Alegre, _Historia de la Compania de Jesus
en la Nueva Espana_, Tomo i, pp. 91, 92 (Mexico, 1841). The authorities
whom Alegre quotes are P.P. Alonso de la Rea, _Cronica de Mechoacan_
(Mexico, 1648), and D. Basalenque, _Cronica de San Augustin de Mechoacan_
(Mexico, 1673). I regret that I have been unable to find either of these
books in any library in the United States. It is a great pity that the
student of American history is so often limited in his investigations in
this country, by the lack of material. It is sad to think that such an
opulent and intelligent land does not possess a single complete library of
its own history.]

The king of the Tarascos was considered merely the vicegerent of the
absent hero-god, and ready to lay down the sceptre when Curicaberis should
return to earth.

We do not know whether the myth of the Four Brothers prevailed among the
Tarascos; but there is hardly a nation on the continent among whom the
number Four was more distinctly sacred. The kingdom was divided into four
parts (as also among the Itzas, Qquichuas and numerous other tribes), the
four rulers of which constituted, with the king, the sacred council of
five, in imitation, I can hardly doubt, of the hero-god, and the four
deities of the winds.

The goddess of water and the rains, the female counterpart of Curicaberis,
was the goddess _Cueravaperi_. "She is named," says the authority I quote,
"in all their fables and speeches. They say that she is the mother of all
the gods of the earth, and that it is she who bestows the harvests and the
germination of seeds." With her ever went four attendant goddesses, the
personifications of the rains from the four cardinal points. At the sacred
dances, which were also dramatizations of her supposed action, these
attendants were represented by four priests clad respectively in white,
yellow, red and black, to represent the four colors of the clouds.[1] In
other words, she doubtless bore the same relation to Curicaberis that
Ixchel did to Itzamna in the mythology of the Mayas, or the rainbow
goddess to Arama in the religious legends of the Moxos.[2] She was the
divinity that presided over the rains, and hence over fertility and the
harvests, standing in intimate relation to the god of the sun's rays and
the four winds.

[Footnote 1: _Relacion de las Ceremonias y Ritos, etc., de Mechoacan_, in
the _Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de Espana_, vol. liii, pp.
13, 19, 20. This accoun