The goddess of water and the rains, the female counterpart of Curicaberis, was the goddess _Cueravaperi_. "She is named," says the authority I quote, "in all their fables and speeches. They say that she is the mother of all the gods of the earth, and that it is she who bestows the harvests and the germination of seeds." With her ever went four attendant goddesses, the personifications of the rains from the four cardinal points. At the sacred dances, which were also dramatizations of her supposed action, these attendants were represented by four priests clad respectively in white, yellow, red and black, to represent the four colors of the clouds.[1] In other words, she doubtless bore the same relation to Curicaberis that Ixchel did to Itzamna in the mythology of the Mayas, or the rainbow goddess to Arama in the religious legends of the Moxos.[2] She was the divinity that presided over the rains, and hence over fertility and the harvests, standing in intimate relation to the god of the sun's rays and the four winds. [Footnote 1: _Relacion de las Ceremonias y Ritos, etc., de Mechoacan_, in the _Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de España_, vol. liii, pp. 13, 19, 20. This account is anonymous, but was written in the sixteenth century, by some one familiar with the subject. A handsome MS. of it, with colored illustrations (these of no great value, however), is in the Library of Congress, obtained from the collection of the late Col. Peter Force.] [Footnote 2: See above, chapter iv, §1] The Kiches of Guatemala were not distant relatives of the Mayas of Yucatan, and their mythology has been preserved to us in a rescript of their national book, the _Popol Vuh_. Evidently they had borrowed something from Aztec sources, and a flavor of Christian teaching is occasionally noticeable in this record; but for all that it is one of the most valuable we possess on the subject. It begins by connecting the creation of men and things with the appearance of light. In other words, as in so many mythologies, the history of the world is that of the day; each begins with a dawn. Thus the _Popol Vuh_ reads:-- "This is how the heaven exists, how the Heart of Heaven exists, he, the god, whose name is Qabauil." "His word came in the darkness to the Lord, to Gucumatz, and it spoke with the Lord, with Gucumatz." "They spoke together; they consulted and planned; they understood; they united in words and plans." "As they consulted, the day appeared, the white light came forth, mankind was produced, while thus they held counsel about the growth of trees and vines, about life and mankind, in the darkness, in the night (the creation was brought about), by the Heart of Heaven, whose name is Hurakan."[1] [Footnote 1: _Popol Vuh, le Livre Sacré des Quichés_, p. 9 (Paris, 1861).]