s of
the axes shown in the picture-writings are clumsy sticks swelling into
a large knob at one end, and the axe-blade is fixed into a hole in this
knob. Some of the Mexican hammers seem to have had their handles fixed
in this way; while others were made with a groove, in the same manner
as the earlier kind of European stone hammers just described.

When we consider the beauty of the Mexican stonecutter's work, it seems
wonderful that they should have been able to do it without iron tools.
It is quite clear that, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, they used
bronze hatchets, containing that very small proportion of tin which
gives the alloy nearly the hardness of steel. We saw many of these
hatchets in museums, and Mr. Christy bought some good specimens in a
collection of antiquities which had belonged to an old Mexican, who got
them principally from the suburb of Tlatelolco, in the neighbourhood of
the ancient market-place of the city. Such axes were certainly common
among the ancient Mexicans. One of the items of the hieroglyphic
tribute-roll in the Mendoza Codex is eighty bronze hatchets.

A story told by Bernal Diaz is to the point. He says that he and his
companions, noticing that the Indians of the coast generally carried
bright metal axes, the material of which looked like gold of a low
quality, got as many as six hundred such axes from them in the course
of three days' bartering, giving them coloured glass-beads in exchange.
Both sides were highly satisfied with their bargain; but it all came to
nothing, as the chronicler relates with considerable disgust, for the
gold turned out to be copper, and the beads were found to be trash when
the Indians began to understand them better. Such hard copper axes as
these have been found at Mitla, in the State of Oajaca, where the
ruined temples seem to form a connecting link between the monuments of
Teotihuacan and Xochicalco and the ruined cities of Yucatan and
Chiapas.

We want one more link in the chain to show the use of the same kind of
tools from Mexico down to Yucatan, and this link we can supply. In Lord
Kingsborough's great work on Mexican Antiquities there is one
picture-writing, the Dresden Codex, which is not of Aztec origin at
all. Its hieroglyphics are those of Palenque and Uxmal; and in this
manuscript we have drawings of hatchets like those of Mexico, and fixed
in the same kind of handles, but of much neater workmanship.

But here we come upon a difficu