[372] “Et di più v’ hauea vna guarnigione di dieci mila huomini di guerra, tutti eletti per huomini valenti, & questi accompagnauano & guardauano la sua persona, & quando si facea qualche rumore ò ribellione nella città ò nel paese circumuicino, andauano questi, ò parte d’ essi per Capitani.” Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 309. [373] Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 40.--On paving the square, not long ago, round the modern cathedral, there were found large blocks of sculptured stone buried between thirty and forty feet deep in the ground. Ibid., loc. cit. [374] Clavigero calls it oblong, on the alleged authority of the “Anonymous Conqueror.” (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 27, nota.) But the latter says not a word of the shape, and his contemptible woodcut is too plainly destitute of all proportion to furnish an inference of any kind. (Comp. Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 307.) Torquemada and Gomara both say it was square (Monarch. Ind., lib. 8, cap. 11;--Crónica, cap. 80); and Toribio de Benavente, speaking generally of the Mexican temples, says they had that form. Hist. de los Ind., MS., Parte 1, cap. 12. [375] See the essay on the Origin of the Mexican Civilization. _Ante._ [376] Clavigero, calling it oblong, adopts Torquemada’s estimate--not Sahagun’s, as he pretends, which he never saw, and who gives no measurement of the building--for the length, and Gomara’s estimate, which is somewhat less, for the breadth. (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 28, nota.) As both his authorities make the building square, this spirit of accommodation is whimsical enough. Toribio, who did measure a _teocalli_ of the usual construction in the town of Tenayuca, found it to be forty _brazas_, or two hundred and forty feet, square. (Hist. de los Ind., MS., Parte 1, cap. 12.) The great temple of Mexico was undoubtedly larger, and, in the want of better authorities, one may accept Torquemada, who makes it a little more than three hundred and sixty Toledan, equal to three hundred and eight French feet square. (Monarch. Ind., lib. 8, cap. 11.) How can M. de Humboldt speak of the “great concurrence of testimony” in regard to the dimensions of the temple? (Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 41.) No two authorities agree. [377] Bernal Diaz says he counted one hundred and fourteen steps. (Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 92.) Toribio says that more than one person who had numbered them told him they exceeded a hundred. (Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 12.) The steps could hardly have been less than eight or ten inches high, each; Clavigero assumes that they were a foot, and that the building, therefore, was a hundred and fourteen feet high, precisely. (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 28, 29.) It is seldom safe to use anything stronger than _probably_ in history.