Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/106

 This port had been the seat of the shipbuilding operations of Cortes on the Pacific coast, and it is very probable that Alarcon's two ships were the same as those which the marquis claimed to have equipped for a projected expedition. Alarcon sailed north to Santiago, where he was obliged to stop, in order to refit his vessels and to replace some artillery and stores which had been thrown overboard from his companion ship during a storm. Thence he sailed to Aguaiauale, as Ramusio has it, the port of San Miguel de Culiacan. The army had already departed, and so Alarcon, after replenishing his store of provisions, added the San Gabriel to his fleet and continued his voyage. He followed the shore closely and explored many harbors "which the ships of the marquis had failed to observe," as he notes, but he nowhere succeeded in obtaining any news of the army of Coronado.

Melchior Diaz had met with so many difficulties in traveling through the country which the army was about to enter, on its march toward the Seven Cities, and the supply of food to be found there was everywhere so small, that Coronado decided to divide his force for this portion of the journey. He selected seventy-five or eighty horsemen, including his personal friends, and twenty-five or thirty foot soldiers. With these picked men, equipped for rapid marching, he hastened forward, clearing the way for the main body of the army, which was to follow more slowly, starting a fortnight after his own departure. With the footmen in the advance party were the four friars of the expedition, whose zealous eagerness to reach the unconverted natives of the Seven Cities was so great that they were willing to leave the main portion of the army without a spiritual guide. Fortunately for these followers, a broken leg compelled one of the brethren to remain behind. Coronado attempted to take some sheep with him, but these soon proved to be so great a hindrance that they were left at the river Yaquimi, in charge of four horsemen, who conducted them at a more moderate pace.

Leaving Culiacan on April 22, Coronado followed the coast, "bearing off to the left," as Mota Padilla says, by an extremely rough way, to the river Cinaloa. The configuration of the country made it necessary to follow up the valley of this stream until he could find a passage across the mountains to the course of the Yaquimi. He traveled alongside this stream for some distance, and then crossed to Sonora river.