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 Marco da Nizza, with orders to find out "what there was in the extensive regions beyond Mexico."

Starting from Culiacan, then the most northern Spanish settlement in Mexico, Da Nizza, accompanied by several Spaniards and a few Indian guides, made his painful way, first through plains already desolated by the incursions of his fellow-countrymen, and thence into the territory now called Arizona, on the borders of which he was met by some natives of California, who told him falsely, as it turned out, that their home was on an island, and that its shores were washed by waters abounding in pearls.

Encouraged by this intelligence, Da Nizza passed on till he came to the encampment of a tribe of Indians who had never seen a white man, but who received him courteously, informing him that forty days' journey to the north, on the other side of lofty mountains, there existed a vast plain full of cities inhabited by a people whose wealth far exceeded their own. Passing on in search of this new El Dorado, the Father was presently met by some Indians from the plain in question, who confirmed all that he had already been told, and, pointing to some gold ornaments he carried with him, assured him that their land abounded in similar objects. Cevola, or Cibola, was the nearest and largest of their cities. It contained lofty stone houses, large places, etc.; in a word, it seemed likely to be a second Tenotchitlan; and, after a consultation with his companions, Da Nizza resolved to send one of them, Stefano Dorantes, on in advance, with an escort of three hundred Indians, to announce his own approach, hoping thus to enhance the eclat of his own entry with a view to obtaining a larger tribute for his employer.

The first part only of this programme was carried out. As Da Nizza was approaching the capital, a few days after his envoy had left him, he was met by an Indian, who told him that, on entering the city in all the pomp of ringing bells and waving plumes, Dorantes and his escort were seized by the people, stripped of all they possessed, and flung into prison. On their attempting to escape, they were shot down by arrows, and but few lived to tell the tale.

Resolved, in spite of the awful fate of Dorantes, not to return to Mexico without seeing Cibola, Da Nizza now disguised himself, and, accompanied by two attendants as brave as himself, he succeeded in approaching near enough to the scene of the massacre to be convinced that there had been no exaggeration in the reports of the wealth of the people of the plain.