use in Mexico, are said to be of Indian manufacture, and differing very little, if at all, from those used before the conquest." Even in the capital of the republic, says Mr. Consul Strother, where European ideas and habits most generally prevail, a large proportion of the population now use no other bed than the traditional Indian mat, and find their principal food in the Indian corn, ground by hand on the metate a hollow stone, identical in form and character with those used four centuries ago by the wives of the Indian emperors to prepare the corn and the chocolate for their august lords; and in the capital, also, as throughout the republic, the kitchens are furnished with cookery-vessels of Indian manufacture, spoons, bowls and platters of horn, wood, calebasa baskets, and trays of woven rushes and palm-leaves, unchanged in form and character from those described in the earliest histories of the country.
What Aztec architecture was may be inferred from the circumstance that Cortes, with his little band of less than five hundred Spaniards, leveled to the ground three quarters of the city of Tenochtitlan in the seventeen days of his siege; while of the old city of Mexico, with its reported palaces and temples, there is absolutely nothing left which is indicative of having formed a part of any grand or permanent structure.
