marked interest to the traveller of to-day, in those vast and rugged regions of Mexico and Peru, is this matter of the native couriers, who journeyed over mountain roads, swollen rivers, desert plains, and ice-crowned summits.
The wealthier people lived in houses of stone, finished and furnished with certain barbaric luxuriance, in which tapestries woven and richly coloured, and secured with fastenings of gold, had their place. A remarkable industry and article of clothing of the early Mexicans was the beautiful feather-work, made of the plumage of the many-coloured birds, for which Mexico is famous. Surtouts of this feather-work were worn outside their military dresses, or armour, of padded cotton.
War was the great mainspring of action of the Aztecs. It is true that they had a long peaceful period after their establishing upon the lake-girt island of the Eagle and the Serpent, and that they developed their civilisation in some security within this natural fortification, but nevertheless, as previously shown, they extended their conquests on all sides. Fear, not regard, kept the subject-nations of Anahuac under their sway, however, and this was one of the elements leading to the downfall of the empire, in the course of time. Military orders were much esteemed and bestowed. The armies were well equipped and drilled, and breaches of discipline were rigorously punished. The hospitals, which were established for the treatment of the sick and wounded, called forth the praise of the Spanish chroniclers. Captives of war were made as abundantly as possible, to be reserved for the sacrificial stone of the war-god, and the Aztecs carried on this appalling practice of human sacrifice to such an extent as has not been equalled by any other nation. But the most atrocious part of the ceremony, as practised on some occasions, was that of the serving up of the body of victims at a repast, where they were eaten!—sheer cannibalism, which is vouched for as their practice as a religious rite.
How was the history of the early Mexicans handed down and perpetuated? It is probable that the ancient civilisations of America were near the dawn of a literature when their culture was destroyed. They had already some phonetic signs in use, from which, in the natural course of time, an alphabet might have evolved; but the picture-writing, or clumsy hieroglyphical representation of things in line and colour to express ideas, was their main method. Yet their laws, State accounts, history, and other matters were so recorded. When the Spaniards set foot on the coast a hieroglyphical representation of them and their ships, delineated on native paper, was in the hands of Montezuma a few hours afterwards—a species of rapid edition of a newspaper indeed! But these written records were supplemented by oral descriptions, and the two methods in conjunction formed the Aztec literature. Paper for such documents were made of skins, or cotton cloth, or of the fibrous leaves of the maguey, and this last, a species of "papyrus," was carefully prepared, and was of a durable nature. Aztec literature of this nature existed in considerable quantities at the beginning of the Hispanic occupation. It was thoroughly destroyed by the execrable act of the first Archbishop of Mexico—Zumarraga, who, looking upon these papers as "devilish scrolls," had them collected, piled up, and burnt! Some few, however, escaped, and were preserved and published in Europe. Some famous Maya documents of this nature, from Yucatan, have also brought to light some details of those people.
The Mexicans' scientific knowledge was simple and primitive. Some arithmetical system had been evolved, but, on the other hand, they had calculated and adopted a chronology—probably it had been inherited from the Toltecs—which displayed a remarkable precision, in that they adjusted the difference of the civil and solar year in a way superior to that of contemporary European nations.
In primitive Mexico—like primitive Peru—agriculture was far advanced as an industry. Land was apportioned, as has been shown, on a philosophical basis for the needs of the inhabitants. In that respect the system was far superior to that of the Republic of Mexico of to-day, where the whole surface of the land is mainly held by large landholders. Irrigation was an advanced art, artificial canals being made to conduct the water from the streams to the arid lands. The main article of diet among the mass of the people—then, as now—was maiz, which grows freely from highlands to lowlands. Bananas, chocolate—indeed, the latter, chocolatl, is an Aztec word—were among their numerous agricultural products. The maguey—the Agave americana—was an invaluable ally of life and civilisation. It afforded them the famous beverage of pulque; they made ropes, mats, paper, and other things from its fibre; and the leaves furnished an article of diet.
Mining was confined to the getting of gold from riverbeds, where it had been concentrated by Nature, and possibly on a small scale by amalgamation with quicksilver. Copper and tin were found and used, and indeed to-day the natives in certain places beat out large copper vessels[11] and offer for sale masses of rude copper matte,11 from their primitive earthen furnaces. The obsidian mines of Itzala furnished them with tools for the cutting of stone, sculpture, and other purposes, and for their terrible weapons of war.
11 I have used and purchased these articles in the State of Durango.