The Indians themselves may have intended to return when conditions became normal again but they never came back. There is no evidence that farming Indians ever lived in the Mesa Verde after its desertion by the ancient people. Other Indians came but they were hunters and they seem to have shunned the silent cave cities. A couple of centuries after Mesa Verde was deserted an important event took place, an event that was to have a strange effect on it at a later date. America was rediscovered! Fifteen thousand years after the Indians discovered the continent from the west, white men entered it from the east. A new people blundered into the western hemisphere that had so long belonged to the Indians. The newcomers were a greedy lot and they began to stretch acquisitive fingers in all directions. Mexico was colonized and tales of wealth among the Indians to the north led the Spaniards into the Southwest. In 1540, Coronado was only 150 miles from the Mesa Verde but he turned away. Other Spaniards came nearer and nearer until at last, in the year 1776, they were at the base of the great green mesa. On August 10, 1776, only thirty-seven days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Escalante, a Spanish priest, camped in the very shadow of the Mesa Verde. It seems almost incredible that at a time when the colonists along the Atlantic seaboard knew nothing of the vast wilderness beyond the first range of mountains, Escalante and his men were here in the land of the cliff dwellings. Seeking a short route to Monterey, on the Pacific Coast, they had journeyed northwest from Santa Fe. At last, on August 10, 1776, they camped by a small stream at the base of the La Plata Mountains. In his diary Escalante wrote: “August 10. Father Fray Francisco Atanasio awoke troubled by a rheumatic fever which he had felt in his face and head since the day before, and it was desirable that we make camp here until he should be better, but the continuous rains, the inclemency of the weather, and the great dampness of the place forced us to leave it. Going north, and having traveled a little more than half a league, we turned to the northwest, went on a league and then swung west through valleys of very beautiful timber and abundant pasturage, roses, and various other flowers. After going two leagues we were again caught in a very heavy rain. Father Fray Francisco Atanasio became worse and the road impassable, and so, having traveled with great difficulty two more leagues to the west, we had to camp on the bank of the first of the two little rivers which form the San Lazaro, otherwise called Rio de los Mancos. The pasturage continues in great abundance. Today four and a half leagues.”