the Turk, but it would have been better to cross the mountains where this river rises. I believe they would have found traces of riches and would have reached the lands from which these people started, which from its location is on the edge of Greater India, although the region is neither known nor understood, because from the trend of the coast it appears that the land between Norway and China is very far up.[1] The country from sea to sea is very wide, judging from the location of both coasts, as well as from what Captain Villalobos discovered when he went in search of China by the sea to the west,[2] and from what has been discovered on the North sea concerning the trend of the coast of Florida toward the Bacallaos, up toward Norway.[3]
To return then to the proposition with which I began, I say that the settlements and people already named were all that were seen in a region 70 leagues wide and 130 long, in the settled country along the river Tiguex.[4] In New Spain there are not one but many establishments, containing a larger number of people. Silver metals were found in many of their villages, which they use for glazing and painting their earthenware.[5]
Chapter 7, which treats of the plains that were crossed, of the cows, and of the people who inhabit them.
We have spoken of the settlements of high houses which are situated in what seems to be the most level and open part of the mountains, since it is 150 leagues across before entering the level country between the two mountain chains which I said were near the North sea and the South sea, which might better be called the Western sea along this coast. This mountain series is the one which is near the South sea.[6] In order to show that the settlements are in the middle of the mountains, I will state that it is 80 leagues from Chichilticalli, where we began to cross this country, to Cibola; from Cibola, which is the first village, to Cicuye, which is the last on the way across, is 70 leagues; it is 30 leagues from Cicuye to where the plains begin, It may be we went across in an indirect or roundabout way, which would make it seem as if there was more country than if it had been crossed in a direct line, and it may be more difficult and rougher. This can not be known certainly, because the mountains change their direction above the bay at the mouth of the Firebrand (Tizon) river.
- ↑ Ternaux, p. 184: "D'après la route qu'ils ont suivie, ils ont dû venir de l'extrémité de l'Inde orientale, et d'une partie très-inconnne qui, d'après la configuration des côtes, serait située très-avant dans l'intérieur des terres, entre la Chine et la Norwège."
- ↑ See the Carta escrita por Santisteban á Mendoza, which tells nearly everything that la known of the voyage of Villalobos. We can only surmise what Castañeda may have known about it.
- ↑ The Spanish text fully justifies Castañeda's statement that he was not skilled in the arts of rhetoric and geography.
- ↑ Compare the Spanish text. I here follow Ternaux's rendering.
- ↑ In a note Ternaux, p. 185, says: "Le [dernier] mot est illisible, raais comme l'auteur parle de certain émail que lea Espagnols trouvèrent, . . . j'ai cru pouvoir hasarder cette interpretation." The word is legible enough, but the letters do not make any word for which I can find a meaning.
- ↑ More than once Castañeda seems to be addressing those about him where he is writing in Culiacan.
