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The Cathedral is upon the northern side of the Grand Plaza, and is said to occupy the site of the great teocalli, and to have a rocky foundation. Whether this last assertion is really true, I have no means of verifying, but there must be something unusual about its foundations, as its towers are the only ones that I know of in the city that do not lean a little.
A passage in Humboldt, which I met with long after, seems to clear up the mystery. Speaking of the great teocalli of the city of Mexico, he says, quoting an old description, that the Moon had a little temple in the great courtyard, which was built of shells. Those that we found may be the remains of a similar structure on the top of the pyramid.
By now all the city was destroyed, and we who remained alive within its bounds were gathered on the causeways and behind the ruins of walls; men, women, and children together. Here they attacked us again. The great drum on the teocalli beat for the last time, and for the last time the wild scream of the Aztec warriors went up to heaven.
Wherever human sacrifices are known to have occurred among the American aborigines, the place was an elevated mound platform, in the nature of a temple, as the Teocalli of Mexico, and the raised altar or sacrificial stone stood before the idol in whose worship the rites were performed.
He knew that he could never again see this cathedral built upon the site of the great Aztec teocalli, destroyed by the Spaniards more than three hundred years before, without a throb of gratitude. Ned's first resolve was to take measures for protection from the cold, and he placed his silver dollars in his most convenient pocket.
'You are wise, Guatemoc, I said. 'I am sure that you are wise. Afterwards Otomie, Guatemoc, and I went into the garden of the palace and sat upon the crest of a small pyramid, a teocalli in miniature that Montezuma had built for a place of outlook on the market and the courts of the temple. From this spot we saw the dancing of the Aztec nobles, and heard the song of the musicians.
The outer facing of the plateau, like that of the terraces below it, was a prodigiously heavy wall of squared stones set in cement; and for a coping this wall had great stones carved in the similitude of serpents' heads, with mouths wide open, that instantly recalled to my mind the like enclosure that the Spaniards found surrounding the principal temple in the city of Tenochtitlan and I had a sudden strong longing that my friend Bandelier might be with me at that moment to see how precisely his very ingenious speculations concerning the snake-wall about the great Teocalli were here confirmed.
The teocalli itself was of the usual pyramidal shape, and five stories high, coated on the outside with hewn stones. The ascent was by flights of steps on the outside, and Cortés found two priests and several caciques waiting to carry him up them as they had just carried the emperor; but the general declined this compliment, preferring to march up at the head of his men.
The last sacrifice, except one only, the most terrible of them all, of which I will tell afterwards, that was ever celebrated on the teocalli in front of the palace, took place after the defeat of the Spaniards in the pass.
Next they carried me through the wall of serpents and up the winding paths of the mighty teocalli till we reached the summit, where the temples and idols stood, and here a great drum beat, and the priests sacrificed victim after victim in my honour and I grew sick with the sight of wickedness and blood.
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