for the escape of
Cabeza de Vaca, his treasurer, and a few others, there would have been
nothing left to suggest that the history of the start of the expedition
was any other than a myth. But De Vaca and his companions were saved,
only to fall, however, into the hands of the Indians. What an unhappy
fate! Was life to end thus? Were all the hopes, ambitions and glorious
dreams of De Vaca to terminate in a few years of bondage to
degraded savages?

Unthinkable, unbearable, unbelievable. De Vaca was a man of power, a man
of thought. He reasoned the matter out. Somewhere on the other side of
the great island--for the world then thought of the newly-discovered
America as a vast island--his people were to be found. He would work his
way to them and freedom. He communicated his hope and his determination
to his companions in captivity. Henceforth, regardless of whether they
were held as slaves by the Indians, or worshiped as demigods,--makers of
great medicine,--either keeping them from their hearts' desire, they
never once ceased in their efforts to cross the country and reach the
Spanish settlements on the other side. For eight long years the weary
march westward continued, until, at length, the Spanish soldiers of the
Viceroy of New Spain were startled at seeing men who were almost
skeletons, clad in the rudest aboriginal garb, yet speaking the purest
Castilian and demanding in the tones of those used to obedience that
they be taken to his noble and magnificent Viceroyship. Amazement,
incredulity, surprise, gave way to congratulations and rejoicings, when
it was found that these were the human drift of the expedition of which
not a whisper, not an echo, had been heard for eight long years.

Then curiosity came rushing in like a flood. Had they seen anything on
the journey? Were there any cities, any peoples worth conquering;
especially did any of them have wealth in gold, silver and precious
stones like that harvested so easily by Cortes and Pizarro?

Cabeza didn't know really, but--, and his long pause and brief story of
seven cities that he had heard of, one or two days' journey to the north
of his track, fired the imagination of the Viceroy and his soldiers of
fortune. To be sure, though, they sent out a party of reconnaissance,
under the control of a good father of the Church, Fray Marcos de Nizza,
a friar of the Orders Minor, commonly known as a Franciscan, with
Stephen, a negro, one of the escaped party of Cabeza de