Besides the inhabited towns there are a number now unoccupied and fast going to decay. The names of these are given with slight variations by different writers; the following, however, are generally agreed upon: Pecos, Quivira, Valverda, San Lázaro, San Marcos, San Cristóbal, Socorro, Senacu, Abó, Quarra, Rita, Poblazon, old San Filipe, and old Zuñi.[482] The most important of all these ruins is Pecos, one of the sacred cities of the pueblos. Here the everlasting fire dedicated to their god Montezuma was kept burning from time immemorial down to the abandonment of the town, which occurred some time during the second quarter of the present century. The reader will remember, however, that the culture-god of the Pueblos and the Aztec monarch are in no sense to be associated with each other, since it is quite certain that they were not confounded in the mythology of the worshippers of the deity. Whether the Pueblos, Cliff-dwellers, etc., were ever in any way related to the Aztecs or any Nahua people is difficult to determine. Certainly there is no architectural nor traditional evidence that they were. When the Spaniards under Coronado traversed the region in 1540 A. D., no reports of inter-communication between the two peoples seem to have been current. Father Escalante, who in 1776 visited many of the pueblos, and mentions many ruins not since located, as well as many inhabited towns now in ruins, found nothing to really substantiate the “Aztec theory.”[483] On the contrary, substantial arguments can be presented for the intimate relationship of the Nahuas and some of the Pueblos.