consequently have been somewhat healing to his injured pride, if not
to his depleted purse; but his sun was setting. This voyage of Ulloa
was its last expiring ray. With an artistic adjustment to the
situation that seems remarkable, Ulloa, after turning the end of the
peninsula and sailing up the Lower Californian coast, sent home one
solitary vessel, and vanished then forever. Financially wrecked, and
exasperated to the last degree by the slights and indignities of his
enemies and of the Mendoza government, Cortes left for Spain early in
1540 with the hope of retrieving his power by appearing in person
before the monarch. As in the case of Columbus, scant satisfaction
was his, and the end was that the gallant captain, whose romantic
career in the New World seems like a fairy tale, never again saw the
scene of his conquests.

Mendoza, the new viceroy of New Spain, a man of fine character but
utterly without sympathy for Cortes, and who was instrumental in
bringing about his downfall, now determined on an expedition of great
magnitude: an expedition that should proceed by both land and water
to the wonderful Seven Cities of Cibola, believed to be rich beyond
computation. The negro Estevan had lately been sent back to the
marvelous northland he so glowingly described, guiding Marcos, the
Franciscan monk of Savoyard birth, who was to investigate carefully,
as far as possible, the glories recounted and speedily report. They
were in the north about the same time (summer of 1539) that Ulloa was
sailing up the Sea of Cortes. The negro, who had by arrangement
proceeded there some days in advance of Marcos, was killed at the
first Pueblo village, and Marcos, afraid of his life, and before he
had seen anything of the wonderful cities except a frightened glimpse
from a distant hill, beat a precipitate retreat to New Galicia, the
province just north of New Spain, and of which Francis Vasquez de