Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/370

346 edifice seems to have observed it critically, or to have left a complete architectural description of it to posterity. They were all more impressed with the horrors they witnessed in it and their dreadful significance than with the architectural details; all agree that it was a most awesome place, in which dark, gruesome chambers, smelling like a slaughter house, contained hideous idols, smeared with human blood. In these dim recesses, demoniacal priests, clad in black robes, with grotesquely painted faces, framed in blood-clotted locks, celebrated their inhuman rites, and offered smoking hearts on golden salvers to the monstrous deities there enthroned. The presiding figure of this theocratic charnel house was that of the god of war Huitzilopochtli—the humming bird to the left—and of his image Bernal Diaz gives a careful description. Its face was distorted and had terrible eyes; the body was covered with gold and jewels, and was wound about with the coils of golden serpents; in the right hand was held a bow, and in the left a bundle of arrows. Suspended from the idol's neck was a necklace of human heads and hearts made of gold and silver with precious stones set in them, and by its side stood the figure of a page, called Huitziton, bearing a lance and shield richly jewelled. This little statue of the page was carried by the priests in battle, and was also on certain occasions borne with much pomp through the streets. The honours of these altars were shared by Tezcatlipoca—Shining Mirror—who was called "the soul of the world." He was a god of law and severe judgment and was much dreaded. His statue was of black obsidian, and suspended from his plaited hair, which was confined in a golden net, was an ear made of gold, towards which mounted tongues of smoke symbolising ascending prayers. On the summit of the teocalli stood a great cylindrical drum tlapanhuehuetl), made of serpents' skins, which was beaten on certain solemn occasions, and as an alarum. It is said to have given forth a most sinister sound, which could be heard for miles. During the siege, the Spaniards had sad cause to shudder at its fearsome roll which announced the sacrifice of their captive comrades, whose white, naked bodies were even discernible in the dusky procession which moved, in the glare of torches and the sacred fires, up the terraces of the pyramid on its way to the stone of sacrifice. The area of the courtyard, some twelve hundred feet square, was paved with flat polished stones, which were so slippery the Spaniards' horses could hardly keep their footing. Four gates in the surrounding wall, called coatepantli, gave entrance to the courtyard, one facing each of the cardinal points, and over each gate there was kept a store of arms in readiness for attack or defence. Sahagun (Hist. Nueva España, tom i., p. 197) enumerates seventy-eight different buildings inside the wall surrounding the courtyard; they comprised chapels, cells for priests, fountains for ablutions, quarters for students and attendants, and a number of smaller teocalli. This tallies with the description of Cortes and Bernal Diaz, and makes it evident that the entire group of buildings somewhat resembled the Kremlin at Moscow,