Page:Vol 1 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/357

Rh the great Huitzilapan plateau, famous beside for her pottery and delicate fabrics. The warlike Tlascaltecs referred to her contemptuously as a city of cunning and effeminate traders, and there was doubtless a good deal of truth in this; but then her merchants rivalled those of Mexico in wealth, while her citizens were not behind the dwellers on the lake in refinement.

But the chief renown of Cholula consisted in being the holy city of Anáhuac, unequalled for the frequency and pomp of her festivals and sacred pageantry; in being the religious centre for countless pilgrims who journeyed from afar to worship at the shrines here maintained, not only by the citizens, but by princes of different countries. Her temples were estimated to equal the number of days in the year, and as some possessed more than one chapel, fully four hundred towers rose to bewilder the eye with their gleaming ornamentation. Chief among them was the semispherical temple, with its vestal fire, devoted to Quetzalcoatl, which stood upon a quadrilateral mound of nearly two hundred feet in height, ascended by one hundred and twenty steps, and with a larger base than any old-world pyramid.

The government was aristocratic republican, directed by a council of six nobles, elected in the six wards. At their head sat two supreme magistrates, the tlachiach and aquiach, chosen respectively from the priesthood and nobility, and corresponding to pontiff and captaingeneral, the latter office held at this time by Tecuanhuchuetzin.