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In reading the first Spanish historians with attention, i. 

 would appear that the two countries are situated west of the 

 Rocky Mountains ; but Cornado states clearly, that in 

 going to the north, the rivers are found to flow, as far as the 

 Cibola, towards the west 5 and beyond Cibola, as far as 

 Quivira, towards the east. There is no question however, 

 in any of these expeditions to the north, of a passage across 

 the mountains 5 Quivira is described as an immense plain, 

 where it is difficult to mark the way. Whatever opinion 

 may be formed of the abrupt lowering of the mountains, 

 north of New Mexico, it is difficult to figure, between the 

 JRocky Mountains and the Sierra Verde, a point of parti- 

 tion of the waters, divortia aquarum, situated in a plain. 

 Francisco Vasquez de Cornado, in his letter to the viceroy, 

 complains of the falsehoods of the monk Marcos de Niza j 

 and to justify his return, paints the country through 

 which he had passed, as poor and savage : he is, however, so 

 much struck with the grandeur of the edifices at Cibora and 

 Quivira, several stories high, built of stone and clay, that 

 he doubts if the natives, who he says are intelligent but 

 little industrious, could have constructed them. This testi- 

 mony of a man of veracity is well worthy of attention. Does 

 it indicate a people relapsed into barbarism, and who had 

 preserved some knowledge of the mechanic arts ? Every 

 house in Quivira having a fiat roof, or a terrace (azofea), 

 Cornado calls the whole country " la tierra de las azoteas." 

 Terraces of the same kind were found in 1773, by Father 

 Garces, in the villages of the present Indians of Moqui. Did 

 the nations of the Mexican race, in their migrations to the 

 south, send colonies towards the east, or do the monuments 

 of the United States pertain to the autocthone nations ? 

 Perhaps we must admit in North America, as in the ancient 

 world, the simultaneous existence of several centres of 

 civilization, of which the mutual relations are not known in 

 history. The very civilized nations of New-Spain, the Tol~ 



