s is well known, is _Historia General y
Natural de las Indias_. The work of Francisco Lopez de Gomara bears the
title _Historia de las Indias_, and is in two parts. Gomara is more
explicit than Oviedo, who gives only a brief and preliminary mention;
but even Gomara, while more detailed, and basing his work evidently on
the earliest data then accessible in regard to the expedition of
Coronado, cannot be compared with the later reports of those attached to
the expedition. The value of these books is comparatively slight, so far
as New Mexico is concerned. Much more important is the _Historia
General_, etc., by Antonio de Herrera (1601-1615). What authorities
Herrera had at his command cannot be readily determined. He may have had
access to the report of Jaramillo, and he was certainly acquainted with
the letters of Coronado. Perhaps the letter of Coronado which I have as
yet been unable to find was consulted by him. In any event Herrera's
information is all second-hand, and while by no means devoid of merit,
his work cannot rank with sources written by men who saw the country and
took part in the events of the earliest explorations. The map
accompanying the first volume of Herrera, while scarcely more than an
outline, is still in advance of the charts published during the
sixteenth century.

Here I may be permitted to refer to the older cartography of New Mexico
in general. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century these maps
are very defective and incomplete. It is almost as if the Ptolemy of
1548 had served as a basis for them. Even the large and beautiful globe
constructed at St. Gall in Switzerland in 1595, and now in the Swiss
National Museum at Zuerich, places Tiguex near the Pacific coast. It is
through the work of Benavides that more correct ideas of New Mexican
geography were gained and a somewhat more accurate and detailed
nomenclature was introduced, since the _Geografie Blaviane_ of 1667 by
the Dutch cartographer Jean Blaeuw contains a map of the region far
superior to any hitherto published. The number of early maps of New
Mexico is larger than is generally supposed, and there are to-day
unpublished maps (for instance in the National Archives of Mexico for
the eighteenth century) that indicate, as existing, Indian pueblos and
missions that were abandoned nearly a century before the maps were made.

I must state that in this Introduction I have abbreviated as much as
practicable the titles of books and m