For the sedentary tribes of the valleys, dependent chiefly upon agriculture and fishing for a livelihood, the deities presiding over vegetation, rain and earth were the most important; and after the Aztec had become settled and devoted themselves to intensive cultivation, they readily adopted these gods and gave them a high place in their pantheon. Most important of all was Tlaloc, the god of rain and thunder (Fig. 3, b); his worship appears to have been extremely widespread, and his images are found in numbers among the remains of pre-Aztec date at Teotihuacan (where he is the only god who can be identified with certainty), in the Huaxtec country, at Teotitlan, at Quiengola in the Zapotec district, and at Quen Santo in Guatemala. It is even related that when the Acolhua first arrived in the valley in the reign of the first Chichimec ruler Xolotl, they discovered on a mountain a figure of this god, which remained an honoured object of worship until it was broken up by order of the first bishop of Mexico. Tlaloc is one of the most easily recognizable of Mexican deities, since he is represented with snakes twined about his eyes (the snake being throughout practically the whole of America the symbol of lightning and rain), with long teeth, and often with a trunk-like nose. According to legend he was one of the first gods created, and lived in a kind of paradise, situated in the east, called Tlalocan, where he presided over the souls of the drowned and those who in life suffered from dropsical affections. He was supposed to be assisted in his duties by a number of subsidiary rain-gods, called Tlaloque, who distributed the rain from magical pitchers and caused the thunder by striking them with rods. In the courtyard of Tlaloc's palace four great jars were supposed to stand, which contained rain of varying quality. In the first was the good rain which produced fertile crops; in the second, rain which gave being to cobwebs and mildew; in the third were stored ice and sleet; and in
