SANTA FE TRAIL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 149, 5 April 1930, Page 5

SANTA FE TRAIL.

HOW IT GOT ITS NAME. A Spanish king leading his army to battle in wild impassible mountains found himself hemmed in by the enemy, who outnumbered his men, nye fco one. He would have perished with all his troops had not a private soldier discovered a narrow, unguarded pass at the entrance-of which lay ttte bleached skull of a cow. He led the kih"- and his army to safety, and the o-rateful monarch not only, rewarded him with wealth and honours, hut bestowed on him a new name—Uabezo de Vaca, "cow's head." . > , De Vaca, savs a writer in the JNew York "Times,'"' sailed from Spain, for the Florida coast .about three and a half centuries ago with the Narva**? expedition and was wrecked -n the Gulf, but de Vaca survived with thiee others, who clun S to him when the ship went down. Though his ship was at the bottom of the sea, the ocean, behind him, an untrodden wilderness before, and hostile Indians all around, de Vaca's purpose was unshaken Widely he told his companions that a settlement cf their countrymen was ancati and their only hope was to reach it. He led them from somewhere i.car the Mississippi's mouth across an unknown continent to the pacific. At the Seven Cities of Cibola there lived a people, peaceful and industrious, worshipping strange heathen sods, and possessing; treasures of gold and silver and plenty of food. At least this was the storv* which de Vaca later told Coronado the Governor of New Ualwia, inducing him to send an expedition under Marcos de Niza in 1540 to coloriise the Seven Cities ofthe Pueblos. De Niza invaded New Mexico, conquered the native towns with his sokftery and found everything as de Vaca had leported—except the treasure. . Thus, about 1600 was founded the city of Santa Fe. The famous Santa Fe' Trail, traversed by ipack mules, prairie schooners, and the present railroad line, was known to the Spanish conquerors as the Cow's Head Trail; first blazed for hundreds of miles across an unexplored continent by de Vaca' and his three men.