CORONADO. There was great excitement in Mexico over the story Friar Marcos told. The account of what had been seen grew, as such stories always do, in the telling and retelling. Nothing else was thought of in all New Spain. The Viceroy of Mexico made ready a great army for the conquest of the Seven Cities of Cibola. He gave the command to his intimate friend, Francisco de Coronado. Everybody wanted to accompany him, but it was necessary to have the consent of the viceroy. Sons of nobles, eager to go, traded with their more fortunate neighbors for the viceroy's permit. Some men who secured these sold them as special favors to their friends. Whoever obtained one of them counted it as good as a title of nobility. So high were the expectations of great wealth when the Seven Cities should be discovered! [Illustration: A ZUNI PUEBLO FROM A DISTANCE] THE ARMY OF CORONADO. In the early part of 1540, Coronado set forth from his home in western Mexico near the Gulf of California. He had an army of three hundred Spaniards, nearly all the younger sons of nobles. They were fitted out with polished coats of mail and gilded armor, carried lances and swords, and were mounted on the choicest horses from the large stock-farms of the viceroy. There were in the army a few footmen armed with crossbows and harquebuses. A thousand negroes and Indians were taken along, mainly as servants for the white masters. Some led the spare horses. Others carried the baggage, or drove the oxen and cows, the sheep and swine which would be needed on the journey. A small fleet carried part of the baggage by way of the Gulf of California, prepared also to help Coronado in other ways, and to explore the Gulf to its head. [Illustration: THE ROUTE OF CORONADO] THE ROUTE OF CORONADO TO CIBOLA. The large army marched slowly through the wild regions of the Gulf coast. Coronado soon became impatient and pushed ahead of the main body with a small following of picked horsemen. They went through the mountainous wilderness of northern Mexico and across the desert plains of southeastern Arizona. After a march lasting five months, over a distance equal to that from New York to Omaha, Coronado came upon the Seven Cities of Cibola; but the real Seven Cities of Cibola as Coronado found them bore little resemblance to what he had expected. [Illustration: A ZUNI PUEBLO]