points and the four winds.

They rarely lose altogether their true character. The Quiche legends
tell us that the four men who were first created by the Heart of Heaven,
Hurakan, the Air in Motion, were infinitely keen of eye and swift of
foot, that "they measured and saw all that exists at the four corners
and the four angles of the sky and the earth;" that they did not fulfil
the design of their maker "to bring forth and produce when the season of
harvest was near," until he blew into their eyes a cloud, "until their
faces were obscured as when one breathes on a mirror." Then he gave them
as wives the four mothers of our species, whose names were Falling
Water, Beautiful Water, Water of Serpents, and Water of Birds.[81-1]
Truly he who can see aught but a transparent myth in this recital, is a
realist that would astonish Euhemerus himself.

There is in these Aztec legends a quaternion besides this of the first
men, one that bears marks of a profound contemplation on the course of
nature, one that answers to the former as the heavenly phase of the
earthly conception. It is seen in the four personages, or perhaps we
should say modes of action, that make up the one Supreme Cause of All,
Hurakan, the breath, the wind, the Divine Spirit. They are He who
creates, He who gives Form, He who gives Life, and He who
reproduces.[82-1] This acute and extraordinary analysis of the origin
and laws of organic life, clothed under the ancient belief in the action
of the winds, reveals a depth of thought for which we were hardly
prepared, and is perhaps the single instance of anything like
metaphysics among the red race. It is clearly visible in the earlier
portions of the legends of the Quiches, and is the more surely of native
origin as it has been quite lost on both their translators.

Go where we will, the same story meets us. The empire of the Incas was
attributed in the sacred chants of the Amautas, the priests assigned to
take charge of the records, to four brothers and their wives. These
mythical civilizers are said to have emerged from a cave called _Pacari
tampu_, which may mean "the House of Subsistence," reminding us of the
four heroes who in Aztec legend set forth to people the world from
Tonacatepec, the mountain of our subsistence; or again it may mean--for
like many of these mythical names it seems to have been designedly
chosen to bear a double construction--the Lodgings of the Dawn,
recalling another Aztec legend whic