s so
anxious to explore New Mexico that he made an expedition without leave
from the viceroy. He came up the Pecos River and crossed to the Rio
Grande; and at the pueblo of Santo Domingo was arrested by Captain
Morlette, who had come all the way from Mexico on that sole errand, and
carried home in irons.

Juan de Onate, the colonizer of New Mexico, and founder of the second
town within the limits of the United States, as well as of the city
which is now our next oldest, was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. His family
(which came from Biscay) had discovered (in 1548) and now owned some of
the richest mines in the world,--those of Zacatecas. But despite the
"golden spoon in his mouth," Onate desired to be an explorer. The Crown
refused to provide for further expeditions into the disappointing north;
and about 1595 Onate made a contract with the viceroy of New Spain to
colonize New Mexico at his own expense. He made all preparations, and
fitted out his costly expedition. Just then a new viceroy was appointed,
who kept him waiting in Mexico with all his men for over two years, ere
the necessary permission was given him to start. At last, early in 1597,
he set out with his expedition,--which had cost him the equivalent of a
million dollars, before it stirred a step. He took with him four hundred
colonists, including two hundred soldiers, with women and children, and
herds of sheep and cattle. Taking formal possession of New Mexico May
30, 1598, he moved up the Rio Grande to where the hamlet of Chamita now
is (north of Santa Fe), and there founded, in September of that year,
San Gabriel de los Espanoles (St. Gabriel of the Spaniards), the second
town in the United States.

Onate was remarkable not only for his success in colonizing a country so
forbidding as this then was, but also as an explorer. He ransacked all
the country round about, travelled to Acoma and put down a revolt of its
Indians, and in 1600 made an expedition clear up into Nebraska. In 1604,
with thirty men, he marched from San Gabriel across that grim desert to
the Gulf of California, and returned to San Gabriel in April, 1605. By
that time the English had penetrated no farther into the interior of
America than forty or fifty miles from the Atlantic coast.

In 1605 Onate founded Santa Fe, the City of the Holy Faith of St.
Francis, about whose age a great many foolish fables have been written.
The city actually celebrated the three hundred and thirty-third
annive