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Show COMMENTARY ON MARK OF NICE, 1539. 483 ing that the Indians of this ( river) informed him that at about ten days' journey to the north there was an- Santa Cruz, through Tucson, Florence, Phoenix, or anywhere else so far west, are certainly at fault; he was on the San Pedro, as he was also with Coronado the next year; and he went down that river, past the vicinity of Tombstone and other well- known Arizona places. At this point in the Relacion conies up a matter which seems to have needlessly puzzled many commentators, and even caused some of them to send Fray Marcos to a supposed west coast in an impossible lat. 350. But I find nothing in the original Spanish to require such a forcible construction of his words. I think that he does not say he went to see about the trend of the coast, but simply sought to learn about it (" quiselo saber" he says) from hearsay; " y asi fui en demanda delta y vi claramente " need not mean more than that he demanded of Indians how the case was, and was given to understand clearly what they told him. At this stage of his journey he was on the Rio San Pedro, then called Nexpa, say 200 miles or more from the Gulf of California in an air line, say lat. 31 ° 30' or 40', among the Sobaipuri Indians; and he was following down the river northward. At the last village of the Sobaipuris Friar Marcos remained three days and then plunged into the despoblado or wilderness, which he was told it would take him 15 days to cross, to reach Cibola. This was on the gth of May old style, or the 19th new style. He was still traveling on the trail of the negro, which probably is not now ascertainable with entire precision, as it was " across country" and not along any recognizable water- course after the Sari Pedro had been left His point of departure from this river is not fixed; but in any event his mean course was about northnortheast, across the Gila and the Salado, necessarily, and so on to Zufii. It seems to me altogether most probable that Estevan's trail, which Friar Marcos |