Near and around this Great Temple there were more than forty lesser ones, each one of them dedicated and erected to a God, and its tower and shape narrowed up to the floor on which the Chapel and altar began to arise, and it was not as large as the Great Temple, nor did it approach it by far in size, and all these lesser Temples and towers were associated with the Great Temple and tower which there was in this City. The difference between the Great Temple and the lesser ones was not in the form and structure, for all were the same, but they differed in site and position [orientation], for the Great Temple had its back to the East, which is the practice the large temples ought to follow, as we have noticed that the ancients assert, and their steps and entrance to the West (as we are accustomed to place many of our Christian Churches), so that they paid reverence in the direction of the sun as it rose, the smaller temples looked in the other direction towards the East and to other parts of the heaven [that is to] the North and South. * * * * * In order that my readers may not think that I speak heedlessly, and without a limit to my figures, I wish to quote here the words of Padre Fray Bernadino de Sahagun, a friar of my Order and one of those who joined very early in the discovery of this New Spain in the year twenty-nine [1529], who saw this and the other temples.... He says these words:—“This Temple was enclosed on all sides by stone walls half as high again as a man, all embattled and whitened. The ground of this Temple was all paved, with very smooth flag stones (not dressed but natural) as smooth and slippery as ice. There was much to be seen in the buildings of this Temple; I made a picture of it in this City of Mexico, and they took it to Spain for me, as a thing well worth beholding, and I could not regain possession of it, nor paint it again, and although in the painting it looks so fine, it was in reality much more so, and the building was more beautiful. The principal shrine or chapel which it possessed was dedicated to the God Huitzilupuchtli, and to another God his companion named Tlacahuepancuezcotzin, and to another, of less importance than the two, called Paynalton....” And he adds more, saying “the square was of such great circumference that it included and contained within its area all the ground where the Cathedral, the houses of the Marques del Valle[A], the Royal houses[16] and the houses of the Archbishop have now been built, and a great part of what is now the market place,” which seems incredible, so great is the said area and space of ground. I remember to have seen, thirty-five years ago, a part of these buildings in the Plaza, on the side of the Cathedral, which looked to me like hills of stone and earth, which were being used up in the foundations of God’s house and Cathedral which is being built now with great splendour.