[38] Tolantzinco, Quauhchinanco, Xicotepec, Pauhatla, Yauhtepec, Tepechco, Ahuacaiocan, and Quauhahuac. Ib.; see also Torquemada, Monarq. Ind., tom. i., p. 167.
[39] 'La cerca tan grande que tenia para subir á la cumbre de él y andarlo todo.' Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 251.
[40] 'Para subir hasta esta cumbre se passan quinientos y veynte escalones, sin algunos que estan ya deshechos, por auer sido de piedras sueltas y puestas à mano: que otros muchos escalones ay, labrados en la propia peña con mucha curiosidad. El año pasado los anduue todos, y los contè, para deponer de vista.' Dávila Padilla, Hist. Fvnd. Mex., p. 619. Prescott, Mex., vol. i., p. 186, citing the above author, gives five hundred and twenty as the whole number of steps, without further remark.
[41] Torquemada also mentions this staircase. Monarq. Ind., tom. ii., p. 436.
[42] 'Esculpida en ella en circunferencia los años desde que habia nacido el rey Nezahualcoiotzin, hasta la edad de aquel tiempo.' Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 252. Prescott says that the hieroglyphics represented the 'years of Nezahualcoyotl's reign.' Mex., vol. i., p. 182.
[43] Hist. Fvnd. Mex., p. 619. 'This figure was, no doubt, the emblem of Nezahualcoyotl himself, whose name ... signified "hungry fox."' Prescott's Mex., vol. i., p. 183, note 42.
[44] 'Un leon de mas de dos brazas de largo con sus alas y plumas.' Hist. Chich., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 252.
[45] These figures were destroyed by order of Fr Juan de Zumárraga, first Bishop of Mexico. Dávila Padilla, Hist. Fvnd. Mex., p. 619; Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., in Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 252. The injury wrought by this holy iconoclast is incalculable. Blinded by the mad fanaticism of the age, he saw a devil in every Aztec image and hieroglyph; his hammers did more in a few years to efface all vestiges of Aztec art and greatness than time and decay could have done in as many centuries. It is a few such men as this that the world has to thank for the utter extinction in a few short years of a mighty civilization. In a letter to the Franciscan Chapter at Tolosa, dated June 12, 1531, we find the old bigot exulting over his vandalism. 'Very reverend Fathers,' he writes: 'be it known to you that we are very busy in the work of converting the heathen; of whom, by the grace of God, upwards of one million have been baptized at the hands of the brethren of the order of our seraphic Father Saint Francis; five hundred temples have been leveled to the ground, and more than twenty thousand figures of the devils they worshiped have been broken to pieces and burned.' And it appears that the worthy zealot had even succeeded in bringing the natives themselves to his way of thinking, for further on he writes: 'They watch with great care to see where their fathers hide the idols, and then with great fidelity they bring them to the religious of our order that they may be destroyed; and for this many of them have been brutally murdered by their parents, or, to speak more properly, have been crowned in glory with Christ.' Dicc. Univ., App., tom. iii., p. 1131.
[46] There is a singular confusion about this passage. In Kingsborough's Mex. Antiq., vol. ix., p. 252, Ixtlilxochitl is made to write: 'Un poquito mas abajo estaban tres albercas de agua, y en la del medio estaban en sus bordos tres damas esculpidas y labradas en la misma peña, que significaban la gran laguna; y las ranas los cabezas del imperio.' In Prescott's Mex., App., vol. iii., pp. 430-2, Ixtlilxochitl's description of Tezcozinco is given in full; the above-quoted passage is exactly the same here except that for ranas, frogs, we read ramas, branches. Either of these words would render the description incomprehensible, and in my description I have assumed that they are both misprints for damas. Mr Prescott, Mex., vol. i., pp. 182-3, surmounts the difficulty as follows: 'On a lower level were three other reservoirs, in each of which stood a marble statue of a woman, emblematic of the three states of the empire.' This is inaccurate as well as incomplete, inasmuch as the figures were not statues, each standing in a basin, but were all three cut upon the face of the rock-border of the middle basin.
[47] I have no doubt that this is the basin known to modern travelers as the 'Baths of Montezuma,' of which Ward says that it is neither of the proper shape, nor large enough for a bath, but that it more probably 'served to receive the waters of a spring, since dried up, as its depth is considerable, while the edge on one side is formed into a spout.' Mexico, vol. ii., p. 297. Of late years this excavation has been repeatedly described by men who claim to have visited it, but whose statements it is hard to reconcile. Bullock mentions having seen on this spot 'a beautiful basin about twelve feet long by eight wide, having a well about five feet by four deep in the centre, surrounded by a parapet or rim two feet six inches high, with a throne or chair, such as is represented in ancient pictures to have been used by the kings. There are steps to descend into the basin or bath; the whole cut out of the living porphyry rock with the most mathematical precision, and polished in the most beautiful manner.' Mexico, vol. ii., pp. 125-6. Latrobe says there were 'two singular basins, of perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, not big enough for any monarch bigger than Oberon to take a duck in.' Rambler, p. 187; Vigne's Travels, vol. i., p. 27, mentions 'the remains of a circular stone bath ... about a foot deep and five in diameter, with a small surrounding and smoothed space cut out of the solid rock.' Brantz Mayer, who both saw it and gives a sketch of it, writes: 'The rock is smoothed to a perfect level for several yards, around which, seats and grooves are carved from the adjacent masses. In the centre there is a circular sink, about a yard and a half in diameter, and a yard in depth, and a square pipe, with a small aperture, led the water from an aqueduct, which appears to terminate in this basin.' Mex. as it Was, p. 234. Beaufoy says that two-thirds up the southern side of the hill was a mass of fine red porphyry, in which was an excavation six feet square, with steps leading down three feet, having in the centre a circular basin four and a half feet in diameter and five deep also with steps. Mex. Illustr., p. 195. 'On the side of the hill are two little circular baths, cut in the solid rock. The lower of the two has a flight of steps down to it; the seat for the bather, and the stone pipe which brought the water, are still quite perfect.' Tylor's Anahuac, p. 152.