This Court was so large that on the occasion of a festival eight or ten thousand men assembled in it; and to show that this is not impossible, I wish to relate an event that is true, related by one who with his own hands killed many Indians within it....
This Court had four doors or entrances, one towards the East, another towards the West, another towards the South, and one on the North side. From these commenced four Causeways, one towards Tlacopan, which we now call the street of Tacuba, another towards Guadelupe, another towards Coyoacan, and the other led to the lake and the landing place of the canoes.
The four principal Temples also have their portals towards the said four directions, and the four Gods which stand in them also have their fronts turned in the same directions.
Opposite the principal gateway of this Temple of Huitzilopochtli there were thirty long steps thirty fathoms long; a street separated them from the wall of the patio[[18]]. On the top of them [the steps] was a terrace, 30 feet wide and as long as the steps, which was all coated with plaster, and the steps very well made.
Lengthwise along the middle of this broad and long platform was a very well made palisade as high as a tall tree, all planted in a straight line, so that the poles were a fathom apart. These thick poles were all pierced with small holes, and these holes were so close together that there was not half a yard between them, and these holes were continued to the top of the thick and high poles. From pole to pole through the holes came some slender cross-bars on which many human skulls were strung through the forehead. Each cross-bar held thirty heads, and these rows of skulls reached to the top of the timbers and were full from end to end ... all were skulls of the persons who had been sacrificed.
After describing a procession in which the God was carried to Chapultapec and thence to Coyoacan, the author continues:—
When they arrived at the foot of the steps of the Temple they placed the litter [on which the image of the God was carried] there, and promptly taking some thick ropes they tied them to the handles of the litter, and, with great circumspection and reverence, some making efforts from above and others helping from below, they raised the litter with the Idol to the top of the Temple, with much sounding of trumpets and flutes, and clamour of conch-shells and drums; they raised it up in this manner because the steps of the Temple were very steep and narrow [in the tread] and the stairway was long and they could not ascend with it on their shoulders without falling, and so they took that means to raise it up.
Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Cronica Mexicana, Ch. XXX, p. 319, writing of the Temple of Huitzilipochtli, says:—