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220  our wonder and admiration; some specimens for their beauty, their elegance of form, and fineness of decoration; other specimens of idols or images are astonishing on account of the precision of their manufacture and the difficulty of its accomplishment by hand."

The material progress of the aborigines was shown not only by their architecture and manufacturing, but by the extent to which they had developed horticulture and agriculture, as witnessed by the descriptions of the exquisite pleasure gardens and parks surrounding the residences of the kings of the country and their nobles. Prescott describes with much enthusiasm the system of laws which these people had established and the judiciary they had organized for enforcing them. And when Prescott, writing of the crime of larceny, says: "Yet the Mexicans could have been under no great apprehension of this crime, since the entrances to their dwellings were not secured by bolts or fastenings of any kind," he mentioned the quality which differentiated the native Mexican from the descendants of the conquering Latin race more clearly than does any other racial characteristic.

They had created a highly developed machinery of government, with systems of public revenue, of