The natives of Mexico appear to have had no knowledge, nay, not even the most dim recollection, of the _fauna_ of South-western North America. While their so-called calendar, in the graphic tokens used to designate each one of the twenty days of their conventional "month," contains the forms of all the larger quadrupeds roaming over Mexico and Central America, the tapir excepted, we look in vain for the coyote, the bear, the mountain-sheep, and the buffalo. [6] _Popol Vuh_, part iii. cap. iv. p. 216, cap. vi. pp. 226, 228, cap. viii. p. 238, etc. [7] Hernando Cortés, _Carta Quarta_, dated Temixtitan, 15 October, 1524, Vedia i. p. 102. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, _Historia General y Natural de las Indias_, lib. xxxiii. cap. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 447, lib. xxxiv. cap. viii. p. 576, Madrid, 1853. The information was derived from Gonzalo de Sandoval. See Antonio de Herrera, _Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano_, dec. iii. lib. iii. cap. xvii. p. 106, edition of 1726. [8] _Relacion de las Ceremonias y Ritos, Poblacion y Gobierno de los Indios de la Provincia de Mechuacan_, p. 113, from the _Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de la España. Tercera Relacion Anónima de la Jornada de Nuño de Guzman, Coleccion de Documentos_, Icazbalceta, ii. pp. 443, 449, 451. _Matias de la Mota Padilla, Historia de la Nueva-Galicia_, published 1870, cap. iii. p. 27. Oviedo, lib. vi. cap. xxxiii. vol. i. pp. 222, 223. [9] _Quarta Relacion Anónima de la Jornada de Nuño de Guzman, Coleccion de Documentos_, Icazbalceta, ii. p. 475. Oviedo, lib. vi. cap. xxxiii. vol. i. p. 223. [10] In 1527, Herrera, dec. iv. lib. ii. cap. iv. pp. 26, 27. [11] He was treasurer of Narvaez' expedition, and subsequently, upon his return, or rather in 1541, became _adelantado_ of Paraguay. [12] He wrote all from memory. The title of his work is _Naufragios de Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, y Relacion de la Jornada que hizo á la Florida_. It was first printed in 1555, at Valladolid. My references are to the reprint in Vedia's _Historiadores Primitivos de Indias_, vol. i. [13] Cabeza de Vaca, _Naufragios_, etc., cap. xxxvii. p. 548, xxxiv. p. 545. According to Herrera, dec. vi. lib. i. cap. vii. p. 11 and cap. viii. p. 11, it might be either 1536 or 1534, "el año pasado de 1534." Oviedo, lib. xxxv. cap. vi. p. 614, intimates as much as 1538. Fray Antonio Tello, _Historia de la Nueva-Galicia_, fragment preserved in _Coleccion de Documentos_, Icazbalceta, ii. cap. xii. p. 358, says "habían llegado ese año de treinta y tres á aquellas tierras," 1533. [14] Cabeza de Vaca, cap. xxxi. pp. 542, 543. [15] Id., p. 543.