DISAPPEARANCE OF THE AZTECS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 835, 6 January 1883, Page 2

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE AZTECS.

If never seems to have occurred to anyone that there was anything strange about the to‘al disappearance of the Aztec civilization in Mexico. When ""Cortez landed in Mexico he found a nation o highly-civilized people living in magnificent cities and having more gold in theirhouees than they could well use, in spits, gjP the fact that their frying-pans and pie-plates and ooffee-po'a were made of the precious metal. The Aztecs had a religion that, much as the Spaniards abhorred; it,> was undoubtedly ingenious and elaborate] They had a literature that was purely American, and they were addicted* to sculpture, aesthetic crockery, and the other arts. The City of Mexico was, on_ the whole, much more magnificent than- any European city. It covered a vast 5 extent of ground, and was a sort of combined Venice and i As for tha Aztecs' 1 themselves, they were numerous, “brave when they 5 bought it worthwhile to fighti gentle, when they were peaceful, and possesaed'of nearly all the virtues except thatofburning heretics. The Aztecs and thrfr civilization have totally disappeared. The disappearance does, not seem to have; been ttmpslow work of centuries, though, to he few centuries have, elapsed- since the landing of Cortez. So far as can be learned, the disappearance of the Aztecs took place the day after Cortez’ conquered their empire for all subsequent Spaniards were unable to find them. Nqtj only did the Aztecs vanish, giving place to savage and degraded Indians, but'they took their cities with them. Not a trace of the splendid buildings which Cprtez found in every Mexican city reniained to bear witness to the departed grander of the Aztecs. At the present day there is a collection of crumbling mounds and ruined masonry in Yucatan and bentral America, but it is universally that these are the remains of a civilization which preceded that of the Aztecs* The disappearance of Aztec literature may be due to the fact that the Spaniards burned all the hooks that they could find, lest cheap reprints of them should destroy, the Spanish, book trade, but we can * only explain the disappearance of x4*teo art by the supposition that the Aztecs when they disappeared, took their statues, paintings, and aesthetic crotfeery With them. But now comes an intelligent, scientific person, who has studied'the ruins of Yucatan, and has learned all about the Aztecs that any man can and who utterly denies that they, everfwere civilized. He maintains that in the time of Cortez, were pceoiaejy like the Pueblo Indiana of modern day 3.,) jthafc their cities were nothing more than vast communal houses, like those in whtch the Pueblos live, and that all the stories of their magnificence and of the wealth' Vnd civilization of the Aztec Empire ware invented by the Spaniards. According to this scientific person, neither the Alfteca nor their civilization ever disappeared. On the contrary, they adopted (I the methods of building employed by tha Spaniards, suffered their oil communal houses made of sun-dried bricky to crumble into shapeless mounds,', rjand learned the art of revolution and ag* became the Mexicans of modern times. This theory is certainly a very plausible one. Nothing is more probable than’-jthat the Spaniards told lies about tha Asgecs, and nothing is more improbable than the theory that Aztecs mysteriously disappeared. When, however, we make up our minds that the Aztecs were dirty, ignorant savages, like the Pueblos, all the romance of the Spanish conquest vanishes.