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Rh wrapped in dough or plainly roasted, and pepper was consumed in great quantities as a condiment, just as in Peru. Fish too formed an important article of diet, and the courier-system in the later days of the Empire was so excellent that it could be brought fresh from the coast for the use of the royal house. Certain marsh-flies which appear in veritable clouds on the lake were pounded and made up into balls and boiled, and their eggs were collected from the reeds and eaten as a kind of caviare; frogs too were not despised, and the Otomi were credited with eating snakes and rats. A peculiar food seen by the conquerors consisted of "cakes made from a sort of ooze which they get out of the great lake, which curdles, and from this they make a bread having a flavour something like cheese." Honey, both that of bees and that made from the sap of the maguey, was used to sweeten atolli and in many other ways, and salt was prepared by filtering water through certain kinds of earth and evaporating the liquor. The constant hostilities of the Tlaxcalans with the Mexicans had resulted in the almost total destruction of the salt trade as far as the former were concerned; in fact the inhabitants had practically lost the habit of taking It, and some years elapsed after the conquest before it became common in that district. It is said that neither salt nor pepper was used by the Toluca and Matlatzinca. As regards beverages, two were of great importance; the first of these was prepared from the cacao, imported from the hotter regions near the coast, and was called chocolatl (whence our own word chocolate). The nut was pounded and boiled in water with a little maize-flour; the oil was skimmed off, and the mixture strained and poured into another vessel so as to produce a froth; sometimes honey and vanilla were added, and it was generally taken after food with tortoise-shell spoons. The other national drink was octli (often inaccurately termed pulque, an