I will in conclusion call attention to Boturini's statement that knotted cords, similar to the aboriginal Peruvian quipus, but called in Aztec nepohualtzitzin, were also employed to record events in early times, but had gone out of use probably before the Aztec supremacy. This author even claims to have found one of these knotted records in a very dilapidated condition in Tlascala. His statement is repeated by many writers; if any information on the subject is contained in the old authorities, it has escaped my notice.[662]
CHAPTER XVIII.
ARCHITECTURE AND DWELLINGS OF THE NAHUAS.
Architecture of the Ancient Nations—General Features of Nahua Architecture—The Arch—Exterior and Interior Decorations—Method of Building—Inclined Planes—Scaffolds—The use of the Plummet—Building-Materials—Position and Fortification of Towns—Mexico Tenochtitlan—The Great Causeways—Quarters and Wards of Mexico—The Market-Place—Fountains and Aqueducts—Light-houses and Street-work—City of Tezcuco—Dwellings—Aztec Gardens—Temple of Huitzilopochtli—Temple of Mexico—Other Temples—Teocalli at Cholula and Tezcuco.
I shall describe in this chapter the cities, towns, temples, palaces, dwellings, roads, bridges, aqueducts, and other products of Nahua architectural and constructive art, as they were found and described by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Monuments of this branch of Nahua art chiefly in the form of ruined temples, or teocallis, are still standing and have been examined in detail by modern travelers. The results of these later observations will be given in Volume IV. of this work, and I have therefore thought it best to omit them altogether here. In order to fully comprehend the subject the reader will find it advantageous to study and compare the two views taken from different standpoints. It is for a general and doubtless exaggerated account of the grandeur and extent of the Nahua structures, rather than any details of their construction that we must look to the Spanish chronicles; and it is also to be noted that the descriptions by the conquerors are confined almost entirely to the lake region of Anáhuac, the buildings of other regions being dismissed with a mere mention. In this connection, therefore, the supplementary view in another volume will be of great value, since the grandest relics of Nahua antiquity have been found outside of Anáhuac proper, while the oft-mentioned magnificent temples and palaces of the lake cities have left no traces of their original splendor.
The Olmecs, Totonacs, and others of the earlier Nahua nations are credited by tradition with the erection of grand edifices, but the Toltecs, in this as in all other arts, far surpassed their predecessors, and even the nations that succeeded them. I have in a preceding chapter sufficiently explained the process by which this ancient people has been credited with all that is wonderful in the past, and it will be readily understood how a magnifying veneration for past glories, handed down from father to son with ever accumulating exaggeration, has transformed the Toltec buildings into the most exquisite fairy structures, incomparably superior to anything that met the Spanish gaze. With architectural as with other traditions, however, I have little or nothing to do in this chapter, but pass on to a consideration of this branch of art in later times.
Respect for the gods made it necessary that the temples should be raised above the ordinary buildings, besides which their height made them more conspicuous to the immense multitudes which frequently gathered about them on feast-days, rendering them also more secure from desecration and easier of defence when used as citadels of refuge, as they often were. But as the primitive ideas of engineering possessed by the Aztecs and their insufficient tools did not permit them to combine strength with slightness, the only way the required elevation could be attained was by placing the building proper upon a raised, solid, pyramidal substructure. The prevalence of earthquakes may also have had something to do with this solid form of construction. In the vicinity of the lake of Mexico, the swampy nature of the soil called for a broad, secure foundation; here, then, the substructure was not confined to the temples, but was used in building public edifices, palaces, and private dwellings.
NAHUA ARCHITECTURE.
Another general feature of Nahua architecture was the small elevation of the buildings proper, compared with their extent and solidity. These rarely exceeded one story in height, except some of the chapels, which had two or even three stories, but in these cases the upper floors were invariably of wood.
Whether the Aztecs were acquainted with our arch, with a vertical key-stone, is a mooted point. Clavigero gives plates of a semi-spherical estufa constructed in this manner, and asserts, further, that an arch of this description was found among the Tezcucan ruins, but I find no authority for either picture or assertion. The relics that have been examined in modern times, moreover, seem to show conclusively that key-stone arches were unknown in America before the advent of the Europeans, though arches made of overlapping stones were often cut in such a manner as to resemble them. The chaplain Diaz, who accompanied Grijalva, mentions an 'arc antique' on the east coast, but gives no description of it. Nevertheless, as the 'antique' would in this connection imply a peculiar, if not a primitive, construction, it is not probable that the arch he saw had a key-stone.[663]