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54 questionable. In all fairness, therefore, all controversy with the writer's position, if there is any, ought to be considered as settled; for there is no more infallible test and criterion of the civilization and social condition of either a man or a nation than the tools which he or it works with; and stone hatchets and stone arrow-heads are the accompaniments of the stone age and all that pertains thereto, and their use is not compatible with any high degree of civilization or social refinement.

But this is not all. It is now generally conceded that the Aztec tribes, that have become famed in history, did not number as many as two hundred and fifty thousand, and that the area of territory to which their rule was mainly confined did not much exceed in area the State of Rhode Island. The first sight of a horse threw them into a panic, and they had no cattle, sheep, swine, dogs, or other domestic animals—save the turkey—of any account. They had no written language, unless the term can be properly applied to rude drawings of a kind similar to those with which the North American Indian ornaments his skins or scratches upon the rocks. It is very doubtful if they had anything which would be regarded as money; and in the absence of beasts of burden, of any system of roads and of wheeled vehicles, or, indeed, of any methods of transportation other than through the