[327] The Inca gives the distance as being seven hundred and fifty leagues. The real distance was about seven hundred and twenty miles.
[328] At that time the Atchafalaya probably formed the lower course of Red River, the latter not having cut through to the Mississippi, and it was its current that they encountered.
[329] Or Pánuco. A Mexican river which flows into the Gulf about a hundred and fifty miles north of Vera Cruz.
[330] The viceroy.
[331] Henry, cardinal archbishop of Evora, uncle of King John III., great uncle of King Sebastian, and himself King of Portugal from 1578 to 1580.
[332] For information concerning the author of this narrative, see the Introduction.
[333] Mendoza was first viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), serving from 1535 to 1550, when he was ordered to Peru as its second viceroy. He reached Lima in September, 1551, and died July 21 of the year following.
[334] Castañeda is supposed to have been writing at Culiacan, in western Mexico, about 1565.
[335] The Seven Cities of Cibola. See p. 287, note 1; p. 300, note 1.
[336] Nuño Beltrán de Guzman was appointed governor of Pánuco, Mexico, in 1526, assuming the office in May, 1527. In December he became president of the Audiencia, the administrative and judicial board which governed the province, and in the following year participated in the trial of Cortés, his personal and political enemy, for strangling his wife to death in 1522. Guzman's barbarous cruelty, especially to the natives, whom he enslaved and bartered for his personal gain, resulted in a protest to the crown by Bishop Zumárraga, and in the hope of finding new fields for the gratification of his avarice he raised a large force, including 10,000 Aztecs and Tlascaltecs, and started from Mexico late in 1529 to explore the northwest (later known as Nueva Galicia), notwithstanding Cortés had already penetrated the region.