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They had the great teocalli for a fortress, on which they might have planted their cannon, and leveled the city in a few days, if not in a few hours, and the great Plaza in which to manoeuvre their cavalry and protect the Indians while leveling the rubbish of the broken walls.
On the day of our departure a great sacrifice of slaves was held upon the teocalli to propitiate the gods, so that they might give us a safe journey, and also in honour of some festival, for to the festivals of the Indians there was no end. Thither we went up the sides of the steep pyramid, since I must look upon these horrors daily.
Then I was borne to the edge of the teocalli, for I could not walk, and here my would-be murderer, the priest, having first shouted some words to the spectators below, that caused them to murmur like a forest when the wind stirs it, clasped me in his blood-stained arms and kissed me on the forehead.
O, vividly do I recall to mind examples of heaven-bestowed genius, talent, health, and abilities, sacrificed on the worse than bloody teocalli of this hideous and slimy devil, Intemperance!
As he returned to his camp he was startled by the sound of the great drum on the temple of the war-god, heard only once before during the night of horror, and looking up he saw a long file of priests and warriors, winding round the terraces of the teocalli.
However, he seized upon the great teocalli of which all the woodwork had been burned, and built a church of the stone that remained, and he opened the cages in which the wretched victims about to be sacrificed were imprisoned, and restored them to liberty, and then he thought it time to begin the march to Mexico once more.
It asked that the false white man who had been rescued from the altars of the gods upon the teocalli should be given in exchange for certain Aztec prisoners, in order that he might be hung according to his merits as a spy and deserter, a traitor to the emperor of Spain.
He spoke in slow words and weighty, and more than once his voice broke in his sorrow. He told of the grievous misfortunes that had overcome the country, of the death of hundreds of its bravest warriors, of the slaughter of the priests and soldiers that day on the teocalli, and the desecration of his nation's gods. What was to be done in this extremity? he asked.
He then led the way to a spacious hall, where a banquet was served to the whole army, after which, quarters were assigned to them in a neighbouring teocalli, the Mexican ambassadors being, at the desire of Cortés, lodged next to himself that he might the better protect them in the city of their foes.
Calli, the ordinary dwelling house, of which the "House of the Nuns" is an example. 2. Ticplantlacalk, the "Stone House," which contained council halls, etc., of which the "Governor's House" is an example. 3. Teocalli, "House of God," such as the "House of the Dwarf." The estufas in New Mexican pueblos took the place of the last two in Mexico and Yucatan.
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