walnuts better than those of Spain. They have many mountain grapes, which are very good eating, chestnuts, and filberts. According to the way he painted it, this should have been the terrestrial paradise. For game, there were partridges, geese, cranes, and all the other winged creatures—it was marvelous what was there." And then Suarez adds, writing half a century later, "He told the truth in all this, because there are mountains in that country, as he said, and herds, especially of cows There are grapes and game, without doubt, and a climate like that of Spain."[1]
Second-hand evidence, recorded fifty years after the occurrence, is far from conclusive. Fortunately, we are able to supplement it by legal testimony, taken down, and recorded under oath, with all the formalities of the old Spanish law customs. When the news of Friar Marcos' journey reached Spain there was much rivalry among those who claimed the privilege of completing the discovery. Much evidence was presented and frequent pleas were entered by all the men who had an active part and leadership in the conquest of the northern portion of the New World. In the course of the litigation the representative of the adelantado Hernando de Soto, presented some testimony which had been given in the town of San Cristobal de la Habana de la Isla Fernandina—Habana and Cuba—dated November 12, 1539. There were seven witnesses, from a ship which had been obliged to put into this port in order to procure water and other supplies, and also because some persons aboard had become very sick. Each witness declared that a month or more before—Friar Marcos arrived back in Mexico before the end of August, 1539—he had heard, and that this was common talk in Mexico, Vera Cruz, and in Puebla de los Angeles, that a Franciscan friar named Fray Marcos, who had recently come from the inland regions, said that he had discovered a very rich and very populous country 400 or 500 leagues north of Mexico. "He said that the country is rich in gold, silver and other treasures, and that it contains very large villages; that the houses are built of stone, and terraced like those of Mexico, and that they are high and imposing. The people, so he said, are shrewd, and do not marry more than one wife at a time, and they wear coarse woolen cloth and ride on some animals," the name of which the witness did not know. Another testified that the common report was that this country "was very rich and populous and had great walled cities, and that the lords of the cities were called kings, and that the people were very shrewd and use the Mexican language." But the witness to whose deposition we are most indebted was Andrés Garcia. This man declared that he had a son-in-law who was a barber, who had shaved the friar after he came back from the new country. The son-in-law had told the witness that the friar, while being
- ↑ The Spanish text from which I have translated may be found on pages 144 and 148 of Zaragoza's edition of Suarez de Peralta's Tratado. This edition is of the greatest usefulness to every student of early Mexican history.
