In the ancient religions of America, a species of trinity was recognised altogether different to that of Christianity or the Trimurti of India. In some of the ancient poems a triple nature is actually ascribed to storms; and in the Quiche legends we read: "The first of Hurakan is the lightning, the second the track of the lightning, and the third the stroke of the lightning; and these three are Hurakan the Heat of the Sky." In the Iroquois mythology the same thing is found. Heno was thunder, and three assistants were assigned to him whose offices were similar to those of the companions of Hurakan. Heno was said to gather the clouds and pour out the warm rain; he was the patron of husbandry, and was invoked at seedtime and harvest. As the purveyor of nourishment, he was addressed as grandfather, and his worshippers styled themselves his grandchildren. Amongst the Aztecs, Tlaloc, the god of rain and water, manifested himself under the three attributes of the flash, the thunderbolt, and the thunder. But this conception of three in one, says Brinton, "was above the comprehension of the masses, and consequently these deities were also spoken of as fourfold in nature, three _and_ one." Moreover, as has already been pointed out, the thunder-god was usually ruler of the winds, and thus another reason for his quadruplicate nature was suggested. Hurakan, Haokah, Tlaloc, and probably Heno, are plural as well as singular nouns, and are used as nominatives to verbs in both numbers. Tlaloc was appealed to as inhabiting each of the cardinal points and every mountain top. His statue rested on a square stone pedestal, facing the east, and had in one hand a serpent in gold. Ribbons of silver, crossing to form squares, covered the robe, and the shield was composed of feathers of four colours, yellow, green, red and blue. Before it was a vase containing all sorts of grain; and the clouds were called his companions, the winds his messengers. As elsewhere, the thunderbolts were believed to be flints, and thus, as the emblem of 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. He is distinctly said to be the same as Quetzelcoatl, one of whose commonest symbols was a flint. Such a stone, in the beginning of things, fell from heaven to earth, and broke into 1600 pieces, each of which sprang up a god; an ancient legend, which shadows forth the subjection of all things to him who gathers the clouds from the four corners of the earth, who thunders with his voice, who satisfies with his rain the desolate and waste ground, and causes the tended herb to spring forth. 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 long round stones, which they think fall from the clouds when it thunders.