We have now to consider the position of the Great Teocalli in relation
to the excavations made in the Calle de las Escallerillas when pipes
were being laid for the drainage of the city in the year 1900. These
excavations were watched on behalf of the Government by Señor Don
Leopoldo Batres, Inspector General of Archæological Monuments, who
published an account of his researches in 1902, with a plan showing the
position and depth below the surface at which objects of archæological
interest were discovered. Unfortunately Señor Batres was already fully
convinced that the Great Teocalli faced the south and occupied more or
less the position of the present Cathedral.
At a spot marked _a_, in Tracing A_{2}, 38 metres from the east end of
the Escalerillas, Señor Batres discovered a stairway of four masonry
steps which he states measured each 29 cm. in the rise and 22 cm. in the
tread, but unfortunately beyond this statement he gives no information
whatever regarding them. However, I presume that the steps followed the
same direction as a stairway of nine steps which he had previously
described and which will be alluded to immediately. _These three steps I
have taken to be the central stairway leading to the forecourt or
apetlac of the Great Teocalli._
Señor Batres had already noted a stairway of nine steps, marked _b_ in
Tracing A_{2}, each measuring 22 cm. in rise and 26 cm. in tread. This
stairway was 2 metres wide and faced the west. The stairway was
apparently joined at one or both sides to a sloping wall[11]. Embedded
in the débris which covered these steps was found an idol of green stone
measuring 75 cms. in height and 61 cms. in diameter. The idol is now
preserved in the National Museum.
I take the foot of this stairway of nine steps to have been in line with
the great stairway of the Teocalli, and it may have been part of the
great stairway itself; however, a stairway only two metres wide is not
likely to be the beginning of what must have been the principal approach
to the Teocalli, and I can only suggest that it may have been a stairway
leading to a niche which held the idol of green stone and that the great
stairways passed on either side of it. An idol in a somewhat similar
position can be seen on the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copan.
THE ANONYMOUS CONQUEROR. A Description written by a Companion of
Hernando Cortés.