[1539.] In August, 1539, three vessels under Alonso de Camargo were despatched from Seville for India _via_ the South Sea, and reached Cabo de las Vírgenes January 20, 1540. One of the vessels was wrecked in the strait of Magellan; another returned to Spain, and the third entered the Pacific, and finally, after touching Chile in 38° 30', arrived at Arequipa in Peru. This voyage is supposed to have afforded the first knowledge of the intermediate coast between the strait of Magellan and Peru. _Diccionario Univ._, app. tom. x. p. 807; _Herrera_, _Hist. Gen._, dec. vii. lib. i. cap. viii.; _Burney's Discov. South Sea_, vol. i. p. 186. [Sidenote: NEW MEXICO INVADED.] Cabeza de Vaca brought to Sinaloa and thence to Mexico accounts of wonderful towns in the northern regions traversed by him; and in March, 1539, Fray Marcos de Niza, accompanied by one of the men who had seen the reported wonders, set out from Culiacan and proceeded northward in search of the Seven Cities of whose existence other rumors were current besides those brought by Alvar Nuñez. Marcos de Niza reached the Pueblo towns of Zuñi and brought back greatly exaggerated reports of the wealth of the people and the magnificence of their cities. _Relatione del Reverendo Fra Marco da Nizza_, in _Ramusio_, tom. iii. fol. 356; _Purchas_, _His Pilgrimes_, vol. iv. p. 1560; _Pacheco_ and _Cárdenas_, _Col. de Doc._, tom. iii. p. 325; _Hakluyt's Voy._, vol. iii. pp. 366-73; _Ternaux-Compans_, _Voy._, série i. tom. ix. p. 256. See also _Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner_, in _Pacific R. R. Reports_, vol. iii. pp. 104-8.