Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/202



The enormous expenditure incurred in the maintenance of such a household as this, was defrayed by the people, who, as we shall see in a future chapter, were sorely oppressed by over-taxation. The management of the whole was entrusted to a head steward or majordomo, who, with the help of his secretaries, kept minute hieroglyphic accounts of the royal revenue. Bernal Diaz tells us that a whole apartment was filled with these account-books.[85] In Tezcuco, writes Ixtlilxochitl, the food consumed by the court was supplied by certain districts of the kingdom, in each of which was a gatherer of taxes, who besides collecting the regular tributes, was obliged to furnish the royal household, in his turn, with a certain quantity of specified articles, for a greater or less number of days, according to the wealth and extent of his department. The daily supply amounted to thirty-one and a quarter bushels of grain; nearly three bushels and three quarters of beans;[86] four hundred thousand ready-made tortillas; four xiquipiles[87] of cocoa, making in all thirty-two thousand cocoa-beans;[88] one hundred cocks of the country;[89] twenty loaves of salt; twenty great baskets of large chiles, and twenty of small chiles; ten baskets of tomatoes; and ten of seed.[90] All this was furnished daily for seventy days by the city of Tezcuco and its suburbs, and by the districts of Atenco, and Tepepulco; for sixty-five days by the district of Quauhtlatzinco; and for forty-five days by the districts of Azapocho and Ahuatepec.[91]

AZTEC KINGS AND THEIR SUBJECTS.

Such, as full in detail as it is handed down to us, was