part from each other. At
each of these couriers are stationed, men trained to run at great
speed, and these carry the dispatches from post to post, at the
rate of eight or nine miles an hour."

"But the messages must get changed, where they have to be given so
often?"

"Not at all," he said. "The couriers know nothing of the dispatches
they carry."

"Oh, they are written dispatches?" Roger said. "Then you possess
the art of writing?"

"Writing, what is writing?" the merchant asked.

"Letters are inscribed on paper," Roger said, "so that the person
receiving them at a distance understands exactly what the one who
wrote wished to say."

The merchant shook his head.

"I know nothing of what you call letters," he said. "We draw
pictures, on a fabric formed of prepared skins, or of a composition
of silk and gum, but chiefly on a paper prepared from the leaves of
the aloe. Besides the pictures there are marks, which are
understood to represent certain things. These picture dispatches
are made in the form of rolls, or books. I myself have a slave who
is skilled in such work, and who has depicted you, and added all
particulars, and the roll has been forwarded to Tezcuco."

Chapter 7: A Wonderful Country.

So anxious were the merchants to avoid arriving at any town of
importance, where there would be an Aztec commander and garrison,
until they received an answer from Tezcuco, that they traveled by
very slow stages, camping in small villages where they could obtain
water and supplies. Roger asked many questions of them as to the
country, and learned that the hot and arid soil they were now
crossing extended only about one-third of the distance to be
traversed. Then that they would pass over a range of lofty
mountains, offering great difficulties to travel, that the cold was
extreme, and that snow lay almost continuously upon the highest
summits. After crossing this range they would journey across a rich
country, and descend at last into a most lovely and fertile valley,
in which lay the lake, upon which the capitals of the two countries
were situated.

The country they were now traversing varied considerably. In some
places it consisted of parched and sandy plains, almost free of
vegetation. In others, where the rains were less able to drain
quickly away, were districts of extraordinary fertility. Here grew
the cocoa, vanilla, indigo and aromatic shrubs innumerable, forming
thick and tangled jungles, impervi