oth, and Moorish blood to Mexico, and mingled it with the aboriginal
Aztecs and others. As to the origin of the Mexican aboriginals, this is
unknown or only conjectured, but they embrace an enormous range of
tribes, some 230 names of which appear in the list compiled by Mexican
ethnologists. These, however, are grouped into some twelve or more
linguistic families, among whom may be mentioned in order of their
numerical importance the Nahuatlan, Otomian, Zapotecan, Mayan,
Tarascan, Totonacan, Piman, Zoquean, and others, including the Serian
and the Athapascan, or Apache. These families embody people of very
varying degrees of native culture; from the low type of the abject Seri
Indians, inhabiting part of Sonora; the treacherous and bloodthirsty
Apaches, who formerly roved over the vast deserts of the north, up to
the cultured peoples who formed the prehistoric civilisation of the
country; the Nahuatl- and Maya-speaking races, who, in the peninsula of
Yucatan and the Valley of Mexico, were the foremost peoples in point of
culture of the whole of the New World, and who have left the remarkable
chapters in stone of their history which are scattered about Mexico,
and which have been described in a former chapter.

To-day the vast area and different peoples of Mexico are combined
politically into one community--a Federation of States or Federal
Republic; and the blending of the peoples, carnally, goes on day by
day, as there are not inseparable distinctions of colour or creed to
keep them asunder. Politically Mexico may be considered as the foremost
of the Spanish-American Republics, her population being the greatest,
and her civilisation more broadly developed than any of her
sister-nations. The form of government, as stated, is that known as a
Federal Republic--a definition of which is that the numerous States
composing the whole are free and sovereign as regards their internal
_regime_, but united under their representative, democratic
Constitution as a political entity.

The Constitution is fashioned upon the model of the United States to a
certain extent, and as a Federation differs from most of the other
Spanish-American republics. The supreme authority of the Republic is
held and exercised by three bodies--the Legislative, the Executive, and
the Judiciary. The Legislative embodies the Congress, or Parliament,
consisting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the members of
which are elected, the first in the prop