Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/754

734 United States—no better than, and in some respects inferior in artistic merit and finish to, many like articles excavated from the Western mounds, or known to have been the work of our historic Indians; or to the arrow-heads and lance-tips which are still fabricated by the Shoshones and Flatheads on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. In all this large Aztec collection there is not a single metal tool or fabrication, and in only a very few instances have any such articles of unquestionable antique origin ever been found in Mexico. And of the pottery and stone-work in the shape of idols, small and big, masks, and vases, and of which there are many specimens in the museum and throughout the country, it is sufficient to say that it is all of the rudest kind, and derives its chief attraction and interest from its hideousness and almost entire lack of anything which indicates either artistic taste or skill on the part of its fabricators. Take any fair collection of what purports to be the products of Aztec skill and workmanship, and place the same side by side with a similar collection made in any of the most civilized of the islands of the Pacific—the Feejees, the Marquesas, or the Sandwich Islands, or from the tribes that live on Vancouver's Sound, and the superiority of the latter would be at once most evident and unquestionable. In all fairness, therefore, all controversy with the writer's position, if there is any, ought to be considered as settled; for there is no more infallible test and criterion of the civilization and social condition of either a man or a nation than the tools which he or it works with; and stone hatchets and stone arrow-heads are the accompaniments of the stone age and all that pertains thereto, and their use is not compatible with any high degree of civilization or social refinement. But this is not all. It is now generally conceded that the Aztec tribes, that have become famed in history, did not number as many as two hundred and fifty thousand, and that the area of territory to which their rule was mainly confined did not much exceed in area the State of Rhode Island. The first sight of a horse threw them into a panic, and they had no cattle, sheep, swine, dogs, or other domestic animals—save the turkey—of any account. They had no written language, unless the term can be properly applied to rude drawings of a kind similar to those with which the North American Indian ornaments his skin or scratches upon the rocks. It is very doubtful if they had anything which could be regarded as money, and in the absence of beasts of burden, of any system of roads and of wheeled vehicles, or, indeed, of any methods of transportation other than through the muscular power and backs of men, they could have had but little internal trade or commerce. Prescott assigns to the Aztec city of Mexico a population of three hundred thousand, and sixty 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