HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



29 



This great temple occupied the centre of the city, and, 

 together with the other temples and buildings annexed 

 to it, comprehended all that fpace upon which the great 

 cathedral church now (lands, part of the greater market- 

 place, and part likewife of the flreets and buildings 

 around. Within the inclofure of the wall which encom- 

 pafTed it in a fquare form, the conqueror Cortes affirms 

 that a town of five hundred houfes might have ftood ( y). 

 The wall 3 built of flone and lime, was very thick, eight 



feet 



gun. The three firft lived for feveral months in the palace of king Axajacatl, 

 near the temple, and therefore faw it every day. Sahagun, although he never 

 faw it entire, yet faw fome part of it, and could difcover what ground it had 

 occupied. Gomara, who did not himfelf fee the temple, nor ever was in Mexi- 

 co, received the different accounts of it from the conquerors themfelves who 

 faw it. Acofta, whofe defcription has been copied by Herrera and Solis, inftead 

 of the great temple defcribes one perfectly different. This author, although in 

 other refpecls deferving of credit, was not in Mexico till fixty years after the 

 conqueft, when there were no remains of the temple. 



In a Dutch edition of Solis, was given an incorrect print of the great tem- 

 ple, which was afterwards given by the authors of the General Hijlory of Voyages, 

 and is ftill to he met with in an edition of the conqueror Cortes's Letters, pub- 

 lifhed at Mexico in 1770 : but the careleffnefs of the editors of that edition will 

 appear from comparing the print in it with Cortes's own defcription. He fays, 

 in his firft letter, though fomewhat hyperbolically, that the great temple of 

 Mexico was higher than the tower of the cathedral church of Seville, while in 

 the print mentioned it fcarcely appears to be feven or eight perches or toifes. 

 Cortes declares that five hundred Mexican nobles fortified themfelves in the 

 upper area, whereas that fpace as reprefented in the print could not contain 

 more than feventy or eighty men. LaPdy, omitting many other contradictions, 

 Cortes fays, that the temple confifted of three or four bodies, and that each body 

 had, as he defcribes it, its corridnres or balconies ; yet in the print it is repre- 

 fented as confifting of one body only, without any of thofe corridores at all. 



{ y) The Anonymous Conqueror fays, that what was within the wall was 

 like a city. Gomara affirms, that the wall was a very long bowfhot in length 

 upon every fide. Torquemada, although agreeing with Gomara in book viii. 

 chap. 2. fays afterwards in ch. xix. that the circumference of the wall was above 

 three thoufand paces, which is plainly a miftake. Dr. Hernandez, in his pro- 

 lix defcription of the temple, preferved in manufcript in the library of the 

 Efcurial, and which Father Nieremberg has made ufe of in his Natural Hiftory, 

 allows to the wall, of every fide, two hundred Toledan cubits, which is about 

 eighty- fix perches. 



