MORGAN.) _ BANCROFT’S VERSION. 235 
description it seems probable that in the interior of the large rooms the 
natural faces of the stone in the walls were seen here and there, some of 
the red porous stone, some of marble, and some resembling porphyry, for 
it is not supposable that they could cut this stone with flint implements. 
Large stones used on the inner faces of the walls might have been left un- 
covered, and thus have presented the mottled appearance mentioned. The 
Aztecs had no structures comparable with those of Yucatan. Their archi- 
tecture resembles that of New Mexico wherever its features distinctly appear 
upon evidence that can be trusted. The best rooms found in the latter 
region are of thin pieces of sandstone prepared by fracture and laid up with 
a uniform face. Herrera had no occasion to speak of the use of marble 
and porphyry in the walls of this house in such a vague manner and upon 
more vague information. The reference to the thousand or more women as 
forming the harem of Montezuma is a gross libel. 
Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft, the last of the long line of writers who have 
treated the affairs of the Aztecs, has put the finishing touch to this picture 
in the following language: ‘The principal palace of the king of Mexico 
was an irregular pile of low buildings enormous in extent, constructed of 
huge blocks of tetzontli, a kind of porous stone common to that country, 
cemented with mortar. The arrangement of the buildings was such that 
they enclosed three great plazas or public squares, in one of which a beau- 
tiful fountain incessantly played. Twenty great doors opened on the squares 
and on the streets, and over these was sculptured in stone the coat-of-arms of 
the king of Mexico, an eagle griping in his talons a jaguar. In the interior 
were many halls, and one in particular is said by a writer who accompanied 
Cortes, known as the Anonymous Conqueror, to have been of sufficient 
extent to contain three thousand men. * * * In addition to these were 
more than one hundred smaller rooms, and the same number of marble baths. 
* * * The walls and floors of halls and apartments were many of them 
faced with polished slabs of marble, jasper, obsidian, and white tecali; lofty 
columns of the same fine stones supported marble balconies and porticos, 
every inch and corner of which was filled with wondrous ornamental carv- 
ing, or held a grinning, grotesquely sculptured head. The beams and casings 
were of cedar, cypress, and other valuable woods profusely carved and put 
