Note 54 — Chapter XCI

The revenue of Motecusuma we know consisted of the natural products of the country, and what was produced by the industry of his subjects. Respecting the payment of tribute, we find the following story in Torquemada: "During the abode of Motecusuma among the Spaniards, in the palace of his father, Alonso de Ojeda one day espied in a certain apartment of the building a number of small bags tied up. He imagined at first that they were filled with gold dust, but on opening one of them, what was his astonishment to find it quite full of lice? Ojeda, greatly surprised at the discovery he had made, immediately communicated what he had seen to Cortes, who then asked Marina and Aguilar for some explanation. They informed him that the Mexicans had such a sense of their duty to pay tribute to their monarch, that the poorest and meanest of the inhabitants, if they possessed nothing better to present to their king, daily cleaned their persons, and saved all the lice they caught, and that when they had a good store of these, they laid them in bags at the feet of their monarch. Torquemada further remarks, that his reader might think these bags were filled with small worms (gasanillos), and not with lice; but appeals to Alonso de Ojeda, and another of Cortes' soldiers, named Alonso de Mata, who were eyewitnesses of the fact."

This story, no doubt, is founded on something like truth, and most probably these bags were filled with the coccus cacti, the famous cochineal insect, then unknown to the Spaniards, who might easily have mistaken them in a dried state for lice. (p. 231.)