Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/233

Rh zone. Cattle and sheep raising might have appeared more promising to them, but a long time would have to pass before they could establish those industries and a safe, accessible market could be built up for their stock. This could certainly not be expected in the first generation, while every one wanted first of all to be rich himself.

Only productive mining could be profitable in a short time, but the Spaniards, who lacked neither desire for the metals nor practical skill in discovering them, did not suffer themselves to be misled by the traces, universally present, of malachite and carbonate of copper. They indeed recognized the existence of silver ore in the rocks, but shrewdly doubted as to the paying quality of the mineral. The Indians did not possess, nor were they acquainted with, gold, silver, copper, or iron. Green stones, kalaite and malachite, colored flints and obsidian, gypsum for whitewashing, iron-ochre for painting pots, faces, and feathers, were their mineral treasures. Coronado soon perceived that New Mexico was a poor country, which could not be developed in the immediate future, a land fit only for commonplace work and minor industries. The Spaniards had not made the long, dangerous journey from the sunny south for such a purpose as that. To compensate them for their pains they must find more.

The representations of "the Turk," on the contrary, sounded very differently. He talked of a river two leagues wide containing fish as large as a horse, on