Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/486

 Page 83 (3).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, lib. 9, cap. 2.

Page 84 (1).—Ibid., lib. 9, cap. 2, 4. In the Mendoza Codex is a painting, representing the execution of a cacique and his family, with the destruction of hit city, for maltreating the persons of some Aztec merchants.—Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 67.

Page 84 (2).—.Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 41. Ixtlilxochitl gives a curious story of one of the royal family of Tezcuco, who offered, with two other merchants, otros mercaderes, to visit the court of a hostile cacique, and bring him dead or alive to the capital. They availed themselves of a drunken revel, at which they were to have been sacrificed, to effect their object.— Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 62.

Page 84 (3).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, lib. 9, cap. 2, 5. The ninth book it taken up with an account of the merchants, their pilgrimages, the religious rites on their departure, and the sumptuous way of living on their return. The whole presents a very remarkable picture, showing they enjoyed a consideration, among the half-civilised nations of Anahuac, to which there is no parallel, unless it be that possessed by the merchant-princes of an Italian republic, or the princely merchants of our own.

Page 85 (1).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, lib. 6, cap. 23-37.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS. These complimentary attentions were paid at stated seasons, even during pregnancy. The details are given with abundant gravity and minuteness by Sahagun, who descends to particulars, which his Mexican editor, Bustamente, has excluded, as somewhat too unreserved for the public eye. If they were more so than some of the editor's own notes, they must have been very communicative indeed.

Page 85 (2).—Zurita, Rapport, pp. 112-134. The Third Part of the Col. de Mendoza (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i.) exhibits the various ingenious punishments devised for the refractory child. The flowery path of knowledge was well strewed with thorns for the Mexican tyro.

Page 85 (3).—Zurita, Rapport, pp. 151-160. Sahagun has given us the admonitions of both father and mother to the Aztec maiden, on her coming to years of discretion. What can be more tender than the beginning of the mother's exhortation? "Hija mia muy amada, muy querida palmita: ya has oido y notado las palabras que tu señor padre te ha dicho; ellas son palabras preciosas, y que raramente se dicen ni se oyen, las quales han procedido de las entrañas y corazon en que estaban atesoradas; y tu muy amado padre bien sabe que eres su hija, engendrada de él, eres su sangre y su carne, y sabe Dios nuestro señor que es así; aunque eres muger, é imágen de tu padre? que mas te puedo decir, hija mia, de lo que ya esta dicho? "(Hist. de Nueva España, lib. 6, cap. 19.) The reader will find this interesting document, which enjoins so much of what is deemed most essential among civilised nations, translated entire in the Appendix, Vol. II. p. 401.

Page 85 (4).—Yet we find the remarkable declaration, in the counsels of a father to his son, that, for the multiplication of the species, God ordained one man only for one woman. "Nota hijo mio, lo que te digo, mira que el mundo ya tiene este estilo de engendrar multiplicar, y para esta generacion, y multiplicacion, ordenó Diot que una muger usase de un varon, y un varon de una muger."—Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 21.

Page 85 (5).—.Hist. de Nueva España, lib. 6, cap. 21-23; lib. 8, cap. 23.—Rel. d'un gent., ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 305.—Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.

Page 85 (6).—As old at the heroic age of Greece, at least. We may fancy ourselves at the table of Penelope, where water in golden ewers was poured into silver basins for the accommodation of her guests before beginning the repast: "And a handmaid bearing water for his hands in a fair golden ewer poured it forth over a silver bowl, that he might wash withal; and by him set a polished table."—(Odyssey, A.) The feast affords many other points of analogy to the Aztec,