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Updated: May 1, 2025
The priests in the great teocallis, or temple pyramids, were beating the great drum of the war-god, Huitzilopocahtli. Lights appeared here and there in the town, the clashing of arms was heard here and there on the broad avenues. Under the lights farther up the streets could be seen files of troops moving. The hour was full of portent.
Like the Mexicans and Central Americans, they had many of the smaller structures known as teocallis, and also large high mounds, with level summits, reached by great flights of steps. Pyramidal platforms or foundations for important edifices appear in both regions, and are very much alike. In Central America important edifices were built of hewn stone, and can still be examined in their ruins.
We found that during our absence the natives had placed a quantity of gum-leaves and small boughs into the interstices of the small mounds of stone, or as I call them, teocallis, which I mentioned previously; this had evidently been done so soon as we departed, for they were now dead and dry.
These structures, and the Mexican teocallis generally, were made of earth, and faced with brick or stone. Captain Dupaix saw, not far from Antequera, two truncated pyramids which were penetrated by two carefully constructed galleries. A gallery lined with hewn stone, bearing sculptured decorations, went through one of them.
Flights of stone steps led straight up from terrace to terrace, and the procession of priests and victims made the circuit of each before they ascended to the one above. The larger of the two teocallis is dedicated to the Sun, has a base of about 640 feet, and is about 170 feet high. The other, dedicated to the Moon, is rather smaller.
In the Old World the word Papa, Pope, or Priest, was connected with the idea of father or grandfather, but the Aztec word has no such origin. When the Aztecs abandoned their temples, and began to build Christian churches, they called them also "teocallis," and perhaps do so to this day.
Difficulty in watering them. Another night of misery. Dante's Inferno. The waters of oblivion. Return to the pass. Dinner of carrion. A smoke-house. Tour to the east. Singular pinnacle. Eastern ranges. A gum creek. Basins of water. Natives all around. Teocallis. Horrid rites. A chip off the old block. A wayside inn. Gordon's Springs.
On we went past towns built upon piles fixed in the bottom of the lake, past gardens that were laid out on reeds and floated over the waters like a boat, past teocallis and glistening temples without number, through fleets of light canoes and thousands of Indians going to and fro about their business, till at length towards sunset we reached the battlemented fort that is called Xoloc which stands upon the dyke.
In his anxiety to keep up a resemblance between his conquests and that of Granada, Cortéz calls the teocallis, or Indian mounds which he found, mosques, and speaks of "forty towers, the largest of which has fifty steps leading to its main body, and is higher than the tower of the principal church in Seville." Bernal Diaz says there were "115 steps to the summit."
This city is the most marvellous place that I have seen in all my travels, though much of it is hidden in bush, for wherever the traveller wanders there he finds vast palaces of marble, carven within and without, and sculptured teocallis and the huge images of grinning gods. Often have I wondered what nation was strong enough to build such a capital, and who were the kings that dwelt in it.
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