Tezcatlipocâ was unquestionably the god of the itztli (obsidian) stone, and Seler [132] has identified him with Iztli, the stone-knife god, the second of the lords of the night. In certain codices, too, he is represented as having such a knife in place of a foot, and we know that it was a fairly common practice of the Mexican artists to indicate the name or race of an individual by drawing one of his feet in a hieroglyphical manner. [133] I believe, too, that the net-like garment worn at times by the god above his other attire is an adaptation of the mesh-bag in which Mexican hunters carried flints for use as spear- and arrow-heads. This, as well as the fact that he was the god of the sharp-cutting obsidian from which such weapons were made, caused him to be regarded as patron deity of the wild hunting Chichimecs of the northern steppes, a connection which is eloquent of his erstwhile primitive character. It is clear, too, that Chalchiuhtotolin, the jewelled fowl, which is ruler of the eighteenth day-sign, tecpatl (obsidian knife), is merely a variant of Tezcatlipocâ. [134] But another important link connects Tezcatlipocâ with obsidian. Bernal Diaz states that they called this “Tezcat.” From it mirrors were manufactured as divinatory media by the wizard. Sahagun says [135] that it was known as aitztli (water obsidian), probably because of the high polish of which it was capable. Another such stone he mentions was called tepochtli, which I would translate “wizard stone,” and from which I think, by a process of etymological confusion, Tezcatlipocâ received one of his minor names, Telpochtli, “the youth.” The name of the god means “Smoking Mirror,” and Acosta [136] says that the Mexicans called Tezcatlipocâ’s mirror irlacheaya (an obvious error for tlachialoni) “his glass to look in,” otherwise the mirror or scrying-stone in which he was able to witness the doings of mankind. It is possible that the “smoke” which was said to rise from this mirror symbolized the haziness which is supposed to cloud the surface of a divinatory glass prior to the phenomenon of vision therein. Thus from the shape beheld in the seer’s mirror, Tezcatlipocâ came to be regarded as the seer. That into which the wizard gazed became so closely identified with sorcery as to be thought of as wizard-like itself; for Tezcatlipocâ is, of all Mexican deities, the one most nearly connected with the wizard’s art. He is par excellence the nocturnal god who haunts the crossways and appears in a myriad phantom guises to the night-bound wayfarer. “These,” says Sahagun, “were masks that Tezcatlipocâ assumed to frighten the people.”