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Show THE FIRST SPANISH EXPLORERS o7 however, sailed from Vera Cruz, reaching the port of Lisbon on the 9th day of August, 1537. During the voyage his ship was pursued by a French corsair. He had no sooner arrived in Spain than he was promptly summoned to court, at Valladolid, whither he went at once and made his report to the emperor, Charles the Fifth, presenting him also with a buffalo hide, some emeralds, and some turquoises which he had collected during his journey from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast.*® The story of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca,*’ published five years of Jalisco, and married Dofia Maria de la Torre, a widow, by whom he had a large family. One of his sons, Balthazar, some time king’s treasurer of Vera Cruz, was born about the middle of the century, and on the death of his father inherited an encomienda that produced an income of five thousand pesos a year. Another son, Gaspar, inherited the encomienda of the pueblos of Ocava; and another, Melchior, an encomienda of Indians and of very good rents.’’ Bancroft, H. H., North American States, vol. i, p. 70. See also Letter from Mendoza to Charles the Fifth, of December 10, 1537, Col. Doc. Flor., p. 136. 46 Hodge, F. W., Ibid, pp. 7-8: ‘‘He seems to have been an honest, modest, and humane man, who underestimated rather than exaggerated the many strange things that came under his notice, if we except the account of his marvelous healings, even to the revival of the dead. The expedition of Narvaez was in itself a disastrous and dismal failure, reaching ‘an end alike forlorn and fatal;’ but viewed from the standpoint of present-day civilization, the commander deserved his fate. On the other hand, while one might well hesitate to say that the acomplishment of Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions compensated their untold sufferings, the world eventually became the wiser in more ways than one. The northern continent had been penetrated from shore; the waters of the Mississippi and the bison of the plains were now first seen by white men; and some knowledge of the savage tribes had been gleaned for the benefit of those who should come after. There is no blatant announcement of great mineral wealth—a mountain with scoria of iron, some small bags of mica, a quantity of galena, with which the Indians painted their faces, a little turquoise, a few emeralds, and a small copper bell were all. Yet the effect of the remarkable overland journey was to inspire the expedition of Coronado in 1540; and it is not improbable that De Soto, who endeavoured to enlist the services of Cabeza de Vaca, may likewise have been stimulated to action.’’ 47 Hodge, F. W., Ibid, pp. 10-11: ‘‘The Relacion of Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca was first printed at Zamora in 1542, and with slight changes was reprinted with the first edition of the Comentarios on the Rio de la Plata, at Valladolid, in 1555. The editio princeps was translated into Italian by Ramusio, in the third volume of his Navagationi et Viaggt (Venice, 1556) and this was paraphrased into English by Samuel Purchase in volume iv of Purchas His The Naufragtos (or Relacion) Pilgrimes (London, 1613, pt. iv, lib. viii, cap. 1). and Comentarios were reprinted at Madrid in 1736, preceded by the Examen Apologetico of Antonio Ardoino, who seemed to feel it his duty to reply to an Austrian monk named Caspar Plutus, who, in 1621, under the name Philoponus, published a treatise in which he maintained that laymen like Cabeza de Vaca should not be permitted to perform miracles. Cabeza de Vaca is included in volume i of This edition of the narration of Barcia’s Historiadores Primitivos |