anquished." We know that the
early inhabitants reared palaces, temples, and pyramids, that they
constructed a grand system of aqueducts for irrigating purposes, and for
the liberal promotion of agriculture, being in many respects in advance
of the Mexicans of to-day in the cultivation of the soil, as well as in
some productions of art.

This people, after several centuries of occupation, seem to have been
driven away, probably to South America, by the arrival of another race
called Aztecs or Mexicans, about the year 1325,--some writers say much
earlier,--who finally, under the emperors known as the Montezumas,
brought the country to a lofty height of barbaric and extravagant
splendor, though they were largely, if not almost entirely, indebted to
the discoveries and genius of their intelligent predecessors. The early
faith of the Toltecs, it is claimed, was the adoration of the sun, moon,
and stars. They offered to their representative gods flowers, fruits,
and the life-blood of small animals. The sacrifice of human beings was
later engrafted on their simple faith by other tribes.

History tells us that these aboriginal races did not possess stamped
coin. They had certain signs of the value of different articles, which
took the place of money. One of these, for example, is said to have been
cacao beans counted into lots of eight thousand, or in sacks of
twenty-four thousand each. To exchange for articles of daily necessity
they used pieces of cotton cloth. Expensive objects were paid for in
grains of gold dust, which were carried in quills. For the cheapest
articles, copper pieces cut like the letter T were used. After the
conquest, the earliest mint was established in Mexico, in 1538, by Don
Antonio de Mendoza, who was the first viceroy.

When Cortez came from--in the light of history we should say, ran away
from--Cuba to conquer and possess Mexico, in 1519, a hundred years
before the Pilgrims lauded on the shore of Massachusetts Bay, he
encountered a people who had reached, comparatively speaking, a high
degree of civilization, though weighted by an idolatrous worship which
was most terrible in its wild and reckless practice of human sacrifice,
as represented by Spanish authorities. Their imposing sculptures,
curious arms, picture records, and rich, fanciful garments, filled the
invaders with surprise and whetted their gross avariciousness. There was
much that was strange and startling in their mythology, and even th