Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/242

226 of Ixtlilxochitl, often referred to and quoted by Prescott. This historian, who had produced a most interesting and authoritative account of his people, was a descendant of the royal family that furnished the kings of Tezcoco.

The fact that Mexico's most talented painter was a pure-blooded Aztec, would seem to indicate that the race has not lost the capacity for artistry as expressed in some of their creations which appealed so strongly to the admiration of their Spanish conquerors.

I was much interested in an account by Mr. E. L. Doheny, who first discovered and developed Mexico's great petroleum deposits, of his experiences with the common labourer. Mr. Doheny, being a man of warm humanitarian impulses, decided that it was his duty so to manage his Mexican enterprises that they should contribute as much as possible to the comfort and well-being of the common people. As one means to that end, shortly after he first began work in the oil fields nearly a score of years ago, he secured numbers of peon boys who were given a careful apprenticeship in the mechanical department. He assured me, with warm expressions of gratification, that these boys developed into mechanics of the highest order, so that he was finally able to entrust to them important mechanical work of his great plants, some of which required a very high type of skill.