A.D. The Toltecs arrived in Anahuac 648 They abandoned their country 1051 The Chichemecs arrived 1170 The Acolhuans arrived about 1200 The Aztecs or Mexicans reached Tula 1196 They founded the Mexican Empire 1325 Conquest by Cortez 1521 Zurita, a celebrated jurist, whose personal experience and observation among the Aztecs extended over a period of nineteen years, and who returned to Spain in 1560, was indignant at the epithet _barbarian_ as applied to the Aztecs,--an epithet, he says, "which could come from no one who had personal knowledge of the capacity of the people or their institutions, and which in some respects is quite as well merited by the European nations." Their high degree of civilization, their remarkable advance in the knowledge and practice of the arts and sciences, so wondrously displayed in their architecture, their causeways, their temples, their homes and their adornments, their agriculture and systems of irrigation, their floating gardens and beautiful feather-work, their strange religion and military displays, must have produced an impression upon the Spaniards which they never forgot. The vast wealth of the Aztecs so excited the spirit of avarice in them, however, that, for a time, each one planned how best to enrich himself. In complexion they were much lighter than the common American Indians. Their style of dress, which was often the most elaborate, and made from the finest materials of their own weaving, more nearly approached that of Europeans,--trousers, jacket, surtout, cloak, and cap or hat ornamented with fine feather-work. The same dress is worn by their descendants in Mexico at the present time. Their treatment of their women was not Asiatic, but resembled more that which is accorded to them by the civilized nations of the world. Their duties were domestic, and they were not degraded by servile bondage. Throughout the different cities were barber-shops, where the men assembled to have their beards shaved. No such thing was known among the American Indians.