Melchior Diaz had met with so many difficulties in traveling through the country which the army was about to enter, on its march toward the Seven Cities, and the supply of food to be found there was everywhere so small, that Coronado decided to divide his force for this portion of the journey. He selected seventy-five or eighty horsemen, including his personal friends, and twenty-five or thirty foot soldiers. With these picked men, equipped for rapid marching, he hastened forward, clearing the way for the main body of the army, which was to follow more slowly, starting a fortnight after his own departure. With the footmen in the advance party were the four friars of the expedition, whose zealous eagerness to reach the unconverted natives of the Seven Cities was so great that they were willing to leave the main portion of the army without a spiritual guide. Fortunately for these followers, a broken leg compelled one of the brethren to remain behind. Coronado attempted to take some sheep with him, but these soon proved to be so great a hindrance that they were left at the river Yaquimi, in charge of four horsemen, who conducted them at a more moderate pace. Leaving Culiacan on April 22, Coronado followed the coast, “bearing off to the left,” as Mota Padilla says, by an extremely rough way, to the river Cinaloa. The configuration of the country made it necessary to follow up the valley of this stream until he could find a passage across the mountains to the course of the Yaquimi. He traveled alongside this stream for some distance, and then crossed to Sonora river.[66] [p387] The Sonora was followed nearly to its source before a pass was discovered. On the northern side of the mountains he found a stream—the Nexpa, he calls it—which may have been either the Santa Cruz or the San Pedro of modern maps. The party followed down this river valley until they reached the edge of the wilderness, where, as Friar Marcos had described it to them, they found Chichilticalli.[67] Here the party camped for two days, which was as long as the general dared to delay, in order to rest the horses, who had begun to give out sometime before as a result of overloading, rough roads, and poor feed. The stock of provisions brought from Culiacan was already growing dangerously small, although the food supply had been eked out by the large cones or nuts of the pines of this country, which the soldiers found to be very good eating. The Indians who came to see him, told Coronado that the sea was ten days distant, and he expresses surprise, which Mr Bandolier has reëchoed, that Friar Marcos could have gone within sight of the sea from this part of the country.