Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/251

Rh Coronado stayed twenty-five days with the Indians of Quivira and the vicinity. He found the country fertile. "The soil," he says, "is the best that can be found for all the crops of Spain; besides being strong and black, it is well watered with brooks, springs, and rivers. I found plums like those in Spain, nuts, very fine grapes, and mulberries." To this description is added the testimony of Jaramillo, who praises the fertility of the soil, the abundance of water, and the absence of mountains, and gives special prominence to certain productions, such as flax, sumach, and grapes.

Notwithstanding all these advantages, which Coronado sufficiently pointed out, he could not remain in Quivira. Winter, if not immediately at his door, was not very far off, and the Spaniards, surprised by early frosts, and not being acquainted with the delightful autumn of Kansas and the Mississippi Valley, thought that cold weather would follow at once. They therefore began a retreat, accomplished it without accident in forty days, and arrived in the Pecos Valley on October 25th (1541). Thence Coronado returned with Arellano to Bernalillo, where he wrote on October 31st the report to Charles V., from which part of the facts we have related are taken.

It is remarkable that when Coronado told his men the full truth about Quivira, and confided to them the discouraging results of his expedition, they became all the more fixed in the idea that Quivira was a gold-rich country. They conceived that their commander had not gone far enough into the interior because, meeting a dense population, he was