Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/25

14 SECOND.-' The World Was Astounded When Cortes New Spain Founded. T WAS the learned men of the University of Salamanca and three other colleges there located to whom King Ferdinand referred Columbus' project of reaching India by sailing west. It was these scientists who rejected the claims of Columbus as being visionary and impractical. Here in this Harvard- Yale seat of learning the principal personage of this narration was born, Francisco Vasques Coronado. Ha was noble by birth and education, being trained to the profession of arms, and from boyhood had been encouraged to become an expert horseman as weU as to be proficient in the manual of arias. His father being an ofBLcer of state and of great influence was able to give him every advantage. Before completing his education at the Salamanca Universi- ty in the year 1528, the great Cortes, then Governor of Mexico, visited Spain, and was the hero of Europe. The eclat received by the conqueror naturally fired