The labors of Don Mariano Veytia in his _Historia Antigua_, and the researches of more modern scholars, furnish us with some fragmentary history of the Aztecs before the coming of Cortés; but these fragments, in relation to the status of womanhood in those days, cannot be joined into a coherent whole, and consideration will therefore be here given to some aspects of Aztec civilization as found by the conqueror rather than to the pre-Aztec culture. The most notable general feature of that civilization is its singular contradictions. We find a race, gentle, intelligent, refined in some respects beyond European standards of their day--and yet cannibals, at least under certain conditions! We find these people moral, with high ideals of religion in theory--and in practice holding human sacrifices as an essential part of their cult! We find them warlike and yet mild, the conquerors of the neighboring races, and yet ruling these more by force of intellect than of arms. Most wonderful of all, we find a true and high civilization, isolated from all companionship and existing by its own inherent merits, and not, as has been the case with almost all others, by contact and rivalry with others of almost equal powers. The Aztecs were versed in the arts of agriculture, mechanics, architecture, pottery, and, generally, in the domestic arts. They built beautiful cities, containing noble edifices, both private and public. Their dress was artistic and graceful, and their tastes were worthy of the highest civilization then known. They delighted in flowers, in beautiful gardens, in all manner of natural graces. They lived under the rule of an emperor, and there were many great nobles, of a distinct class and holding large estates. There was a regular law of descent for these estates, and the principles of entail and of reversion to the crown were understood and practised. There seems to have been a species of feudality as the foundation of the social order, but our knowledge in this respect is too vague to justify us in reasoning from it to any great length. There were courts of justice, with jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, and there was the legal machinery of higher and lower courts, with the privilege of appeal. The rights of property and persons were fully, if not acutely, recognized. There was a regularly established priesthood, of which the emperor was the official head. There were admirably organized and conducted schools, where morality as well as education was inculcated. In short, there were all the requisites, though not always in modern form, that we are accustomed to consider as the rightful and unique portion of the highest Caucasian culture.