The army moved on to another valley, where a halt was made to await orders from the general.  At length, about the middle of September, Melchior Diaz came back from Cibola, with dispatches, accompanied by Juan Gallegos, who bore a message for the viceroy.  In their company also was the miserable Friar Marcos, pursuing his dismal return to New Spain by direction of the general, who considered it unsafe for him to remain with the army now that the glorious bubble of his imagination had been exploded.  Melchior Diaz was an excellent officer, and already had an experience in this northern region extending over some four years.  It was he, also, who had been sent, the previous November, as far as the place called Chichilticalli, in an attempt to verify the friar’s tale, and had reported that the natives were good for nothing except to make into Christians.  The main army, which was in command of Don Tristan de Arellano, in accordance with the orders received from Coronado, now advanced toward Cibola.  Maldonado, who had been to the coast, went with it.  Diaz retained eighty men, part of whom were to defend the settlement of San Hieronimo, and twenty-five were to accompany him on his expedition in search of Alarcon.  He started north and then went west, following native guides for 150 leagues (412 1/2 miles) in all, and at length reached a country inhabited by giant natives who, in order to keep warm in the chill autumn air, carried about with them a firebrand.  From this circumstance, Diaz called the large river he found here the Rio del Tizon.  This was the Buena Guia of Alarcon.  The natives were prodigiously strong, one man being able to lift and carry with ease on his head a heavy log which six of the soldiers could not transport to the camp.  Here Diaz heard that boats had come up the river to a point three days’ journey below, and he went there to find out about it, doubtless expecting to get on the track of Alarcon.  But the latter had departed from the mouth of the river at least two or three weeks before; one writer says two months.* The same writer states that Diaz reached the river thirty leagues above the mouth, and that Alarcon went as far again above.  This coincides very well with Alarcon’s estimate of eighty-five leagues, for Diaz did not follow the windings of the stream as Alarcon was forced to do with his boats.  At the place down the river, Diaz found a tree bearing an inscription:  “Alarcon reached this point; there are letters at the foot of this tree.”  Alarcon does not, as before noted, mention burying letters, and these were found at the foot of a tree, so that Diaz evidently failed to reach the cross erected at Alarcon’s highest point.

* Relacion del Suceso.  Alarcon must have reached his highest point about October 5th or 6th, and the ships on the return about the 10th.  Diaz probably arrived at the river about November 1st.