Cortés says that there were 3 or 4 ledges or passages one pace wide.
Bernal Díaz—5 recesses (concavidades).
Both the pictures show four ledges.
The Anonymous Conqueror gives the width of the ledges as two paces.
The height of the wall between each ledge is given as follows:—
| Cortés—the height of three men | = say 16′. |
| Anonimo—the height of two men | = say 10′ 8″. |
| Motolinia—1½ to 2 Brazas | = say 11′. |
The size of the platform on the top of the Teocalli cannot be decided from the written records. Torquemada says that there was ample room for the Priests of the Idols to carry out their functions unimpeded and thoroughly, yet in an earlier paragraph he appears to limit the width to a little more than seventy feet. Possibly this measurement of seventy feet is meant to apply to a forecourt of the two sanctuaries.
Motolinia gives the measurement of the base of the Teocalli at Tenayoca as 222½′ × 222½′ (English), and the summit platform as about 192′ × 192′ (English). Applying the same proportion to a Teocalli measuring 300′ × 300′ at the base, the summit platform would measure about 259′ × 259′.
Duran says “in front of the two chambers where these Gods (Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc) stood there was a Patio forty feet square cemented over and very smooth, in the middle of which and fronting the two chambers was a somewhat sharp pointed green stone about waist high, of such a height that when a man was thrown on his back on the top of it his body would bend back over it. On this stone they sacrificed men in the way we shall see in another place.”
Ixtlilxochitl gives a similar description but, says the sacrificial stone was on one side towards (hacia) the doorway of the larger chamber of Huitzilopochtli.