Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/272

 266 boilers and pots full of water to dress the flesh of the victims, which was eaten by the priests. The idols were like serpents and devils, and before them were tables and knives for sacrifice, the place being covered with the blood which was spilled on those occasions."

Near this temple was another, full of bones, and skulls and skeletons, piled in heaps and laid in rows. The dwellings of the priests, the colleges and nunneries, were within the vast enclosure also. The great wall which surrounded it had four gates, above which were places for the collection of the royal arms. In the Place of Skulls, these ghastly emblems were symmetrically arranged, and when one dropped from its place, owing to decay, it was replaced by a fresh one. Some of the conquerors declared "that they counted the skulls preserved in this horrible place, and that there were one hundred and thirty-six thousand!

The favorite palace of Montezuma was built of stone, whitened with lime, and had twenty doors opening into the public square. It contained more than a hundred chambers, three great courts adorned with fountains and gardens, and apartments finished in jasper and marble. One of these halls was so large that it would hold, according to credible testimony, three thousand persons. Upon the roof of some of the buildings, some of the Spanish officers declared, there was ample room for a tournament! These roofs were flat, and sometimes with battlements; the houses were of stone, one and two stories in height, sometimes roofed with stone and sometimes with thatch; but all with immense beams of cedar and cypress. Two great houses about the central square were devoted to the animals of the kingdom, and contained every variety of bird and beast it was possible to obtain, even snakes and alligators. The birds alone demanded three hundred men for their daily care, and they had physicians also, who carefully noted their diseases and