It is in consequence of this scarcity of fish, that Church-fasts have never been very strictly kept in Mexico.
[Illustration: HIEROGLYPHICS.] The method of keeping accounts in the shops--which, it is to be remembered, are almost always kept by white or half-white people, hardly ever by Indians--is primitive enough.

Here is a score which I copied, the hieroglyphics standing for dollars, half-dollars, medios or half-reals, cuartillos or quarter-reals, and tlacos--or clacos--which are eighths of a real, or about 3/4d.

While account-keeping among the comparatively educated trades-people is in this condition, one can easily understand how very limited the Indian notions of calculation are.

They cannot realize any number much over ten; and twenty--cempoalli--is with them the symbol of a great number, as a hundred was with the Greeks.

There is in Mexico a mountain called in this indefinite way "Cempoatepetl"-- the twenty-mountain.
Sartorius mentions the Indian name of the many-petaled marigold--"cempoaxochitl"-- the twenty-flower.