Here is the asylum of the modern Quivira-myth ;
the Mecca of the Southwestern fortune-hunter ; the
field of the Last Folly. That it should have been
chosen from among all the fifteen hundred pueblo
ruins in New Mexico for credulity to butt its head
against, is not strange physicallj^ Its bleak, un-
earthly site, the necromancy of the plains, its ghostly
aspect, and its distance from all water, were enough
to stop and hold the later treasure-seekers, who had
heard vaguely that " Coronado hunted the Quivira,"
but utterly failed to hear that he found it — found it in
northeastern Kansas, and found it worthless. These
new victims found this unprecedented ruin of Tabira
a century ago ; and to them we owe the misnomer



THE CITIES THAT WERE FORGOTTEN 303

of Gran Quivira. Since their day its rest has been
yearly broken. At first were those who pried in the*
debris-choked lower rooms of the pueblo, and go-
phered under the mighty walls of the temple. But
they were only "^oor paisanos who could neither read
nor ask of history. Within the last decade members
of the Superior Race drilled down through a hundred
feet of the eternal bedrock in quest of buried treasure,
and the ruins of Tabira are so peppered with their
shafts that it is unsafe to move about by night.
For the myth of the Quivira has come to Tabira to
stay. Neither fact nor reason will ever fully dislodge
it, and it will always count its dupes. It has even
grown, in that arid home, to startling proportions.
