--Raton Peak--Snowy Range--Pike's Peak--Raton Creek--The Invasion
of the Railroad--The Old Santa Fe Trail a Thing of the Past.

FOOTNOTES.

PUBLICATION INFORMATION.





INTRODUCTION.



For more than three centuries, a period extending from 1541 to 1851,
historians believed, and so announced to the literary world,
that Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the celebrated Spanish explorer,
in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola and the Kingdom of Quivira,
was the first European to travel over the intra-continent region
of North America. In the last year above referred to, however,
Buckingham Smith, of Florida, an eminent Spanish scholar, and secretary
of the American Legation at Madrid, discovered among the archives
of State the _Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca_, where for
nearly three hundred years it had lain, musty and begrimed with the
dust of ages, an unread and forgotten story of suffering that has no
parallel in fiction. The distinguished antiquarian unearthed the
valuable manuscript from its grave of oblivion, translated it into
English, and gave it to the world of letters; conferring honour upon
whom honour was due, and tearing the laurels from such grand voyageurs