tablished by Alfonso XI in the twelfth
century, consisted of four miles (_millas_) of four thousand paces, each
pace being equal to three Castilian feet. The length of the Castilian
foot at that time cannot be established with absolute minuteness. The
terrestrial league consisted of three thousand paces each, so that while
it contained nine thousand Castilian feet, the maritime league was
composed of twelve thousand. The latter was used for distances at sea
and occasionally also for distances on land, therefore where an
indication of the league employed is not positively given, a computation
of distances with even approximate accuracy is of course impossible.

The result of Coronado's failure was so discouraging, and the reports on
the country had been so unfavorable that for nearly forty years no
further attempt was made to reach the North from New Spain. In fact
Coronado and his achievements had become practically forgotten, and only
when the southern part of the present state of Chihuahua in Mexico
became the object of Spanish enterprise for mining purposes was
attention again drawn to New Mexico, when the Church opened the way
thither from the direction of the Atlantic slope. This naturally led the
explorers first to the Rio Grande Pueblos.

The brief report of the eight companions of Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado
who in 1580 accompanied the Franciscan missionaries as far as
Bernalillo, the site of which was then occupied by Tigua villages, and
who went thence as far as Zuni, is important, although it presents
merely the sketch of a rather hasty reconnoissance. Following, as the
Spaniards did, the course of the Rio Grande from the south, they fixed,
at least approximately, the limit of the Pueblo region in that
direction. Some of the names of Pueblos preserved in the document are
valuable in so far as they inform us of the designations of villages in
a language that was not the idiom of their inhabitants. Chamuscado
having died on the return journey, the document is not signed by him,
but by his men. The document had been lost sight of until I called
attention to it nearly thirty years ago, the subsequent exploration by
Antonio de Espejo having monopolized the attention of those interested
in the early exploration of New Mexico.

The report of Antonio de Espejo on his long and thorough reconnoissance
in 1582-1583 attracted so much attention that for a time and in some
circles his expedition was looked upon as resul