But the religion of Quetzalcoatl, as observed in his Yucatec form of Kukulkan and his Guatemalan variant of Gucumatz, bore a close resemblance to that of Tlaloc. In Yucatan Quetzalcoatl was regarded by priests and people as the great rain-making priest, the god of moisture, whereas in Mexico he is merely the sweeper of the ways to the Tlaloc deities of rain. This is surely eloquent of the fact that the Tlaloc religion was not only of greater antiquity in Mexico, but that its ministers were disinclined to permit the deity of the new religion to adopt a status similar to that of their own god. With true priestly diplomacy, then, it would seem that they temporized by affording Quetzalcoatl a status as the great rain-making priest, a character which he retained to the last. Myth certainly alludes to Tlaloc as the supplanter of Quetzalcoatl in the affections of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue and as robbing the peaceful culture-hero of the maize-plant which he had discovered. This does not necessarily signify the defeat of an older religion by a more novel faith, but may relate to a successful defence by the more ancient cultus and its absorption of the other. The theory of the amalgamation of the Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl cults appears to me to be in some measure assisted by the circumstance that the devotees of both placed a high value upon minerals of a green colour. The word chalchihuitl (“green stone”), of such common occurrence in the works of the Spanish authors who wrote on Mexican affairs, must be taken as applying with equal force to jadeite, nephrite, turquoise, emerald, chlormelanite, green quartz, precious serpentine, or, indeed, any mineral of a green shade. A tradition existed that Quetzalcoatl brought the use and manipulation of jadeite into Mexico, but green was a salient hue in the insignia of Tlaloc, and the name of his consort Chalchihuitlicue (“greenstone skirt”) is eloquent of his connection with the several kinds of stones which the Mexicans grouped under the name chalchihuitl. Whatever significance attached to the colour of these stones, apart from their nature as precious stones, whether or not they were symbolic of water or verdure, or metal, or of all of these agencies, which are regarded as so potent by primitive peoples, it is apparent that both cults employed them symbolically or pseudo-scientifically, and it therefore seems probable that each of these religions was originally connected with the worship of water, and therefore the influence associated with and contained in water, and that this belief would render their amalgamation a process of little difficulty.