From the south side of the Temple of the Moon runs an avenue of burial-mounds, the Micaotli, “the path of the dead.” On these mounds, and round the foot of the pyramids themselves, the whole population of the once great city of Teotihuacán and its neighbourhood used to congregate, to see the priests and the victims march round the terraces and up the stairs in full view of them all. Standing here, one could imagine the scene that Cortes and his men saw from their camp, outside Mexico, on that dreadful day when the Mexicans had cut off their retreat along the causeways, and taken more than sixty Spanish prisoners. Bernal Diaz was there, and tells the tale how they heard from the city the great drum of Huitzilopochtli sending forth a strange and awful sound, that could be heard for miles, and with it many horns and trumpets; and how, when they had looked towards the great teocalli, they saw the Mexicans dragging up the prisoners, pushing and beating them as they went, till they had got them up to the open space at the top, “where the cursed idols stood.” Then they put plumes of feathers on their heads, and fans in their hands, and made them dance before the idol; and when they had danced, they threw them on their backs on the sacrificial stone that stood there, and, sawing open their breasts with knives of stone, they tore out their hearts, and offered them up in sacrifice; and the bodies they flung down the stairs to the bottom. More than this the Spaniards cannot have seen, though Diaz describes the rest of the proceedings as though they had been done in his sight; but it was not the first time they had witnessed such things, and they knew well enough what was happening down below,—how the butchers were waiting to cut up the carcases as they came down, that they might be cooked with chile, and eaten in the solemn banquet of the evening.
The day was closing in by this time; and our man was waiting with the horses at the foot of the great pyramid; and with him an Indian, whom we had caught half an hour before, and sent off with a real to buy pulque, and to collect such obsidian arrows and clay heads as were to be found at the ranchos in the neighbourhood.