It was in 1530 that specific reports first came, through native slaves, of seven great cities of stone-built houses a few hundred miles north of the capital of the Aztecs, where the inhabitants had such a profusion of gold and silver that their household utensils were made of those metals. The search for "the seven cities of Cibola," as these alleged communities came to be called by the Spaniards, was at once begun. Guzman, just then at the head of affairs in New Spain, led northward a considerable expedition of Spanish soldiers and Indians, which suffered great hardships, but failed to discover Cibola. Sidenote: Coronado's march. Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow-adventurers claimed, upon their arrival, to have themselves seen the seven cities; and they enlarged on the previous stories. Coronado, governor of the northern province of New Gallicia, was accordingly sent to conquer this wonderful country which Guzman had failed to find. Early in 1540 he set out with a well-equipped following of three hundred Spaniards and eight hundred Indians. The Cibola cities were found to be but pueblos in Arizona or New Mexico, like the communal dwellings of the Hopis and Zuñis, with the aspect of which we are so familiar to-day; while the mild inhabitants destitute of wealth, peacefully practising their crude industries and tilling their irrigated fields, were foemen hardly worthy of Castilian steel. Disappointed, but still hoping to find the country of gold, Coronado's gallant little army, frequently thinned by death and desertion, beat for three years up and down the southwestern wilderness,--now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy cañons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation and of despair, but following this will-o'-the-wisp with a melancholy perseverance seldom seen in man save when searching for some mysterious treasure. Coronado apparently crossed the State of Kansas twice; "through mighty plains and sandy heaths, smooth and wearisome and bare of wood.... All that way the plains are as full of crookback oxen as the mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep.... They were a great succor for the hunger and want of bread which our people stood in. One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weaknesses, and vows." The wanderer ventured as far as the Missouri, and would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the swollen river. Co-operating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila, ascended the Colorado for two hundred and forty miles above its mouth, and visited the Grand Cañon of the same river. Coronado at last returned, satisfied that he had been made the victim of travellers' idle tales. He was rewarded with contumely and lost his place as governor of New Gallicia; but his romantic march stands in history as one of the most remarkable exploring expeditions of modern times.