"The thunder-bolts, as elsewhere, were believed to be flints, and thus, as the emblem of the fire and the storm, this stone figures conspicuously in their myths. Tohil, the god who gave the Quiches fire by shaking his sandals, was _represented by a flint-stone_. Such a stone, _in the beginning of things, fell from heaven to earth, and broke into sixteen hundred pieces_, each of which sprang up a god. . . . This is the germ of the adoration of stones as emblems of the fecundating rains. This is why, for example) the Navajos use, as their charm for rain, certain [1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 117.] {p. 258} long, _round_ stones, which they think fall from the cloud when it thunders."[1] In the Algonquin legends of Manibozho, or Manobosbu, or Nanabojou, the great ancestor of all the Algic tribes, the hero man-god, we learn, had a terrific battle with "his brother Chakekenapok, _the flint-stone, whom he broke in pieces, and scattered over the land_, and changed his entrails into fruitful vines. The conflict was _long and terrible_. The face of nature was _desolated as by a tornado, and the gigantic bowlders and loose rocks found on the prairies are the missiles hurled by the mighty combatants_."[2] We read in the Ute legends, given on page ---, _ante_, that when the magical arrow of Ta-wats "struck the sun-god full in the face, the sun was shivered into a _thousand fragments, which fell to the earth_, causing a general conflagration."[3] Here we have the same reference to matter falling on the earth from the heavens, associated with devouring fire. And we have the same sequence of events, for we learn that when all of Ta-wats was consumed but the head, "his tears gushed forth in a flood, which spread over the earth and extinguished the fires." The Aleuts of the Aleutian Archipelago have a tradition that a certain Old Man, called Traghdadakh, created men "_by casting stones on the earth; he flung also other stones into the air, the water, and over the land_, thus making beasts, birds, and fishes."[4] It is a general belief in many races that the stone axes and celts fell from the heavens. In Japan, the stone [1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 170. 2. Ibid., p. 181. 3. Major J. W. Powell, "Popular Science Monthly," 1879, p. 799. 4 Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 104.] {p. 259} arrow-heads are rained from heaven by the flying spirits, who shoot them. Similar beliefs are found in Brittany, in Madagascar, Ireland, Brazil, China, the Shetlands, Scotland, Portugal, etc.[1] In the legends of Quetzalcoatl, the central figure of the Toltec mythology, we have a white man--a bearded man--from an eastern land, mixed up with something more than man. He was the Bird-serpent, that is, the winged or flying serpent, the great snake of the air, the son of Iztac Mixcoatl, "the white-cloud serpent, the spirit of the tornado."[2] He created the world. He was overcome by Tezcatlipoca, the spirit of the night.