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Show CHAPTER XV. TOLTECCAN. ALVAR NUNEZ CABEZA DE VACA was the first European who stood upon the soil of New Mexico. A survivor of the unfortu-nate Pamphilo cle Narvaez's expedition, he wandered for ten years among the aborigines between the Mississippi and Gulf of California; reached the Spanish settlements in Mexico, and lived to Write a book as full of marvels as Swift's Gulli-ver. The miracles, supernatural cures, and other nonsense in the work, have caused many to reject it entire; but as it is proved by other testimony that he went into the wilderness at one time and came out of it at another, and as his descriptions of places are as correct as could be written to-day, we are justified in regarding the possible part of it as true. The private journal of Vaca begins on the 4th of September, 1527, when the few survivors of the Narvaez expedition were making boats to go to Mexico. All these boats were lost except that of Vaca, which was wrecked upon the* coast of Texas. With some fifteen others he was captured by the Indians ; and of this number but three reached Mexico with him Dorantes and Castillo, Spaniards, and a Barbary negro named Estevanico. Sometimes slaves, sometimes peddlers, and again treated as guests and acting as physicians, they got as far north as the Canadian River. Then they turned westward, traversed what Vaca called the " cow country," and came to a desert. Crossing this with much suffering, they visited in turn nearly all the strange tribes of New Mexico, and at last reached the vicinity of the Gulf of California. There they came upon the force commanded by Diego de Alcaraz, who was exploring the country under orders of the Viceroy of New Spain ( 230) |