usually sacrificed to the gods,--was milder among the Aztecs than among any people of whom there is historical record; the slave could marry at will, could hold property, and could even possess slaves of his own, while, as has been already said, the child of a slave was independent of the status of his parent. It is unfortunately true that there can be found but few names of women of importance in the history of the Aztecs or indeed of the Conquest itself; nearly all that is to be learned is general and not particular in its import. Though the blood of many of the women of that period, intermingled with that of the Spanish cavaliers, flows in the veins of a very large number of the Mexicans of to-day, there is yet no trustworthy record of particular names or fames. It is indeed recorded that Alvarado, one of the right-hand men of Cortés, married the daughter of Xicotencatl, a Mexican chief; but she was a Tlascalan, not an Aztec. So, as space would fail in the compass of a large volume to tell of all the civilizations which surrounded that of the Aztecs, and also as Doña Luisa, as she was called by the Spaniards after her baptism into the Christian faith, did nothing more meritorious than to bear to Tonitiuh--"the Sun"--as Alvarado was called by the Mexicans, because of his bright face and golden hair, a number of children who became by intermarriage the sires and mothers of some of the noblest families of Castile, she does not deserve particular chronicle here. It may, however, be well to take advantage of the introduction of this incident to make the statement that marriage between the followers of Cortés and his successors and the native maidens--who must first, as an unalterable rule, embrace the tenets of Christianity, which had borne its earliest message to them in the flame and steel of the massacre of their parents and kinsmen--was adopted as a matter of policy and resulted in the foundation of many lines which have continued to the present day.