y, with palaces and museums. This city
was the capital of the Aztecs, a remarkable people, notable alike for
their ancient civilisation and their wealth. Their national drink was
chocolate, and Montezuma, their Emperor, who lived in a state of
luxurious magnificence, "took no other beverage than the chocolatl, a
potation of chocolate, flavoured with vanilla and other spices, and so
prepared as to be reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which
gradually dissolved in the mouth and was taken cold. This beverage if so
it could be called, was served in golden goblets, with spoons of the
same metal or tortoise-shell finely wrought. The Emperor was exceedingly
fond of it, to judge from the quantity--no less than fifty jars or
pitchers being prepared for his own daily consumption: two thousand more
were allowed for that of his household."[1] It is curious that Montezuma
took no other beverage than chocolate, especially if it be true that the
Aztecs also invented that fascinating drink, the cocktail (xoc-tl). How
long this ancient people, students of the mysteries of culinary science,
had known the art of preparing a drink from cacao, is not known, but it
is evident that the cultivation of cacao received great attention in
these parts, for if we read down the list of the tributes paid by
different cities to the Lords of Mexico, we find "20 chests of ground
chocolate, 20 bags of gold dust," again "80 loads of red chocolate, 20
lip-jewels of clear amber," and yet again "200 loads of chocolate."

[1] Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_.

Another people that share with the Aztecs the honour of being the first
great cultivators of cacao are the Incas of Peru, that wonderful nation
that knew not poverty.

_The Fascination of Chocolate._

That chocolate charmed the ladies of Mexico in the seventeenth century
(even as it charms the ladies of England to-day) is shown by a story
which Gage relates in his _New Survey of the West Indias_ (1648). He
tells us that at Chiapa, southward from Mexico, the women used to
interrupt both sermon and mass by having their maids bring them a cup of
hot chocolate; and when the Bishop, after fair warning, excommunicated
them for this presumption, they changed their church. The Bishop, he
adds, was poisoned for his pains.

_Cacao Beans as Money._

Cacao was used by the Aztecs not only for the preparation of a beverage,
but also as a circulating medium of exchange. For example, one co