TRANSLATION OF THE LETTER FROM CORONADO TO MENDOZA, AUGUST 3, 1540.[1]
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 Culiacan with his army, and after suffering various inconveniences on account of the badness of the way, reaches the Valley of Hearts, where he failed to find any corn, to procure which he sends to the valley called Señora. 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 ou 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 Lordship, 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 forethought 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 mountains and hills and in the passage of the rivers, the greater part of the
- ↑ Translated from the Italian version, in Ramusio'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 as are properly translated, are spelled as in the Italian text.
- ↑ This statement is probably not correct. It may be due to a blunder hy Ramusio in translating from the original text. See note on page 382. Eighty days (see pp. 584, 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 muoh more intelligible.
