Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/802

782 Monterey and the principal leaders of the enterprise, so that several years elapsed before the expedition was fairly under way. Finally, in the autumn of 1597, Oñate set out with four hundred men, one hundred and thirty of whom had families. Many were the hardships, reverses, and successes of this important expedition, until formal possession of the newly conquered territory was taken in the name of the crown, by Juan de Oñate, on April 30, 1598, thus adding another important province to the rapidly expanding boundaries of New Spain. Thus terminated the sixteenth century in New Spain, the opening of which had beheld at the zenith of its glory the most advanced and powerful empire in America, as yet undreamed of by the Spanish adventurers who were scouring the western seas in search of India. Within two brief years it fell, thereafter to serve as a base for the extension of a new power. The ancient capital of the Aztecs was made the metropolis of yet vaster domains. The decade following the fall of Mexico saw these Spaniards spreading in small but irresistible bands southward over Chiapas and Guatemala, until, stayed in Honduras by the current of invasion from the Isthmian capital, they turned to subjugate the still untrodden north, advancing on the one side beyond Pánuco, on the other to the borders of Sinaloa, nearly opposite Lower California. Another decade saw the conquest of the peninsula of Yucatan in the east, while in the north exploring expeditions disclosed the other great peninsula, that of California, entering the gulf by its side, and passing through Sonora and Arizona into the land of Cíbola, and beyond, to the borders of Kansas. Meanwhile a few wanderers had crossed their track and traversed the broad expanse of continent from Florida to the shores of the gulf of California. The following