Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/101

Rh horse and man as one animal, and supposed them to be supernatural beings. At one time, in an encounter with these people, a Cuban horse was left wounded on the field. The villagers near by, finding him in this condition, were full of sympathy for the poor beast. They brought him their finest flowers and their fatted poultry to tempt his appetite, but all in vain. He was only a horse, and he starved to death on fare which would have satisfied some of the best-worshiped idols in all Mexico. Some months afterward, when the Spaniards came that way again, they found the skeleton neatly polished and set up in the village temple as a new god. The spirited mustangs for which the country is now so famous all date from the conquest. Before that time important news was brought to the capital by fleet-footed runners. By means of relays at short intervals these men could bring despatches from the coast, two hundred and fifty miles distant, in twenty-four hours; this seems almost incredible when we remember the lofty mountains to be crossed on the way. The Aztecs boasted that fish which only the day before had been swimming in the Gulf were often brought to Montezuma's table.

An Indian road in those days had but one virtue: it was as nearly straight as it could be made, never turning to the right hand or to the left for rugged mountain or for precipitous ravine. A chasm was sometimes filled up with stones or bridged with a log, but otherwise there was only a footpath wide enough for one man. Ordinary travelers kept up a steady trot all day, even when carrying burdens—a habit still common among the Mexican Indians. Many footpaths used in these days were traveled by Montezuma's carriers, and some are now worn in deep ruts by the feet of many generations.