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14 AZTEC CIVILISATION. law, every defaulter was liable to be taken and sold as a slave. In the capital were spacious granaries and warehouses for the reception of the tributes. A receiver-general was quartered in the palace, who rendered in an exact account of the various contributions, and watched over the conduct of the inferior agents, in whom the least malversation was summarily punished. This functionary was furnished with a map of the whole empire, with a minute specification of the imposts assessed on every E art of it. These imposts, moderate under the reigns of the early princes, ecame so burdensome under those at the close of the dynasty, being rendered still more oppressive by the manner of collection, that they bred disaffection throughout the land, and prepared the way for its conquest by the Spaniards. Communication was maintained with the remotest parts of the country by means of couriers. Post-houses were established on the great roads, about two leagues distant from each other. The courier, bearing his despatches in the form of a hieroglyphical painting, ran with them to the first station, where they were taken by another messenger, and carried forward to the next, and so on till they reached the capital. These couriers, trained from childhood, travelled with incredible swiftness; not four or five leagues an hour, as an old chronicler would make us believe, but with such speed that despatches were carried from one to two hundred miles a day.* Fresh fish was frequently served at Monte zuma’s table in twenty-four hours from the time it had been taken in the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred miles from the capital. In this way intelligence of the movements of the royal armies was rapidly brought to court; and the dress of the courier, denoting by its colour that of his tidings, spread joy or consternation in the towns through which he passed.f But the great aim of the Aztec institutions to which private discipline and public honours were alike directed, was the profession of arms. In Mexico, as in Egypt, the soldier shared with the priest the highest conside ration. The king, as we have seen, must be an experienced warrior. The tutelary deity of the Aztecs was the god of war. A great object of their military expeditions was, to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. The sol'dier, who fell in battle, was transported at once to the region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the Sun. Every war, therefore, became a crusade ; and the warrior, animated by a religious enthusiasm, like that of the early Saracen, or the Christian crusader, was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it, for the imperishable crown of martyrdom. Thus we find the same impulse acting in the most opposite quarters of the globe, and the Asiatic, the European, and the American, each earnestly invoking the holy name of religion in the perpetration of human butchery. * The Hon. C. A. Murray, whose imperturbable good humour under real troubles form* a contrast, rather striking, to the sensitiveness of some of his predecessors to imaginary ones, tells us, among other marvels, that ar. Indian of his party travelled a hundred miles in four and twenty hours. The Greek, who, according to Plutarch, brought the news of victory at Platoea, a hundred and twenty-five miles, in a day, was a better traveller still. t The same wants led to the same expedients in ancient Rome, and still more ancient Persia. “Nothing in the world is borne so swiftly,” says Herodotus, “as messages by the Persian couriers; ” which his commentator, Valckenaer, prudently qualifies by the ex ception of the carrier pigeon. Couriers are noticed, in the thirteenth century, iu China, by Marco Polo. Their stations were only three miles apart, and they accomplished five days’journey in one. A similar arrangement for posts subsists there at the present day, and excites the admiration of a modern traveller. In all these cases, the posts were for the use of government only.
