that the northern nomads drew the inspiration which prompted them to this evil practice from their more civilized neighbours. But it is even more probable that, as the various Mexican peoples were for the most part of cognate origin and contiguous civilization, the practice of human sacrifice had been common to all of them in a more or less modified form for some generations, and only received an impetus after the Chichimec immigration. Against this view may be quoted the myth which refers the introduction of human sacrifice to a group of Huaxtec earth-goddesses, Tlazolteotl and her sisters. But it seems to me that this Maya people were by no means so prone to the custom, and that in this instance Tlazolteotl has been confounded with some of her Mexican forms. The process by which blood was thought of as being transformed into rain has already been fully described, and it but remains here to indicate that Tonatiuh is, in places, closely identified with the sign atl, water, and is indeed one of the four rulers of the week beginning with the day “one rain,” probably because of the early belief that on one occasion the sun “drank up” all the water on earth and later disgorged it in floods.
For