Instead of a fine city of stone and mortar, he found scattered Indian villages with mere tent-like houses formed by fastening grass or straw or buffalo skins to poles. The people were the poorest and most barbarous which he had met. Coronado was, however, fortunate in securing a supply of corn and buffalo meat in Quivira for his long return journey. CORONADO'S OPINION OF THE WEST. A year later a crestfallen army of half-starved men clad in the skins of animals stumbled back homeward through Mexico in straggling groups. Great sadness prevailed in Mexico, for many had lost their fortunes besides friends and relatives in the enterprise. Coronado seemed to the people of the time to have led a costly army on a wild-goose chase. He himself thought that the regions he had crossed were valueless. He said they were cold and too far away from the sea to furnish a good site for a colony, and the country was neither rich enough nor populous enough to make it worth keeping. RESULTS OF CORONADO'S EXPLORATIONS. We know better to-day the value of Coronado's great discoveries. He had solved the age-long mystery of the Seven Cities, and explored the southwest of the United States of our day. The rich region now included in the great states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas had been seen, and it was soon after described for the European world. His men had explored the Gulf of California to its head, and the Colorado River toward its source for two hundred miles. They had proved that lower California was not an island but a part of the mainland. Others soon explored the entire coast of California to the limits of the present state of Oregon. HOW DE SOTO AND CORONADO CAME NEAR MEETING. De Soto and Coronado together pushed the Spanish frontier far northward to the center of North America. A story which was told by De Soto's men shows how close together the two great explorers were at one time. While Coronado was in Quivira, De Soto was wandering along the borders of the plains west of the Mississippi River, though neither knew of the nearness of the other. An Indian woman who ran away from Coronado's army fell in with De Soto's, nine days later. If De Soto and Coronado had met on the plains there would have been a finer story to tell, almost as dramatic as the meeting of Stanley and Livingstone in central Africa. One cannot refrain from wondering how different would have been the ending with the two great armies united and encouraged to continue their explorations. QUESTIONS 1. What story had Ponce de Leon heard in the West Indies? What did he find? Why did he call the new country which he discovered Florida? What was included in Florida as the Spaniards understood it?