[Footnote 2:  The entries in the Diccionario Maya-Espanol del Convento de Motul, MS., are as follows:—­

“Chaac:  gigante, hombre de grande estatura.

“Chaac:  fue un hombre asi grande que enseno la agricultura, al cual tuvieron despues por Dios de los panes, del agua, de los truenos y relampagos.  Y asi se dice, hac chaac, el rayo:  u lemba chaac el relampago; u pec chaac, el trueno,” etc.]

[Footnote 3:  Relacion, etc., p. 255.]

These four Chac or Bacabab were worshiped under the symbol of the cross, the four arms of which represented the four cardinal points.  Both in language and religious art, this was regarded as a tree.  In the Maya tongue it was called “the tree of bread,” or “the tree of life."[1] The celebrated cross of Palenque is one of its representations, as I believe I was the first to point out, and has now been generally acknowledged to be correct.[2] There was another such cross, about eight feet high, in a temple on the island of Cozumel.  This was worshiped as “the god of rain,” or more correctly, as the symbol of the four rain gods, the Bacabs.  In periods of drought offerings were made to it of birds (symbols of the winds) and it was sprinkled with water.  “When this had been done,” adds the historian, “they felt certain that the rains would promptly fall."[3]

[Footnote 1:  The Maya word is uahomche, from uah, originally the tortilla or maize cake, now used for bread generally.  It is also current in the sense of life ("la vida en cierta manera,” Diccionario Maya Espanol del Convento de Motul, MS.). Che is the generic word for tree.  I cannot find any particular tree called Homche. Hom was the name applied to a wind instrument, a sort of trumpet.  In the Codex Troano, Plates xxv, xxvii, xxxiv, it is represented in use.  The four Bacabs were probably imagined to blow the winds from the four corners of the earth through such instruments.  A similar representation is given in the Codex Borgianus, Plate xiii, in Kingsborough.  As the Chac was the god of bread, Dios de los panes, so the cross was the tree of bread.]

[Footnote 2:  See the Myths of the New World, p. 95 (1st ed., New York, 1868).  This explanation has since been adopted by Dr. Carl Schultz-Sellack, although he omits to state whence he derived it.  His article is entitled Die Amerikanischen Goetter der Vier Weltgegenden und ihre Tempel in Palenque in the Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1879.  Compare also Charles Rau, The Palenque Tablet, p. 44 (Washington, 1879).]

[Footnote 3:  “Al pie de aquella misma torre estaba un cercado de piedra y cal, muy bien lucido y almenado, en medio del cual habia una cruz de cal tan alta como diez palmos, a la cual tenian y adoraban por dios de la lluvia, porque quando no llovia y habia falta de agua, iban a ella en procesion y muy devotos; ofrescianle codornices sacrificadas por aplacarle la ira y enojo con que ellos tenia o mostraba tener, con la sangre de aquella simple avezica.”  Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Conquista de Mejico, p. 305 (Ed. Paris, 1852).]