Many of the Indians are very swift runners. An instance is told in Guatemala of a runner who carried a dispatch one hundred and five miles into the interior and returned with an answer in thirty-six hours, making the trip over mountains and a rough trail at an average speed of six miles an hour, including stops and delays. It is said that fish caught at Vera Cruz in the evening were served at the dinner table of Montezuma the following day at his capital near the site of the present City of Mexico, a distance of nearly three hundred miles by road. This was done by a system of relay runners stationed about a mile apart, and they made almost as fast time as the railway train to-day. Whether this is true or not it is well known that the Aztecs had a wonderful system of communication. The Spaniards were frequently astonished at the rapidity with which the news of their movements was spread. These runners were trained to great speed and endurance from their youth. Hundreds of them were in constant use, and the Aztec emperors were kept in communication with all parts of their empire. The Aztecs also used these runners as spies and they thus took the place of scouting parties in present-day campaigns. So it is that these cargadors come and go. Each generation is like the last. They are happy in that they want but little and that little is easily supplied. They are contented because they live for to-day and worry not for the morrow. They are satisfied to go through life as the bearers of other people’s burdens. CHAPTER XI CUSTOMS AND CHARACTERISTICS “A land of lutes and witching tones, Of silver, onyx, opal stones; A lazy land, wherein all seems Enchanted into endless dreams; And never any need they know, In Mexico, “Of life’s unquiet, swift advance, But slipped into such gracious trance, The restless world speeds on, unfelt, Unheeded, as by those who dwelt In golden ages, long ago, In Mexico.” —EVALEEN STEIN.