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56 thousand houses, and abundant fountains and reservoirs of water; but a very brief reflection would seem to make it evident that no such population could have been regularly supported, mainly with bulky agricultural food transported on the backs of men, or in light canoes through canals from the neighboring small salt lakes; or supplied with water sufficient for fountains, drinking, and domestic purposes, through an earthen pipe "of the size of a man's body," brought some miles "from Chapultepec," the water adjacent to the city being then, as now, salt and unfit for use. What their manufactures could have been, with stone tools and the most primitive machinery, it is not difficult to conjecture. Probably not materially different from what the traveler may yet see at the present day in the case of the Indian woman, who, seated by the wayside, with a bundle of wool under her arm and a spindle consisting of a stem of wood, one end resting in a cup formed from the shell of a gourd, dexterously and rapidly draws out and spins a coarse but not uneven thread. If any higher degree of manufacturing industry had ever been attained by this people, it probably would not have been utterly forgotten in later days; and the fact is that, "even at the present time, the greater proportion of the domestic utensils, laborers' tools and implements, and articles of clothing in common