A notion constantly recurring in the Maskoki migrations is that they journeyed _east_. This, of course, only points to the general direction of their march in regard to their starting point. As they were addicted to heliolatry, it may be suggested that their conjurers advised them to travel, for luck, to the east only, because the east was the rising place of the sun, their protector and benefactor. Cosmologic ideas, like this, we find among the Aztecs, Mayas, Chibchas and many other American nations, but the direction of migrations is determined by physical causes and not by visionary schemes. Wealth and plunder prompted the German barbarians, at the beginning of the mediæval epoch of history, to migrate to the south of Europe; here, in the Gulf territories, the inducement lay more especially in the quest of a country more productive in grains, edible roots, fish and game. It may be observed here, that from the moving of the heavenly bodies from east to west the Pani Indians deduced the superstition that they should never move _directly_ east in their travels.[151] This, however, they rarely observed in actual life at the expense of convenience.