ii, cap.

xxxvii.] Others have contended that Tezcatlipoca, as undoubtedly the spirit of darkness and the night, refers, in its meaning, to the moon, which hangs like a bright round mirror in the sky, though partly dulled by what the natives thought a smoke.[1] [Footnote 1: _Anales del Museo Nacional_, Tom.

ii, p.

257.] I am inclined to believe, however, that the mirror referred to is that first and most familiar of all, the surface of water: and that the smoke is the mist which at night rises from lake and river, as actual smoke does in the still air.
As presiding over the darkness and the night, dreams and the phantoms of the gloom were supposed to be sent by Tezcatlipoca, and to him were sacred those animals which prowl about at night, as the skunk and the coyote.[1] [Footnote 1: Sahagun, _Historia_.Lib.vi, caps.

ix, xi, xii.] Thus his names, his various attributes, his sacred animals and his myths unite in identifying this deity as a primitive personification of the Darkness, whether that of the storm or of the night.[1] [Footnote 1: Senor Alfredo Chavero believes Tezcatlipoca to have been originally the moon, and there is little doubt at times this was one of his symbols, as the ruler of the darkness.