TRANSLATION OF THE LETTER FROM CORONADO TO 

 MENDOZA, AUGUST 3, 1540.' 



The Account given by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, 

 Captain-General of the force which was sent in the name 

 of His Majesty to the newly discovered country, of what 



HAPPENED TO THE EXPEDITION AFTER APRIL 22 OF THE YEAR 

 MDXL, WHEN HE STARTED FORWARD FROM CULIACAN, AND OF 

 WHAT HE FOUND IN THE COUNTRY THROUGH WHICH HE PASSED. 



Francisco Vazquez starts from Guliacan with his army, and after suffer- 

 ing various inconveniences on account of the badness of the iray, reaches 

 the Valley of Hearts, where he failed to find any corn, to procure which 

 he sends to the valley called Seftora. He receives an account of the 

 important Valley of Hearts and of the people there, and of some lands 

 lying along that coast. 



On the 22d of the month of April last, I set out from the province of 

 Culiacan with a part of the army, having made the arrangements of 

 which I wrote to Your Lordship. Judging by the outcome, I feel sure 

 that it was fortunate that I did not start the whole of the army on this 

 undertaking, because the labors have been so very great and the lack 

 of food such that I do not believe this undertaking could have been 

 completed before the end of this year, and that there would be a great 

 loss of life if it should be accomplished. For, as I wrote to Your Lord- 

 ship, I spent eighty days in traveling to Culiacan, 2 during which time I 

 and the gentlemen of my company, who were horsemen, carried on our 

 backs and on our horses a little food, in such wise that after leaving this 

 place none of us carried any necessary effects weighing more than a 

 pound. For all this, and although we took all possible care and fore- 

 thought of the small supply of provisions which we carried, it gave out. 

 And this is not to be wondered at, because the road is rough and long, 

 and what with our harquebuses, which had to be carried up the moun- 

 tains and hills and in the passage of the rivers, the greater part of the 



'Translated from the Italian version, in Kamusio's Viaggi.vol. iii, fol. 359 (ed. 1556). There is another 

 English translation in Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii, p. 373 (ed. 1600). Hakluyt's translation is reprinted 

 in Old South Leaflet, general series, No. 20. Mr Irving Babbitt, of the French department in Harvard 

 University, has assisted in correcting some of the errors and omissions in Hakluyt's version. The 

 proper names, excepting such aa are properly translated, are spelled as in the Italian text. 



"This statement is probably not correct. It may be due to a blunder by Eamusio in translating 

 from the original text. See note on page 382. Eighty days (see pp. 564, 572) would be nearly the time 

 which Coronado probably spent on the journey from Culiacan to Cibola, and this interpretation would 

 render the rest of the sentence much more intelligible. 

 552 



