Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/34

A BLUNT SOUJIER TALKS. 23 (It is about 125 miles to the second river and . supposing they were fifty miles from its confluence when they ceased to continue west, so it would make about another 222 miles traveled the second time, and say it took them a month for De Vaca to go to the tnouth of the Apalachicola and return and to con- struct the rafts to cross it, so they were a month go- ing the last 225 miles to reach Mobile Bay, and realizing they had eaten their horses and were phy- sically weak, it would appear that an average of about eight mUes a day was doing very weU.) Upon reaching this point in the account of their route, De Vaca addressed the man who was acquainted with Coronado, and requested him to proceed with the story. Senor Maldornado taking up the thread of the narrative said: "Your Excellencies wUl pardon my lack of descriptive powers, for I am a blunt soldier, and although my parents favored me with a good education, it being their intention to have me enter holy orders, but Holy Mother, bless them, they reckoned without knowing their own flesh and blood, for truth impels me to confess my boyhood dreams were of adventure. But although many works of travel and adventure have been read, yet never did I read of such an adventure and experience as this expedition encountered, for what with the heat, quag- mires, flies that raised lumps on our skin, (mos- quitoes), big trees with thick underbrash to obstruct Dur passage, and then the Indians trying to ambush 03, and last, but worst of aU, the scarcity of food, made it a bard lot indeed.