Aztec Means of Communication
Another institution of the Aztecs which calls to the traveller's mind a similar one among the coeval Incas of Peru, three thousand miles away in South America, was that of their means of communication. Such were maintained by relays of runners or postmen, who journeyed at great speed over roads which connected the distant parts of the empire; and it is stated that two hundred miles were covered in a day by these trained messengers, each of which performed the two leagues—the distance between the post-houses—within an hour. Just as the Inca Emperor of Peru, at Cuzco, beyond the great Cordillera of the Andes, was served with fish brought in fresh from the Pacific Ocean, so Montezuma, the Aztec monarch, also ate it, straight from the Gulf of Mexico, at his capital of Tenochtitlan beyond the maritime Cordillera of Anahuac. Striking and of marked interest to the traveller of to-day, in those vast and rugged regions of Mexico and Peru, is this matter of the native couriers, who journeyed over mountain roads, swollen rivers, desert plains, and ice-crowned summits.
