and slavery, there was no choice
for the weak or the malformed.

As time passed on, the Tlahuicos, marrying among themselves, had greatly
increased in numbers; and so far from remaining a weakling race, the had
become, by reason of their frugal mode of living and of the wholesome,
hearty labor in which they constantly were engaged, exceptionally hale
and strong; the weak and crippled among them being mainly those who each
year, because of such infirmities, were added to their number from the
higher ranks of the community. And thus was collected together material
as dangerous as it was inflammable; for the fresh additions to the
Tlahuicos kept constantly alive in the whole body a spirit of moody
discontent, that time and again, at the season when the lots were cast
by which one in every ten was doomed to death, was fanned into armed
mutiny. These revolts ever had as their single object escape from the
valley; which fact made evident enough the need for the elaborate system
of defensive works by which the outlet of the valley was barred.

From the Tlahuicos were drawn the house-servants of the rich; and by
those of this wretched class who were stout of body all the heavy labor
of the community was carried on--the tilling of the fields, the
quarrying of stone, the building of houses and bridges and roads, the
felling of timber, the carriage of all burdens, and the working of the
great gold-mine, concerning which I shall hereafter have more to tell.
And all of these people were held in absolute bondage, either as the
serfs of individual owners or as the property of the State; for each
year the new accessions to the class were sold publicly at an auction to
whoever would bid the most for them; and those which none would buy,
being too infirm to be useful as laborers, the State laid claim to--but
only that they might be kept alive until such time as they should be
needed by the priests for sacrifice.

Yet out of this custom of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and
barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come;
for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their
own children--nominally thereafter holding them as slaves--and so to
save them at a single stroke from both death and servitude. One strong
cause of the hatred of the Priest Captain Itzacoatl, Tizoc said (and we
wondered then at the trembling in his voice, and at the evidently deep
emotion that overcame him as he spok