Especially as those who gave or withheld the rains were they objects of his anxious solicitation.

"Ye who dwell at the four corners of the earth--at the north, at the south, at the east, and at the west," commenced the Aztec prayer to the Tlalocs, gods of the showers.[75-2] For they, as it were, hold the food, the life of man in their power, garnered up on high, to grant or deny, as they see fit.

It was from them that the prophet of old was directed to call back the spirits of the dead to the dry bones of the valley.

"Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come forth from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." (Ezek.xxxvii.

9.) In the same spirit the priests of the Eskimos prayed to _Sillam Innua_, the Owner of the Winds, as the highest existence; the abode of the dead they called _Sillam Aipane_, the House of the Winds; and in their incantations, when they would summon a new soul to the sick, or order back to its home some troublesome spirit, their invocations were ever addressed to the winds from the cardinal points--to Pauna the East and Sauna the West, to Kauna the South and Auna the North.[76-1] As the rain-bringers, as the life-givers, it were no far-fetched metaphor to call them the fathers of our race.