Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America [antikvár]

Preface This sixteenth-century odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca's is one of the great true epics of history. It is the semi- ( oiRcial report to the king of Spain by the ranking surviving officer of a royal expedition to conquer Florida which fantastically miscarried. Four out of a land-force of 300 men—by wits, stamina and luck—found their way back to civilization after eight harrowing years and roughly 6,00^ miles over mostly unknown reaches of North America. They were the first Europeans to see and live to report the interior of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and northernmost Mexico; the 'possum and the buffalo; the Mississippi and the Pecos; pine-nut mash and mesquite-bean flour; and a long string of Indian Stone Age tribes. What these wanderers merely heard and surmised had just as great an effect on subsequent events as what they learned at first hand. Their sojourn "to the sunset," as they told certain of the Indians in the latters' idiom, took on a great added interest and value in the 1930's with the convergent discovery of Carl Sauer and Cleve HaUenbeck that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions had traveled, for the~"inqsf~ part, over Indian tmils that_were still Uaceable. The thorough work of these two distinguished professors, plus that of innumerable others in such disciplines as axchae-ology, anthropology, cartography, geology, climatology, botany, zoology and history, has given surprisingly sharp definition to much of the old narrative that had hitherto seemed vague and baffling. The present translation is the