Throughout the seventeenth century notices of the colony are very rare. Travellers the most persistent never visited it. One only, Francesco (François) Coreal, a native of Carthagena in South America, who spent his life in wandering from place to place in the New World, seems to have recollected its existence. He was at St. Augustine in 1669, and devotes the second chapter of his travels to the province.[58] It derives its value more from the lack of other accounts than from its own intrinsic merit. His geographical notions are not very clear at best, and they are hopelessly confounded by the interpolations of his ignorant editor. The authenticity of his production has been questioned, and even his own existence disputed, but no reasonable doubts of either can be entertained after a careful examination of his work. Various attempts were made by the Spanish to obtain a more certain knowledge of the shores and islands of the Gulf of Mexico during this period. A record of those that took place between 1685 and 1693[59] is mentioned by Barcia, but whether it was ever published or not, does not appear. About this time the Franciscan Juan Ferro Macuardo occupied the post of inspector (Visitador General) of the church in Florida under the direction of the bishop of Cuba. Apparently he found reason to be displeased with the conduct of certain of the clergy there, and with the general morality of the missions, and subsequently, in his memorial to the king,[60] handled without gloves these graceless members of the fraternity, telling truths unpleasant to a high degree. In consequence of these obnoxious passages, its sale was prohibited by the church on the ground that such revelations could result in no advantage.[61] Whether this command was carried out or not,--and it is said to have been evaded--the work is rare in the extreme, not being so much as mentioned by the most comprehensive bibliographers. Its value is doubtless considerable, as fixing the extent of the Spanish settlements, at this, about the most flourishing period of the colony. The _Respuesta_ which it provoked from the pen of Francisco de Ayeta, is equally scarce.