"It was the Lord's pleasure, that after having journeyed across these deserts 77 days, I arrived at the province they call Quivira to which the guides were conducting me and where they had described to me houses of stone with many stories and not only are they of stone but of straw, but the people in them are as barbarous as all those whom I have seen and passed before this. They do not have cloaks nor cotton of which to make these, but use the skins of the cattle they kill which they tan, because they are settled among these on a very large river * * * The country itself is the best I have ever seen for producing all the products of Spain, for besides the land itself being very fat and black, and being very well watered by the rivulets and springs and rivers, I found prunes like those of Spain * * * and nuts and very good sweet grapes and mulberries. I have treated the natives of this province and all the others whom I have wherever I went as well as was possible, agreeably to what your Majesty had commanded and they have received no harm in any way from me or from those who went in my Company * * * And what I am sure of is, that there is not any gold nor any other metal in all that country and the other things of which they had told me are nothing but little villages and in many of these they do not plant anything and do not have any houses except of skins and sticks and they wander around with the cows; so that the account they gave me was false, because they wanted to persuade me to go there with the whole force, believing that as the way was through such inhabited deserts, and from the lack of water, they would get us where we and our horses would die of hunger * * * I have done all that I possibly could to serve your Majesty and to discover a country where God our Lord might be served and the royal patrimony of your Majesty increased as your loyal servant and vassal. For since I reached the province of Cibola, to which the Viceroy of New Spain sent me in the name of your Majesty, seeing that there were none of the things there of which Fray Marcos had told, I have managed to explore this country for 200 leagues and more around Cibola and the best place I have found is this river of Tiguex, where I am now and the settlements here. It would not be possible to establish a settlement here, for besides being 400 leagues from the North Sea and more than 200 from the South Sea, with which it is impossible to have any sort of communication, the country is so cold as I have written to your Majesty that apparently the winter could not be spent here because there is no wood nor cloth with which to protect the men except the skins which the natives wear and some small amount of cotton cloaks. I send the Viceroy of New Spain an account of everything I