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Show LSP tte THE Bak 4350W wll La ‘ FIRST SPANISH EXPLORERS o9 those that gained, were fully content.’’ All of these Indians carried clubs and, on the discovery of hares (jack-rabbits), the Indians killed them, using the clubs with astonishing accuracy. The hares were very abundant; everything they killed they brought to the Spaniards. The women carried mats, of which lodges were built for the Spaniards, each one having his own house; the deer and hares were roasted in ovens, and after partaking of some of the food prepared for them, they distributed it among the principal Indians, who were asked to divide it among the others, but they would not touch it until the Spaniards had blessed it. On their route they crossed a great river which came from the north ** and traversed a plain thirty leagues broad. Here they were met by other Indians, who had come from a great distance to meet and extend them welcome. They stood in great awe of the Spanlards, and for several days after their arrival dared not speak nor raise their eyes to heaven. The Indians who had accompanied them thus far now returned, and the new tribe conducted them through a desert and mountainous country for fifty leagues, when they came to a very large river, which in fording was breast-deep.®® From the river onward, many of the people accompanying the Spaniards began to sicken from the great privation and labor they had undergone in the passage of the ‘“ridges,’’ which were sterile and difficult in the extreme. Thence they entered upon great plains with mountains in the distance, and 98 This river from the north is undoubtedly the Pecos. 89 This river was the Rio Grande, and I believe that the Spaniards crossed it at a point not further south than old Ft. Selden, New Mexico, near the present town of Dofia Ana. The distance from the Pecos to the Rio Grande, if they crossed near this point, is about eighty leagues; is of the ‘‘ridges’’ Rio Grande, kind described is about one by Cabeza thirty leagues, passes over leagues de Vaca; the intervening country from the Pecos and thence in a westerly of desert plain to the first direction to the and mountain ranges. There is no doubt in my mind that the word ‘‘ridges’’ was not used by Cabeza de Vaca to indicate the walls of canyons; it was evidently meant to de- Scribe ranges of mountains. If we are to conclude that Bandelier, and Hodge, who accepts Bandelier’s map of the route of these travelers, are correct, the distance from the point where the Pecos was crossed to the point where the Rio Grande was forded, the Spaniards did not travel one hundred miles in mak- Ing the journey, instead of eighty leagues as the narrative recites. There is Just aS much reason to believe that they met the Jumanos Indians in this neighborhood, those who mentioned the circumstance to Espejo in 1582, as there is in refusing to believe that it was far north of the mouth of the Pecos river that Cabeza de Vaca and companions journeyed. |