royal expense the expedition was equipped with pack-mules, cannon, and a thousand horses. For food on the way and to stock the new country there were droves of cattle and sheep, goats, and swine. Leading all this splendor, and dulling it by his own brighter glory, rode Coronado in golden armor. If the gray robe of Fray Marcos showed but dingily amid this military brilliance, yet it drew the awed glances of the spectators no less than the golden scales of Coronado's coat. This shining army, after all, had still to see what the humble monk in the drab gown had already seen the magical cities of Cibola.

To coöperate with Coronado by water, the seaman Alarcón was sent up the coast with three vessels. Alarcón sailed to the head of the Gulf of California and ascended the Colorado River eightyfive leagues, perhaps as far as Yuma. Coronado divided his land forces. Leaving the main body at Culiacán in charge of Arellano, who was later one of the unsuccessful adelantados of Florida, Coronado pushed on ahead with Fray Marcos and his brother monks, eighty horse, twenty-five foot soldiers, some Indians and negroes, and part of the artillery. A month later he passed through Vaca's Town of the Hearts; and, continuing

north over the divide into the San Pedro valley, he turned eastward and skirted the Santa Catalina mountains to a small Indian settlement in the vicinity of Fort Grant. Here he turned northward again, crossed the Gila, and, after fifteen days of hard march, reached the Zuñi River. Some twenty miles farther on, Coronado and his men caught their first glimpse of Hawikuh. The disappointing sight was like a dash of icewater. Says Castañeda, the historian of the expedition: "When they saw the first village, which was Cíbola, such were the curses that some hurled at Friar Marcos that I pray God may protect him from them. It is a little, crowded village, looking as if it had been crumpled all up together."

The ruins of Hawikuh, fifteen miles southwest of Zuñi, today bear out the description of the disgusted Castañeda. This first of the Seven Cities, however, was not to be taken without a fight. The Zuñi warriors hurled stones on the Spaniards. The golden-plated Coronado was felled and would have been killed but for the heroism of one of his officers who "bestrode him like a good knight, shielded him and dragged him to safety." But the Spaniards could not be resisted. They entered the village and found

food there, which was the thing they were most

in need of.

Coronado renamed this hill stronghold Granada possibly in irony and sojourned there until recovered from his wounds. A deputation of Indians came to him to make peace, while the rest of the tribesmen removed to their war towns on Thunder Mountain. Once more fit for the saddle, Coronado set about the pacification of the province; then sent an expedition to Tusayán, the present Moqui towns in Arizona, and messengers to Mexico with reports to Mendoza. With them went Fray Marcos, "because he did not think it was safe for him to stay in Cíbola, seeing that his report had turned out to be entirely false, because the Kingdoms he had told about had not been found, nor the populous cities, nor the wealth of gold, nor the precious stones which he had reported, nor the fine clothes, nor other things that had been proclaimed from the pulpits." Thus did Castañeda, the historian, twenty years later bitterly enumerate the list of disappointments experienced by himself and others of Coronado's army in the province of the Seven Cities.

While Coronado was at Hawikuh, or "Granada," detachments of his army were penetrating

other sections of the new country. Arellano, with the main body left at Culiacán, was marching to Cibola. Melchior Díaz, one of Coronado's ablest scouts, was trying to make junction with Alarcón's ships. Díaz touched the Colorado River some distance above its mouth. He found letters left by Alarcón, and met the giant Yuma Indians perhaps in the vicinity of the city of Yuma, where the Gila River empties into the Colorado. These Indians were then as now of unusual height and powerfully made, so that one man could lift a log which several Spaniards could not move. They went stark naked and in cold weather carried firebrands to keep them warm. So Díaz called the Colorado Río del Tizon, or Firebrand River. Here Díaz died from an accidental lance thrust, and his band returned to Sonora.

to

Meanwhile a report from the Moqui country came to Coronado of a great river flowing far down between red mountain walls. This news inspired Coronado to send López de Cárdenas the "good knight" who had saved his life have a look at it; and here is the description of Grand Canyon by Cárdenas, the first white man to view the great gorge of the Colorado, as set down by Castañeda:

After they had gone twenty days' march they came to the banks of a river, which are so high that from the edge of one bank to the other appeared to be three or four leagues in the air. The country was elevated and full of low twisted pines, very cold, and lying open toward the north. They spent three days on this bank looking for a passage down to the river, which looked from above as if the water were six feet across, although the Indians said it was half a league wide. It was impossible to descend, for after these three days Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras and another companion, who were the three lightest and most agile men, made an attempt to go down at the least difficult place, and went down until those who were above were unable to keep sight of them. They returned about four o'clock in the afternoon, not having succeeded in reaching the bottom on account of the great difficulties.

They said they had been down about a third of the way and that the river seemed very large from the place which they reached. . . . Those who stayed above had estimated that some huge rocks on the sides of the cliffs seemed to be about as tall as a man, but those who went down swore that when they reached these rocks they were bigger than the great tower of Seville.1

While Cárdenas was looking at the Grand Canyon, some Indians, led by one whom the Spaniards nicknamed Bigotes (Whiskers), came to Zuñi from the east. They told of great towns, and brought

1 Winship, The Coronado Expedition, p. 489. The Giralda, or famous bell-tower of the Cathedral of Seville, is 275 feet high.