[240] Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.--Acosta, lib. 4, cap. 37.--Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 18-21.--Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 15.--Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 306.--Count Carli is in raptures with a specimen of feather-painting which he saw in Strasbourg. “Never did I behold anything so exquisite,” he says, “for brilliancy and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. No European artist could have made such a thing.” (Lettres Américaines, let. 21, note.) There is still one place, Patzquaro, where, according to Bustamante, they preserve some knowledge of this interesting art, though it is practised on a very limited scale and at great cost. Sahagun, ubi supra, nota. [241] “O felicem monetam, quæ suavem utilemque præbet humano generi potum, et a tartareâ peste avaritiæ suos immunes servat possessores, quod suffodi aut diu servari nequeat!” De Orbe Novo, dec. 5, cap. 4.--(See, also, Carta de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 100, et seq.--Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 36.--Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 8.--Carta del Lic. Zuazo, MS.) The substitute for money throughout the Chinese empire was equally simple in Marco Polo’s time, consisting of bits of stamped paper, made from the inner bark of the mulberry-tree. See Viaggi di Messer Marco Polo, gentil’ huomo Venetiano, lib. 2, cap. 18, ap. Ramusio, tom. ii. [242] “Procurad de saber algun _oficio honroso_, como es el hacer obras de pluma y otros oficios mecánicos.... Mirad que tengais cuidado de lo tocante á la agricultura.... En ninguna parte he visto que alguno se mantenga por su nobleza.” Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 6, cap. 17. [243] Col. de Mendoza, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 71; vol. vi. p. 86.--Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 41. [244] Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 4, 10-14. [245] Ibid., lib. 9, cap. 2. [246] Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 9, cap. 2, 4.--In the Mendoza Codex is a painting representing the execution of a cacique and his family, with the destruction of his city, for maltreating the persons of some Aztec merchants. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. Pl. 67. [247] Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 41.--Ixtlilxochitl gives a curious story of one of the royal family of Tezcuco, who offered, with two _other_ merchants, _otros mercaderes_, to visit the court of a hostile cacique and bring him dead or alive to the capital. They availed themselves of a drunken revel, at which they were to have been sacrificed, to effect their object. Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 62.