Page:The Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.djvu/60

 something to tell which interested his readers vastly more than the painful, wonderful story of Cabeza de Vaca. The very fact that he took it for granted, as he says in his report, that they would go to populate and rule over this land of the Seven Cities, with its doorways studded with turquoises, was enough to insure interest. He must, indeed, have been a popular preacher, and when the position of father provincial to the Franciscans became vacant, just now, brother Marcos, already high in the order and with all the fresh prestige of his latest achievements, was evidently the subject for promotion. Castañeda, who is not the safest authority for events preceding the expedition, says that the promotion was arranged by the viceroy. This may have been so. His other statement is probable enough, that, as a result of the promotion, the pulpits of the order were filled with accounts of such marvels and wonders that large numbers were eager to join in the conquest of this new land. Whatever Friar Marcos may have sacrificed to careful truth was atoned for, we may be sure, by the zealous, loyal brethren of blessed Saint Francis.

Don Joan Suarez de Peralta was born, as Señor Zaragoza shows in his admirable edition of the Tratado del Descubrimiento de las Yndias y su Conquista, in Mexico between 1535 and 1540, and probably nearer the first of these five years. In the Tratado, Suarez de Peralta gives a most interesting description of the effect produced in Mexico by the departure and the return of the Coronado expedition. He can hardly have had very vivid personal recollections of the excitement produced by the reports of Friar Marcos, yet his account is so clear and circumstantial that it evidently must be the narrative of an eyewitness, though recorded, it may be, at second-hand. He tells us that "the country was so stirred up by the news which the friar had brought from the Seven Cities that nothing else was thought about. For he said that the city of Cibola was big enough to contain two Sevilles and over, and the other places were not much smaller; and that the houses were very fine edifices, four stories high; and in the country there are many of what they call wild cows, and sheep and goats and rich treasures. He exaggerated things so much, that everybody was for going there and leaving Mexico depopulated The news from the Seven Cities inspired so eager a desire in every one that not only did the viceroy and the marquis (Cortes) make ready to start for there, but the whole country wanted to follow them so much that they traded for the licenses which permitted them to go as soldiers, and people sold these as a favor, and whoever obtained one of these thought that it was as good as a title of nobility at the least. For the friar who had come from there exaggerated and said that it was the best place in the world; the people in that country very prosperous, and all the Indians wearing clothes and the possessors of much cattle; the mountains like those of Spain, and the climate the same. For wood, they burnt very large walnut trees, which bear quantities of