Like their cousins of Spain and England, the sovereigns of Mexico had their elaborate palaces, with magnificent surroundings, their country residence and their hunting-grounds, their botanical and zoological gardens, and their harems filled with the daughters of nobles, who deemed it an honor to see them thus royally defiled. There were aristocratic and knightly orders; nobles, plebeians, and slaves; pontiffs and priesthoods; land tenures and taxation; seminaries of learning, and systems of education, in which virtue was extolled and vice denounced; laws and law courts of various grades, and councils and tribunals of various kinds; military orders with drill, engineer corps, arms, and fortifications; commerce, caravans, markets, merchants, pedlers, and commercial fairs, with a credit system, and express and postal facilities.
They were not lacking in pleasures and amusements similar to those of the Europeans, such as feasts with professional jester, music, dancing; and after dinner the drama, national games, gymnastics, and gladiatorial combats. They were not without their intoxicating drink, delighting in drunkenness while denouncing it. Their medical faculty and systems of surgery they had, and their burial-men; also their literati, scholars, orators, and poets, with an arithmetical system, a calendar, a knowledge of astronomy, hieroglyphic books, chronological records, public libraries, and national archives.
The horoscope of infants was cast; the cross was lifted up; incense was burned; baptism and circumcision were practised. Whence arose these customs so like those of their fellow-men across the Atlantic, whom they had never seen or heard of?
The conquerors found all this when they entered the country. They examined with admiration the manufactures of gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead, wrought to exquisite patterns with surprising skill. They gazed with astonishment on huge architectural piles, on monumental remains speaking louder than words; on temples, causeways, fountains, aqueducts, and light-houses, surrounded as they were with statues and intricate and costly stone carvings. They found that the Americans made cloth, paper, pottery, and dyes, and were proficient in painting. Their mosaic feather-work was a marvel.