Very early in his history did man take note of these four points, and recognizing in them his guides through the night and the wilderness, call them his gods.

Long afterwards, when centuries of slow progress had taught him other secrets of nature--when he had discerned in the motions of the sun, the elements of matter, and the radicals of arithmetic a repetition of this number--they were to him further warrants of its sacredness.

He adopted it as a regulating quantity in his institutions and his arts; he repeated it in its multiples and compounds; he imagined for it novel applications; he constantly magnified its mystic meaning; and finally, in his philosophical reveries, he called it the key to the secrets of the universe, "the source of ever-flowing nature."[68-1] In primitive geography the figure of the earth is a square plain; in the legend of the Quiche's it is "shaped as a square, divided into four parts, marked with lines, measured with cords, and suspended from the heavens by a cord to its four corners and its four sides."[68-2] The earliest divisions of territory were in conformity to this view.

Thus it was with ancient Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and China;[68-3] and in the new world, the states of Peru, Araucania, the Muyscas, the Quiches, and Tlascala were tetrarchies divided in accordance with, and in the first two instances named after, the cardinal points.

So their chief cities--Cuzco, Quito, Tezcuco, Mexico, Cholula--were quartered by streets running north, south, east, and west.