[167] See pp. 92-93, note 2, regarding the occurrence of magnetic iron in Mason County, where it is found in great quantities, but is yet unworked.
[168] Perhaps the Llano, a branch of the Colorado, or possibly they had met the Colorado again. See p. 90, note 1.
[169] See p. 92, note 2. In the edition of 1542 the text here says silver.
[170] Lead is found in Texas in the trans-Pecos region. The mineral resources of the state have not yet been well exploited.
[171] Doubtless the nut pine (Pinus edulis). Cabeza de Vaca evidently here aims to describe the character of this tree and its fruit without necessarily asserting that the tree was found growing very far east of the Pecos. In the valley of the latter stream it is more or less prolific.
[172] The allusion is probably to Mexico rather than to a northern country, as previously asserted by the Indians. See the second preceding paragraph.
[173] Of this exchange of gifts, or perhaps we may call it plunder, there was an echo a few years later, when Coronado and his army were traversing the eastern part of the Staked Plain, under the guidance of the "Turk," in search of Quivira, in 1541. Before sending the army back, and while among the ravines of western Texas, Rodrigo Maldonado was sent forward to explore, and in four days reached a deep ravine in the bottom of which was a village that Cabeza de Vaca had visited, on which account (see p. 332) "they presented Don Rodrigo with a pile of tanned skins and other things." An unfair distribution being threatened, the men rushed upon the skins and took possession without further ado. "The women and some others were left crying, because they thought that the strangers were not going to take anything, but would bless them as Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes had done when they passed through here." Captain Jaramillo does not mention this occurrence in his narrative (Fourteenth Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 588), but he speaks of reaching a settlement of Indians, in advance of that, according to the narrations, of which Castañeda speaks, "among whom there was an old blind man with a beard, who gave us to understand by signs which he made, that he had seen four others like us many days before, whom he had seen near there and rather more toward New Spain [Mexico], and we so understood him, and presumed that it was Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca and those whom I have mentioned." Although we do not have here conclusive evidence that Cabeza de Vaca actually visited the village or villages mentioned, there is no question that he must have been in this vicinity, and as the evidence is strong that the Rio Colorado was the ravined stream alluded to, there is little likelihood that Cabeza de Vaca's route lay far below that river.
[174] The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico have similar communal rabbit-hunts, in which the animals are killed with a curved stick shaped somewhat like a boomerang.
[175] Evidently the Pecos. This is the first stream mentioned as flowing from the north.
[176] Eighty leagues would probably be a reasonable estimate of the distance from the Pecos to the Rio Grande, which the travellers had now reached. It would seem strange that no mention is made of the cañon of the latter stream (which hereabouts flows through a territory four thousand feet above sea level), were it not for the fact that they had become thoroughly inured to suffering and hard travelling; nevertheless, the terribly rough country through which they had just been guided from stream to stream is commented on, while the fact that the Rio Grande here "flows between some ridges" is mentioned farther on.