But I am getting away from my story and the difficulties I met in trying to make the first wheel ever seen in Mictolan. The simplest method, I decided, was to cut a section of a log and fit an axle in its centre, a method used by many primitive and even civilized people. Even to cut a section of a log by means of stone and copper tools, or by burning it off, was a laborious and slow operation. However, I decided that a model on a small scale would serve just as well, and selecting a stick of soft wood, I began whittling at it with my knife. I had cut about half-way through when a woman passed. As she stopped to look at me, gazing as always at my knife, I noticed that she was spinning cotton. The next instant I dropped my work and fairly roared with laughter. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? The spindle she was using--the spindles every woman used--was a short, round stick with a hook at one end and a metal disk at the other. Here was a miniature wheel ready-made, even fitted to an axle! Telling the woman to bring me two of the spindles, I hurried her off, and as I waited for her return, I pondered on the strangeness of it all. For centuries--thousands of years, these people--as well as all other cultured American aboriginal races--had been using similar spindles--veritable wheels upon axles--and yet never in all those centuries, those tens of centuries, had anyone realized that the most important, the most basic of mechanical inventions was in daily use. It seemed almost incredible that the wheel should not have been discovered by accident; that sometime, someone dropping a spindle, should not have seen it roll and should not have grasped the principle. But I myself had failed utterly to grasp the possibilities of the spindles, even though I were familiar with wheels and had been cudgelling my brain as to how to make them. How many great and epochal discoveries might still remain, undreamed of, unrecognized, under our very eyes? Certainly, there seemed to me an endless supply. * * * * * MY thoughts were interrupted by the woman, who returned with the two spindles. I called to Nohul Voh, who was, as usual, busy among his herbs, and fitting both spindles on one stick, set the affair upon the ground and rolled it along. For a brief instant he and the woman stared at it with utter amazement. The next second they burst into shouts of delight, and, falling on his knees, the white-headed old sorcerer examined, rolled, turned and played with the thing like a child with a new toy.