The worship of Quetzalcoatl was antipathetic if not directly opposed to that of the other deities of Anahuac. It had a separate priesthood of its own who dressed in white in contradistinction to the sable garments which the priests of the other divinities were in the habit of wearing, and its ritual discountenanced if it did not forbid human sacrifice. Quetzalcoatl possessed a high priest of his own, who was subservient, however, to the Aztec pontiff, and who only joined the monarch's deliberative council on rare and extraordinary occasions. There can be no doubt that the good reception given to Cortes and the Spanish conquerors was solely on account of the Quetzalcoatl legend, which insisted upon his return at some future period, and the Aztecs undoubtedly regarded the arrival of the strange white men as a fulfilment of this prophecy. Tlaloc was the god of rain--an important deity for a country where a droughty season was nothing less than a national disaster. His name signifies 'the nourisher,' and from his seat among the mountains he despatched the rain-bearing clouds to water the thirsty and sun-baked plains of Anahuac. He was also the god of fertility or fecundity, and in this respect appears to have been analogous to the Egyptian Amsu or Khem, the ithyphallic deity of Panopolis. He was the wielder of the thunder and lightning, and the worship connected with him was even more cruel, if possible, than that of Huitzilopochtli. One-eyed and open-mouthed, he delighted in the sacrifice of children, and in seasons of drought hundreds of innocents were borne to his temple in open litters, wreathed with blossoms and dressed in festal robes. Should they weep, their tears were regarded as a happy augury for a rainy season; and the old Spanish chroniclers record that even the heartless Aztecs, used to scenes of massacre as they were, were moved to tears at the spectacle of the infants hurried, amid the wild chants of frenzied priests, to the maw of this Mexican Moloch. The statues of Tlaloc were usually cut in a greenish-white stone to represent the colour of water. He had a wife, Chalchihuitlicue (the lady Chalchihuit), and by her he possessed a numerous family which are supposed to represent the clouds, and which bear the same name as himself. At one of his festivals the priests plunged into a lake, imitating the sounds and motions of frogs, which were supposed to be under the special protection of the water-god.