[Footnote 1: The Aztec words are _Quiahuitl teotl, quiahuitl_, rain, _teotl_, god; _Tonacaquahuitl_, from _to_, our, _naca_, flesh or life, _quahuitl_, tree; _Chicahualizteotl_, from _chicahualiztli_, strength or courage, and _teotl_, god. These names are given by Ixtlilxochitl, _Historia chichimeca_, cap. i.] The winds and rains come from the four cardinal points. This fact was figuratively represented by a cruciform figure, the ends directed toward each of these. The God of the Four Winds bore these crosses as one of his emblems. The sign came to be connected with fertility, reproduction and life, through its associations as a symbol of the rains which restore the parched fields and aid in the germination of seeds. Their influence in this respect is most striking in those southern countries where a long dry season is followed by heavy tropical showers, which in a few days change the whole face of nature, from one of parched sterility to one of a wealth of vegetable growth. As there is a close connection, in meteorology, between the winds and the rains, so in Aztec mythology, there was an equally near one between Quetzalcoatl, as the god of the winds, and the gods of rain, Tlaloc and his sister, or wife, or mother, Chalchihuitlicue. According to one myth, these were created by the four primeval brother-gods, and placed in the heavens, where they occupy a large mansion divided into four apartments, with a court in the middle. In this court stand four enormous vases of water, and an infinite number of very small slaves (the rain drops) stand ready to dip out the water from one or the other vase and pour it on the earth in showers.[1] [Footnote 1: Ramirez de Fuen-leal, _Historia de los Mexicanos_, cap. ii.] _Tlaloc_ means, literally, "The wine of the Earth,"[1] the figure being that as man's heart is made glad, and his strength revived by the joyous spirit of wine, so is the soil refreshed and restored by the rains. _Tlaloc tecutli_, the Lord of the Wine of the Earth, was the proper title of the male divinity, who sent the fertilizing showers, and thus caused the seed to grow in barren places. It was he who gave abundant crops and saved the parched and dying grain after times of drought. Therefore, he was appealed to as the giver of good things, of corn and wine; and the name of his home, Tlalocan, became synonymous with that of the terrestrial paradise. [Footnote 1: _Tlalli_, earth, _oc_ from _octli_, the native wine made from the maguey, enormous quantities of which are consumed by the lower classes in Mexico at this day, and which was well known to the ancients. Another derivation of the name is from _tlalli_, and _onoc_, being, to be, hence, "resident on the earth." This does not seem appropriate.]