Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/269

Rh direction. The name of this region was Quivara. Here arose the seven cities of Cibola painted in glowing colors by the monk who first visited them. This romantic story reaching Spain, orders came back to the viceroy to explore and subdue the land without delay. Cortez, who was then living on his Mexican estate, offered to fulfill this task, but was refused. An army was sent out under Coronado, taking the great natural highway leading toward the north over the table-land, where it entered what is now known as New Mexico. Like the seekers after the enchanted islands whose splendid domes and walls lured the mariners of a hundred years before, the soldiers traveled on and on in a fruitless search, wintering twice in the wilderness and coming back disgusted because they found only a community of Indian farmers living in the large pueblos. A few miserable villages still remain to mark the probable site of the cities of Cibola. Mexico whilst ruled by Spain was never so civilized after the conquest as before. It is recorded of one of the viceroys at the close of the eighteenth century that he caused the streets of the capital to be lighted and drained, and strengthened the police-force of this robber-infested land. Beggary increased under Spanish rule, until at the beginning of this century there were twenty thousand beggars in the capital alone.

Very little was done in the way of public improvement during the three centuries of viceroyalty. There were no roads except such as led from one large city to another, and these were very poor. The nobles and the rich Creoles lived on immense estates called haciendas, which separated them widely. One of these gentlemen, who lived on the hills bordering the lowlands, had a hacienda ninety miles long by fifty wide. He fitted out