ues des
Cordilleres_ some of the most remarkable are figured and described.

One of the most curious of the Aztec picture-writings is in the
Bodleian Library, and in fac-simile in Lord Kingsborough's _Antiquities
of Mexico_. In it are shown, in a series of little pictures, the
education of Mexican boys and girls, as prescribed by law. The child
four days old is being sprinkled with water, and receiving its name. At
four years old they are to be allowed one tortilla a meal, which is
indicated by a drawing above their heads, of four circles representing
years, and one cake; and the father sends the son to carry water, while
the mother shows the daughter how to spin. A tortilla is like an
oat-cake, but is made of Indian corn.

At seven years old the boy is taken to learn to fish, while the girl
spins; and so on with different occupations for one year after another.
At nine years old the father is allowed to punish his son for
disobedience, by sticking aloe-points all over his naked body, while
the daughters only have them stuck into their hands; and at eleven
years old, both boy and girl were to be punished by holding their faces
in the smoke of burning capsicums.

At fifteen the youth is married by the simple process of tying the
corner of his shirt to the corner of the bride's petticoat (thus
literally "splicing" them, as my companion remarked). And so on; after
scenes of cutting wood, visiting the temples, fighting and feasting, we
come to the last scene of all, headed "_seventy years_," and see an old
man and woman reeling about helplessly drunk with pulque; for
drunkenness, which was severely punished up to that age, was tolerated
afterwards as a compensation for the sorrows and infirmities of the
last period of life.

Astrological charts formed a large proportion of these
picture-writings. Here, as elsewhere, we may trace the origin of
astrology. The signs of the days and years were represented, for
convenience sake, by different animals, and objects, like the signs of
the Zodiac which we still retain. The signs remained after the history
of their origin was lost; and then--what more natural than to imagine
that the symbols handed down by their wise ancestors had some
mysterious meaning, connected with the days and years they stood for;
and then, that a man's destiny had to do with the names of the signs
that "prevailed" at his birth?

There is little to be seen here or elsewhere, of one kind of work in
which