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[40e] till in May, 1536, they drew near the Pacific Ocean at
Chap. II.} 1536.
the village of San Miguel in Sonora. From that place they were escorted by Spanish soldiers to Compostella; and all the way to the city of Mexico, they were entertained as public guests.

In 1530 an Indian slave had told wonders of the seven cities of Cibola, the Land of Buffaloes, that lay at the north between the oceans and beyond the desert, and abounded in silver and gold. The rumor had stimulated Nuño de Guzman, when president of New Spain, to advance colonization as far as Compostella and Guadalaxara, but the Indian story teller died; Guzman was superseded; and the seven rich cities remained hid.

To the government of New Galicia, Antonio de Mendoza, the new viceroy, had named Francisco Vasquez Coronado. On the arrival of the four pioneers,

1538.
he hastened to Culiacan, taking with him Estevanico and Franciscan friars, one of whom was Marcus de Niza, and on the seventh of March, 1539, he de-
1539.
spatched them under special instructions from Mendoza to find Cibola. The negro, having rapidly hurried on before the party, provoked the natives by insolent demands, and was killed. On the twentysecond of the following September, Niza was again at Mexico, where he boasted that he had been as far as Cibola, though he had not dared to enter within its walls; that, with its terraced stone houses of many stories, it was larger and richer than Mexico; that his Indian guides gave him accounts of still more opulent towns. The priests promulgated in their sermons his dazzling report; the Spaniards in New Spain, trusting implicitly in its truth, burned to subdue the vaunted provinces; the wise and prudent Coronado,

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