Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/137

  of New Galicia, but we need not suppose that he was compelled to resign. There was every reason why he should have desired to escape from a position which demanded much skill and unceasing active administration, but which carried with it no hope of reward or of honor. It is pleasant to believe that Coronado withdrew to his estates and lived happily ever after with his wife and children, spending his leisure in supervising the operations on his farm and ranch, and leading the uneventful life of a country gentleman. The only break in the monotony of which we happen to know—and this is the only part of this belief for which there is the slightest evidence that it is correct—came when he was accused, in 1544 and again in 1547, of holding more Indians to labor on his estates than were allowed by the royal regulations. We do not even know the outcome of this accusation. Vazquez Coronado sinks into oblivion after he made his report to the viceroy in the autumn of 1542.

 

Coronado found no gold in the land of the Seven Cities or in Quivira, but his search added very much to the geographical knowledge of the Spaniards. The maps of the New World drawn and published between 1542 and 1600, reproductions of several of which accompany this memoir, give a better idea of the real value of the geographical discoveries made by Coronado than any bare statement could give. In 1540, European cartographers knew nothing about the country north of New Spain. Cortes had given them the name—Nueva España or Hispania Nova—and this, with the name of the continent, served to designate the inland region stretching toward the north and west. Such was the device which Mercator adopted when he drew his double cordiform map in 1538 (plates XLV, XLVI). Six years later, 1544, Sebastian Cabot published his elaborate map of the New World (see plate XL). He had heard of the explorations made by and for Cortes toward the head of the Gulf of California, very likely from the lips of the conqueror himself. He confined New Spain to its proper limits, and in the interior he pictured Indians and wild beasts. In 1548 the maps of America in Ptolemy's Geography for the first time show the results of Coronado's discoveries (see plate XLI). During the remainder of the century Granada, Cibola, Quivira, and the other places whose names occur in the various reports of the expedition, appear on the maps. Their location, relative to each other and to the different parts of the country, constantly changes. Quivira moves along the fortieth parallel from Espiritu Santo river to the Pacific coast. Tiguex and Totonteac are on any one of half a dozen rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, the Espiritu Santo, or the South sea. Acuco and Cicuye are sometimes placed west of Cibola, and so a contemporary map maker may be the cause of the mistaken title to the report of Alvarado's expedition to the Rio Grande. But many as were the mistakes, they are insignificant in comparison with the great fact that the people of Europe had learned that there was an inhabited country north of Mexico, and that the world was, by so much, larger than before. In addition to the exploration of the Pueblo country of New Mexico and Arizona, and of the great plains as far north as Kansas or Nebraska, the most important subsidiary result of the expedition of 1540-1542 was the discovery of Colorado river. Hernando de Alarcon, who sailed from Acapulco May 9, 1540, continued his voyage northward along the coast, after stopping at the port of Culiacan to add the San Gabriel to his fleet, until he reached the shoals and sandbars at the head of the Gulf of California. The fleet which Cortes 