Tlaloc was appealed to as
inhabiting each of the cardinal points and every mountain top. His
statue rested on a square stone pedestal, facing the east, and had in
one hand a serpent of gold. Ribbons of silver, crossing to form squares,
covered the robe, and the shield was composed of feathers of four
colors, yellow, green, red, and blue. Before it was a vase containing
all sorts of grain; and the clouds were called his companions, the winds
his messengers.[157-2] As elsewhere, the thunderbolts were believed to
be flints, and thus, as the emblem of fire and the storm, this stone
figures conspicuously in their myths. Tohil, the god who gave the
Quiches fire by shaking his sandals, was represented by a flint-stone.
He is distinctly said to be the same as Quetzalcoatl, one of whose
commonest symbols was a flint (tecpatl). Such a stone, in the beginning
of things, fell from heaven to earth, and broke into 1600 pieces, each
of which sprang up a god;[158-1] an ancient legend, which shadows forth
the subjection of all things to him who gathers the clouds from the four
corners of the earth, who thunders with his voice, who satisfies with
his rain "the desolate and waste ground, and causes the tender herb to
spring forth.
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