The toy chariots found no better favour with the public. Our illustrations, however, will settle once for all this vexed question. As must appear to the most inexperienced eye, the character of these toys is exceedingly archaic, nor am I aware that any museum or private collection has anything to show at all approaching them. This was conceded, but it was denied that they were chariots at all—the wheels were only “malacates,” i.e. “fusaïoles”! Numerous spindles were indeed found by us in the cemetery. Profuse collections may be seen and compared in every museum, when the most ignorant must see that these wheels are quite different to “fusaïoles” or wheels. It will be said that this toy was but the copy of a chariot brought in by the Spaniards; but a glance at the drawing will show how absurd is the assumption, and carry conviction to the most incredulous.

Granted that is so, what inference do you draw from it? That the Mexicans had chariots? Hardly, since all authorities are silent on the subject, and when we know that the only means of transportation was afforded by carriers. But if such chariots were not available in distant expeditions across rivers, only mountain paths, through immense forests, it was not so within the radius of a city having good roads; and what is there against the possibility of a hand-cart corresponding with ours having been in use?

I am far from affirming that it was so, although certain expressions and quotations might be adduced which would show that supposition to be not so far-fetched as it looks on the face of it. We read in the Ramirez manuscript, for instance, that Montezuma II. set out for his Huaxateca expedition with a numerous army and carruages. Why should the Indian writer have used an ambiguous word meaning both chariot and transport, when the former must already have been extant when he wrote—that is, after the Conquest? Farther, Padre Durán relates how this same Montezuma, wishing to erect a temalacatl, had a huge block quarried at Aculco, near Amecameca; and [his illustration] shows this block raised by means of a rude chariot having clog-wheels, drawn by a multitude of Indians. The text, it is true, does not specify a chariot; but if they were unknown, how do they come in his drawing? It is unaccountable, too, that no mention is made of the stone having been brought on rollers or wheels, seeing that it could not have come so great a distance by any other means. It is altogether a mystery.

Lastly, Juarros, in describing the battle at Pinar, fought against Alvarado, mentions war-engines, or what would now be called ammunition carts, moving on rodadillos, which were drawn by armed men wherever they were required. These carts were loaded with arrows, spears, shields, stones, slings, etc., and men, chosen for the service, distributed them as they were wanted. Does “rodadillo” mean here a clog-wheel or a roller? If these carts carried arms to combatants in different parts of the field of battle, does it not follow that they moved on wheels, since rollers would have made the diminutive “forts” immovable, contrary to the end proposed?