The hill which the Gran Quivira ruins occupy is of limestone, and underlaid, as limestone hills often are, with hollownesses that give back in places an audible echo to one’s footfalls. Popular fancy has been caught by these givings-off of the underworld, and all sorts of fables have attached themselves to this desolate place. These have mostly to do with buried treasure. It has been thought, for instance, that here in the caverns of this hill is really the store of gold and jewels, the hope of which, like a will-of-the-wisp, lured Coronado on and ever on, to disappointment and a broken heart. Another tradition (quoted by Mr. Paul A. F. Walter, in “The Cities That Died of Fear”[25]) tells of a hidden cave in the hill where the last Piros are said to have retreated with their belongings, including vast treasure brought from Mexico by the Franciscan Fathers,[26] and that an earthquake sealed them and their treasure up together. Of course, such stories have brought hither innumerable treasure seekers, who for years have gophered the hill industriously but have got nothing but sore muscles, arrowheads, and broken pottery. The most picturesque of these delvers was a blind woman, a Mrs. Clara Corbyn, who acquired homestead rights on the north end of Gran Quivira. Lacking the wherewithal to finance excavations, she traveled the country over from the Pacific to the Atlantic, endeavoring to procure money backing for her scheme, and to that end even wrote a musical romance, which she called “La Gran Quivira.” Failing, she died not long ago in Los Angeles—of a broken heart, it is said—and the Museum of New Mexico eventually secured her homestead interest.[27] The major portion of these ruins belongs to the United States, forming the Gran Quivira National Monument.