tecali

Updated: May 19, 2025

In the interior were many halls, and one in particular is said by a writer who accompanied Cortes, known as the Anonymous Conqueror, to have been of sufficient extent to contain three thousand men.... In addition to these were more than one hundred smaller rooms, and the same number of marble baths.... The walls and floors of halls and apartments were many of them faced with polished slabs of marble, jasper, obsidian, and white tecali; lofty columns of the same fine stones supported marble balconies and porticos, every inch and corner of which was filled with wondrous ornamental carving, or held a grinning, grotesquely sculptured head.

Lewis H. Morgan - Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines