valuable confession, was secretly killed, and that night, with a
heavy weight tied to him, was cast into the deep water. But the
others evidently suspected the trick, for the next day they showered
arrows upon the camp. The Spaniards pursued them and by means of
their superior arms soon drove them into the mountains. Diaz was then
able to cross without molestation, his faithful Amerind allies of
another tribe assisting.

Alarcon had conveyed in his letters the nature of the gulf and coast,
so Diaz struck westward to see what he could find in that direction.
The country was desolate and forbidding, in places the sand being
like hot ashes and the earth trembling. Four days of this satisfied
them, and the captain concluded to return to San Hieronimo. The
subsequent fate of Diaz is another illustration of how a man may go
the world round, escaping many great dangers, and then be annihilated
by a simple accident that would seem impossible. A dog belonging to
the camp pursued the little flock of sheep that had been driven along
to supply the men with meat, and Diaz on his horse dashed toward it,
at the same time hurling a spear. The spear stuck up in the ground
instead of striking the dog, and the butt penetrated the captain's
abdomen, inflicting, under the conditions, a mortal wound. The men
could do nothing for him except to carry him along, which for twenty
days they did, fighting hostile natives all the time. Then he died.
On the 18th of January they arrived without their leader at the
settlement from which they had started some three months before.

Cardenas with twelve men had meanwhile gone from Cibola to a place
called Tusayan, or Tucano, situated some twenty or twenty-five
leagues north-westerly from Cibola, from whence he was to strike out
toward the great river these natives had described to Don Pedro de