the next day they showered arrows upon the camp. The Spaniards
pursued them and by means of their superior arms soon drove them into
the mountains. Diaz was then able to cross without molestation, his
faithful Amerind allies of another tribe assisting.

Alarcon had conveyed in his letters the nature of the gulf and coast,
so Diaz struck westward to see what he could find in that direction. The
country was desolate and forbidding, in places the sand being like hot
ashes and the earth trembling. Four days of this satisfied them, and
the captain concluded to return to San Hieronimo. The subsequent fate
of Diaz is another illustration of how a man may go the world round,
escaping many great dangers, and then be annihilated by a simple
accident that would seem impossible. A dog belonging to the camp pursued
the little flock of sheep that had been driven along to supply the men
with meat, and Diaz on his horse dashed toward it, at the same time
hurling a spear. The spear stuck up in the ground instead of striking
the dog, and the butt penetrated the captain's abdomen, inflicting,
under the conditions, a mortal wound. The men could do nothing for him
except to carry him along, which for twenty days they did, fighting
hostile natives all the time. Then he died. On the 18th of January
they arrived without their leader at the settlement from which they had
started some three months before.

Cardenas with twelve men had meanwhile gone from Cibola to a place
called Tusayan, or Tucano, situated some twenty or twenty-five leagues
north-westerly from Cibola, from whence he was to strike out toward
the great river these natives had described to Don Pedro de Tobar, who
recently had paid them a visit, and incidentally shot a few of them
to invite submission. Cardenas was kindly received by the people of
Tusayan, who readily supplied him with guides. Having lived in the
country for centuries, they of course knew it and the many trails very
well. They knew the highway down the Gila to the Colorado, and they told
Cardenas about the tall natives living in the lower part of it, the same
whom Alarcon and Diaz had met. In the direction in which Cardenas was to
go they said it was twenty days' journey through an unpopulated country,
when people would again be met with. After the party had travelled
for twenty days they arrived at a great canyon of the Colorado River,
apparently not having met with the people mentioned. If Cardenas started
from