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Show 480 COMMENTARY ON MARK OF NICE, 1539. tion of journey it is said that this religious, having traveled some 600 leagues to the northwest of the America in 1531, went with Pizarro to Peru in 1532, and after some service in Nicaragua came north with Pedro de Alvarado. In 1539 he was vice- commissary in the order of St. Francis, and in 1540- 43 was provincial, succeeding Fray Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo in that high ecclesiastical office. His personal character has been handed down to us by his enemies as that of an impostor, liar, and coward: none of the which was he, but an honest, brave, and zealous priest, who, in 1539, accomplished the ever memorable discovery of Zuni or the Seven Cities of Cibola* and thus of New Mexico- an exploit which opened the way immediately to the famous expedition of Coronado in 1540. We have his own Relacion or personal report of this pregnant feat, and many other original sources of information; which, as critically examined by modern scholars, especially Bandelier, Hodge, and Winship, enable us to set forth the man in his true light, and state with very close approximation to accuracy where he went and what he did. Unless Fray Juan de la Asumpcion in 1538, Fray Marcos was the first white man to enter what is now Arizona, as well as the present New Mexico. But he was preceded on much of his own route by a person of different color who had been given him for his guide- a negro named Estevan, or Estevanico, native of Azamor or Asimur, on the coast of Morocco, who had before made the transcontinental journey ( 1528- 36) with Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, and Andres Dorantes. Black Stephen was in fact the first " white man " who ever laid eyes on a pueblo of Zuni or Cibola; but he did so on Fray Marcos' expedition and by order of the latter. The friar was also accompanied part way by a lay brother, the Savoyard Fray Honorato, Onorato, or Norato, and some Indians. Friar Marcos received a copy of the instructions of the |