QUARTERLY TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Vol. XVI 1918-1913 ' (From State Library, Austin) THE SP/HISH OCCUPATION OF TEXAS, 1519-1690 Herbert E Bolton (Bri efed) Page 1 "Though it is not commonly known, Texa.s had its share in the romance, and myth, and fable which everywhere attended the Spanish conquest in America, In Florida the Spaniards sought the Fountain of Youth* in South America the Gilded Man (El Dorado): on the west coast of Mexico the Isle of the Amazons.; in Arizona and New Mexico the Seven Cities of Cibola;-on the California coast the Strait of Anian, Likewise, in Texas they searched for the Kingdom of Gran Quivira, where "everyone had their ordinary dishes made of wrought plate, and the jugs and howls were of gold": for the Seven Hills of the Aijados, or Aixaos, where gold was so plentiful that "the natives not knowing any of the other metals, make of it everything they need, such as vessels and the tins of arrows and lances for the Sierra for Cerro) de la Plata (Silver Mountain), somewhere north of the Rio Grande'; for the pearls of the Jutnano country : and for the "Great Kingdom of the Texas," a people who, like the -Jumanos, had been miraculously converted by the woman in blue, who lived next door to the Kingdom of Gran Quivira, were ruled by a powerful lord, had well built towns, each several miles in length, and raised grain in such abundance-the.t they even fed it to their horses. All these various quests and beliefs had made the Texas country an object of interest to the Spaniards