of that person's
hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And
really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides
Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on
to call it "beer"? The _pulque_ was neither the one nor the other; for
want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard
would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly supposable"
that _pulque_ was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who never dined
with Montezuma, know so much more about _such things_ than Cortes and
Bernal Diaz, who did?[142]

[Footnote 142: Mr. Andrew Lang asks some similar questions in
his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a
tone of impatient contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr.
Morgan's calibre, is hardly becoming.]

[Sidenote: The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements.]

The Spanish statements of facts are, of course, not to be accepted
uncritically. When we are told of cut slabs of porphyry inlaid in the
walls of a room, we have a right to inquire how so hard a stone could be
cut with flint or copper chisels,[143] and are ready to entertain the
suggestion that some other stone might easily have been mistaken for
porphyry. Such a critical inquiry is eminently profitable, and none the
less so when it brings us to the conclusion that the Aztecs did succeed
in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read about Indian armies of 200,000
men, pertinent questions arise as to the commissariat, and we are led to
reflect that there is nothing about which old soldiers spin such
unconscionable yarns as about the size of the armies they have
thrashed. In a fairy tale, of course, such suggestions are impertinent;
things can go on anyhow. In real life it is different. The trouble with
most historians of the conquest of Mexico has been that they have made
it like a fairy tale, and the trouble with Mr. Morgan was that, in a
wholesome and much-needed spirit of reaction, he was too much inclined
to dismiss the whole story as such. He forgot the first of his pair of
rules, and applied the second to everything alike. He felt "at full
liberty to reject" the testimony of the discoverers as to what they saw
and tasted, and to "commence anew," reasoning from "what is known of
Indian society." And here Mr. Morgan's mind was so full of the kind of
Indian society which he knew more minutely an