This chapter has to do with the famous Indian pueblo of Zuñi, which lies to the south, about 2½ hours by motor car. The road is all sorts from a motorist’s standpoint; so be your own best friend and take it good-naturedly, for fussing will not mend it. In a few minutes you are beyond sight of houses and railroads, and in a twinkling Time’s clock has whirled back a couple of centuries. You pass, perhaps, a Navajo woman astride her pony, a sheepskin or two tied to the saddle, on her way to the trader’s for coffee and tobacco; and then a Mexican teamster crouching over a bit of camp-fire where his chili and beans are stewing, his wagon piled high with wool sacks drawn up by the roadside. Now a solitary adobe ranch house, or a lone trader’s log hut is seen in a wilderness of sagey plain; and now a flock of sheep drift into the road out of the piñon- and cedar-scrub, a couple of bright-eyed Navajo children shepherding in their wake. By and by you pass another sort of Indian on horseback, a slightly built man with long jet-black hair lifted by the breeze, a red _banda_ encircling it—he is a Zuñi. And then topping a low hill, you are greeted by the distant sight of a long flat-topped mesa, creamy pink against a blue sky. It is Towa-yálleni, Zuñi’s Mountain of the Sacred Corn. A turn in the road, and the great yellow plain of Zuñi spreads out before you, the Zuñi River threading its midst, and on its bank the old pueblo humps itself like a huge anthill, hardly distinguishable in color from the plain itself. Zuñi (with a population of some 1600) is historically perhaps the most interesting of all the Pueblo towns, for it is the present-day representative of those Seven Cities of Cíbola, the fable of whose wealth led to the discovery of New Mexico in the sixteenth century. There really were seven Zuñi villages in Coronado’s time, all of which have long since disappeared, though sites of at least five are known. The present Zuñi pueblo seems to have been built about the year 1700, replacing that one of the ancient seven known as Hálona. This occupied the opposite or south bank of the river in Coronado’s time—a spot now partially covered by the buildings of a white trader.