wdiship] TRANSLATION OF CASTANEDA 489 



This was sonic cotton cloth, although not much, because they do not 

 make it in that district. They also gave him some dressed skins ami 

 corn meal, and pine nuts and corn and birds of the country. After 

 ward they presented some turquoises, but not many. The people of 

 the whole district came together that day and submitted themselves, 

 and they allowed him to enter their villages freely to visit, buy, sell, 

 and barter with them. 



It is governed like Cibola, by an assembly of the oldest men. They 

 have their governors and generals. This was where they obtained the 

 information about a large river, and that several days down the river 

 there were some people with very large bodies. 



As Don Pedro de Tovar was not commissioned to go farther, he 

 returned from there and gave this information to the general, who dis- 

 patched Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas with about twelve companions 

 to go to see this river. lie was well received when he reached Tusayan 

 and was entertained by the natives, who gave him guides for his jour- 

 ney. They started from here loaded with provisions, for they had to 

 go through a desert country before reaching the inhabited region, 

 which the Indians said was more than twenty days' journey. After 

 they had gone twenty days they came to the banks of the river, which 

 seemed to be more than :> or 4 leagues above the stream which flowed 

 between them. 1 This country was elevated and full of low twisted 

 pines, very cold, and lying open toward the north, so that, this being the 

 warm season, no one could live there on account of the cold. They 

 spent three days on this bank looking for a passage down to the river, 

 which looked from above as if the water was (> feet across, although the 

 Indians said it was half a league wide. It was impossible to descend, 

 for after these three days Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras 

 and another companion, who were the three lightest and most agile 

 men, made an attempt to go down at the least difficult place, and went 

 down until those who were above were unable to keep sight of them. 

 They returned about 4 oclock in the afternoon, not having succeeded 

 in reaching the bottom on account of the great difficulties which they 

 found, because what seemed to be easy from above was not so, but 

 instead very hard and difficult. They said that they had been down 

 about a third of the way and that the river seemed very large from the 

 place which they reached, and that from what they saw they thought 

 the Indians had given the width correctly. Those who stayed above 

 had estimated that some huge rocks on the sides of the cliffs seemed to 

 be about as tall as a man, but those who went down swore that when 

 they reached these rocks they were bigger than the great tower of 

 Seville. They did not go farther up the river, because they could not 

 get water. Before this they had had to go a league or two inland 

 every day late in the evening in order to find water, and the guides 

 said that if they should go four days farther it would not be possible 



tCompare the Spanish text. Ternaux translates it : "Lesborda sont tellemenl eleves qu'ils croyaient 

 6tre a trois ou quatre lieues en l'air." i 



