CHAPTER III

MODERN VENEZUELA

In 1822 Bolivar departed bent on the conquest of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, leaving a New Granadan vice-president as ruler of the great Colombian republic, of which Venezuela was merely one division. The ma.s.sacres and sackings of ten b.l.o.o.d.y years had depopulated and impoverished Venezuela, and the cost of maintaining the army and aiding Bolivar in his foreign contests drained its exhausted resources. The educated Creoles, especially powerful in the agricultural regions near the coast, saw no place for themselves in Bolivar's centralising system.

They wanted to control the offices in their own localities, and did not relish the establishment of a bureaucracy in which appointments and promotions would be settled at Bogota. The predominant radical French ideas added force to the sentiment of local independence. The theorists were offended by Bolivar's manifest predilection toward aristocratic forms and the favours which he granted the clergy. Most dangerous of all, jealousy of the Liberator was rife among the generals.

Paez had been left at the head of military affairs in Venezuela and soon after the capture of Puerto Cabello he became involved in quarrels with the munic.i.p.al authorities. The llanero general recked little of the arguments of the lawyers, and carried things with a high hand. In 1826, when the Bogota government sent an order for the organisation of militia, he filled the measure to overflowing, and the munic.i.p.ality of Caracas made a formal complaint to the central government. A decree for his suspension was issued, but a riot in the streets terrorised the cabildo and he was replaced in power as a sort of dictator. This amounted to a destruction of the influence of the central Colombian government in Venezuelan affairs. Many cities raised the standard of rebellion and made themselves virtually independent. Bolivar hastened back from Peru to reduce his old companion in arms to obedience. He cajoled Paez into temporary co-operation, subdued most of the revolted cities, and, seeing that his system could not be sustained without coercion, a.s.sumed a dictatorship. But the news that Peru had revolted destroyed his dream of a continent-wide dominion, and the demand for local autonomy continued so strong throughout Venezuela and New Granada that he was forced to call a national a.s.sembly to amend the Const.i.tution on the basis of a compromise. In spite of Bolivar's intrigues nearly half the elected delegates staid away, and a majority of those who presented themselves at Ocana, in March, 1828, though chosen under the pressure of his influence, opposed his measures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE OF PUERTO CABELLO IN 1870.]

The minority who favoured him withdrew at his suggestion, leaving the congress without a quorum. It dissolved and the Liberator visited Caracas, Cartagena, and Bogota, calling popular a.s.semblies whose deliberations were directed by bayonets and which obediently besought him to save the country from anarchy in his own way. He issued a decree virtually abolishing the Cucuta Const.i.tution, but a conspiracy to a.s.sa.s.sinate him was formed at Bogota in the fall of 1828, and he was saved only by the devotion of his mistress, who stood in the way of the midnight a.s.sa.s.sins, giving him time to jump from a window and escape. He took a fearful vengeance on the conspirators and banished his worst political enemies, but the incident failed to turn public sentiment in his favour, and it was in vain that he exhibited himself as a martyr.

His old friend, General Cordoba, headed an unsuccessful insurrection in the province of Antioquia; insurgents rose in Popayan and Rio Negro, and towards the end of 1829, in Bolivar's native city, Caracas, an a.s.sembly of one thousand generals, public functionaries, and prominent citizens announced that Venezuela would shortly separate from Colombia and called upon Paez to a.s.sume a dictatorship. The Liberator struggled vainly against the rising tide of federalism; the country was at heart opposed to Caesarism and union; he had been unable to convince the Creoles of the advisability of providing a strong centralised government; and his only supporters were personal ones. Bitterly protesting that he was falsely charged with aspiring to mount a throne, and insisting that his real ambition had been only to secure the perpetuity of the Colombian union and establish an ordered government, he offered his resignation.

Congress, however, contained many of his friends and hesitated at coming to an open breach. He was re-elected and made one last effort to enforce the obedience of Venezuela. But the troops he raised in New Granada did not dare to attack Paez, who with superior forces was waiting in an impregnable position near the frontier. Sick and discouraged, the Liberator renewed his resignation--this time in earnest--and retired to the seacoast, where a few months later he died of a wasting sickness at the early age of forty-seven. Though his courage, energy, and sublime persistence and self-confidence had been the chief factors in securing South American independence, those qualities proved utterly inadequate to hold in check the unruly ambitions of the Creoles. He died clearly foreseeing the decades of anarchy which lay before the northern countries of the continent. "I blush to admit it," he said to congress on the eve of his fall, "but independence is the only benefit we have achieved, and that has been at the cost of all others." On his death-bed he wrote: "Our Const.i.tutions are books, our laws papers, our elections combats, and life itself a torment. We shall arrive at such a state that no foreign nation will condescend to conquer us, and we shall be governed by petty tyrants."

The Venezuelan federalists had not waited for Bolivar's death to complete the formal separation from Colombia. In May, 1830, a const.i.tuent congress a.s.sembled which named Paez dictator and notified Bogota that the country regarded itself as absolutely independent. But Bolivar had partisans and the ruling clique enemies. The eastern provinces refused to recognise Paez's authority and the whole country was soon under arms. But Bolivar's death and the virtual recognition of Venezuela's independence by New Granada brought about a treaty between Paez and Monagas, the chief of the insurrection. The Creole aristocracy came to a working understanding with the generals, and little cliques in each city supported the central government as long as they were recognised as dominant in their own localities. Naturally the ignored outsiders were dissatisfied and plotted to overthrow these oligarchies.

In May, 1831, a revolution broke out in Caracas which menaced nothing less than the extermination of the property-holding cla.s.ses, but it was suppressed and its leaders executed. On paper the form of government was most liberal, congress abolishing the tobacco monopoly and many odious taxes inherited from Spanish times, proclaiming religious freedom, and adopting a Const.i.tution very similar to that of the United States. But in practice the conservative cliques had things their own way. Though ambitious chiefs headed insurrections from time to time, they were all bought off or defeated, and Paez continued president until 1835, leaving the country in a condition of comparative order and prosperity.

Doctor Vargas, a civilian, succeeded him, but against him the generals revolted, declaring Marino dictator. Carujo, the soul of the insurrection, said, in the act of making the president and his ministers prisoners, "Doctor Vargas, the world belongs to the strongest," and the latter n.o.bly replied, "No, the world belongs to the just," resumeing in a word the conflict between force and law, between unbridled ambition and the necessity for order, which has desolated Venezuela to this day and which will last until the selfish elements learn that their own true interests would best be served by promoting the prosperity of the whole people--by relying upon their own industry rather than on chances to despoil the producing cla.s.ses. The government party appealed to Paez, and the llanero general accepted the command. His prestige with the common people and the army enabled him to gather forces with which he overcame the revolted generals after eight months of b.l.o.o.d.y civil war.

Vargas was recalled from exile, but after a short time refused to continue in the presidency, and his place was taken by the vice-president, Doctor Narvarte. In 1839 Paez was again made president, and was succeeded in 1842 by General Soublette, another of the heroes of the war of independence. Until 1846 there was comparative tranquillity in Venezuela. The population had decreased by a fifth during the Spanish wars, being estimated at six hundred and fifty thousand in 1825, but within the succeeding twenty years it grew to a million and a quarter.

Cacao, coffee, and sugar became important articles of export and made the landed proprietors rich. With the cessation of warlike operations on the plains, cattle rapidly multiplied, the first waggon roads were built, and a bank was established.

In 1846 an anti-Creole insurrection broke out among the men of colour, and Paez was again invested with dictatorial powers. When he had completed his work he installed Monagas as president. Popular irritation against the ruling conservative coterie was, however, profound and Monagas quarrelled with congress, and sent his soldiers to break up its meetings. Paez took up arms again and tried to expel his nominee, but was defeated, and for the next nine years Monagas and his brother alternated in the presidency. Though raised to power by the conservative party they abandoned it and before 1850 had thrown themselves into the arms of the liberals, or federalists. Extravagant powers were granted to the states; the provincial coteries ran their localities to suit themselves; the ties binding the different parts of the country together were weakened; an elaborate and confused set of taxes, national, provincial, and munic.i.p.al, well-nigh choked commerce out of existence.

More and more liberty was conceded to the states and munic.i.p.alities, and, on paper, to the individual also. Slavery was abolished in 1854.

Revolutions broke out from time to time, and finally, in 1858, the so-called conservatives overthrew the Monagas regime. But they immediately divided into warring groups, and their new Const.i.tution proved too centralising to suit the Creole politicians. The liberals hoisted the banner of federalism and several provinces rose in revolt.

Under the leadership of Pedro Gual the conservatives were, however, victorious, but they again split to pieces, and Gual himself went over to the liberals. A revolution in Caracas brought back old General Paez, who a.s.sumed a dictatorship and tried to re-establish the power of the central government. But it was impossible. Many disappointed conservatives had turned federalist. No politician seemed willing to submit to any administration unless he was a member of it. The struggle had degenerated into a mere selfish contest for power, and the terms liberal and conservative, federalist and unitarian, had ceased to have any real relation to the opinions of the persons who bore these appellations. General Falcon, with Guzman Blanco as lieutenant, led a successful insurrection in Coro and made himself undisputed master of a considerable portion of the country. The province of Maracaibo formally declared itself separated from all connection with Caracas. For three years civil war raged, when finally Paez gave up and Falcon a.s.sumed direction of the exhausted country. On only one thing had the rapid succession of dictators, provincial and national, been agreed,--the increase of taxes. Import duties had been raised to such a point that commerce could stand no more. But in spite of the enormous sums wrung from merchant, producer, and consumer, the treasury was empty, for the local chiefs openly took possession of the receipts of the custom-houses in their respective districts, and diversions of public funds to private use were the rule among all ranks of officials.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VENEZUELAN SOLDIER OF 1870.]

Falcon's success meant the definite triumph of unrestrained federalism.

The twenty states into which the seven old provinces had been divided in the effort to provide enough offices to go around, became in law sovereign; the presidential term was reduced to two years; absolute liberty of the press was permitted, and the right of meeting for any purpose guaranteed. Imprisonment for debt, the death penalty, and religious instruction in the schools were all abolished. During the five years that Falcon was the chief political figure affairs in Venezuela grew worse and worse. State after state burst into revolution. Falcon sometimes whipped the insurrectionists and sometimes bought them off, but more often was unable to secure even a semblance of obedience except by conceding everything. National penury reached the limit, the states collected and pocketed the dues in most of the custom-houses, officials were in regular partnership with smugglers, and finally the feeble ghost of a federal administration simply flickered out of existence because it could pay n.o.body.

A chief of the so-called unitarian party was declared president in 1868, but Guzman Blanco, now the undisputed head of the federalists, retook Caracas in 1870 and installed himself as dictator. He proved the strongest and most tenacious man who had yet come to the front. With a terrific insurrection raging against him, he concentrated all powers in his own hands, suppressed the peculations of his agents, and relentlessly dragged the half-breeds and negroes into his armies. He finally put down all his enemies and in 1873 was installed as const.i.tutional president. Until 1889 he virtually reigned over Venezuela. Though occasionally he might allow some one else to be elected president, after a short interval he would find a pretext for intervention and oust his nominee. Though the Const.i.tution was left substantially unamended, he interpreted it as he pleased. He organised a regular machine through which he governed the "sovereign" states, taking care that none but his creatures should become governors and that the members returned to congress should be docile. To all intents and purposes his will was the law of the land, for the legislative and judicial departments were his instruments, and his executive decrees covered nearly every imaginable subject. The minutest details of commercial and social life were regulated, the clergy owed their positions to the dictator, and even private property was not safe if Blanco took a fancy to it. But in the main his tyranny was intelligent.

The country escaped the desolating outbreaks of local chiefs, with forced loans wrung from property owners and merchants, the seizure of cattle and coffee for "war purposes," and the la.s.soing of peons to serve in the armed bands. Though the taxes imposed by Blanco were enormously heavy, the marvellous productive forces of the soil could stand almost any burden provided its amount were certain and its collection regular.

Though the dictator withdrew millions for his private use, depositing them in Paris against the evil day of his expulsion, indiscriminate exactions by subordinates were suppressed. Large sums were spent on public works and buildings, and the beautification of the city of Caracas, one of the handsomest and best-built cities in America, dates from Guzman Blanco's time. Nearly five hundred miles of railroad were constructed. The country was given and has retained the inestimable blessing of a stable currency, and the coffee and cacao businesses increased enormously. The number of cattle, which the civil wars prior to 1870 had reduced to one million four hundred thousand, increased sevenfold in fifteen years.

But Blanco's system was anomalous and rested on no secure foundation.

The commercial and property-holding cla.s.ses abstained from politics, the people became tired of his busybody tyranny, the peons were still an inert and ignorant ma.s.s, harmless by themselves, but furnishing a tempting recruiting ground for ambitious revolutionists. Nor had the Creole politicians changed their nature. There were plenty of talented adventurers whose mouths fairly watered seeing the immense fortune Blanco was acc.u.mulating, and who only waited a favourable opportunity to conquer a share in the spoils. The successful outbreak came in 1889, headed by Rojas Paul. His success was a signal for other chiefs to imitate his example. Resolute leaders hastily organised bands of peons, and the old story of p.r.o.nunciamentos, kidnappings of peaceful peasants, attacks, surprises, forced loans, and all the demoralising and disintegrating horrors of civil war were repeated. Paul was overthrown by Andueza, and in 1892 Crespo got to the head of affairs and held power long enough to acc.u.mulate a respectable fortune. Andrade succeeded Crespo, but had to divide the spoils with his predecessor. The disturbances did not become of a character to injure seriously Venezuela's commerce and production until 1896, but there then began a rapid decline in the value of her exports. The government's revenues diminished a third and amounted to less than half the expenditures. The debt grew to alarming figures and the guaranteed interest on foreign capital employed in building railroads was allowed to fall into arrear.

In 1899, Castro, a man hitherto unknown in politics, started an insurrection against Andrade in the western state of Los Andes. Marching from one town to another his army grew like a rolling s...o...b..ll by forced enlistments, and though the st.u.r.dy hillmen did not know what they were fighting for and would gladly have been at home, they showed all the stolid bravery that seems inborn in their race. The government troops could not stand against them, and Castro finally entered Caracas in triumph. Though insurrection after insurrection has broken out against him, the dauntless courage with which he leads his men has enabled him to maintain himself. The successful South American revolutionist must be willing to risk losing his own life, for so long as he leads he will be followed, but his cowardice or death means a rapid dissolution of his forces.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VENEZUELAN GUERILLAS.]

Though the solidity acquired by the Venezuelan commercial and financial structure during the long years of Blanco's reign has prevented the country from reverting into the anarchy which prevailed before 1873, and though the spirit of federalism is not so rampant and the chieftains aspire rather to a control of the whole country than to power confined to their own localities, the recent civil wars have disorganised the finances. Internal production has been hampered and external obligations have been deferred--the latter with serious consequences. Anti-foreign sentiment, already raised to a threatening height by the boundary dispute with British Guiana--a long-standing matter which was happily settled by arbitration after menacing a serious rupture between the United States and Great Britain,--was further exacerbated by the blockade of Venezuelan ports and the destruction of the Venezuelan navy by the joint fleets of Germany, England, and Italy in 1902--measures to which the European governments had been incited by the failure of Venezuela to settle claims of their citizens. In the face of this foreign war the civil conflicts were interrupted, and President Castro empowered the American minister to negotiate for the submission of the claims to arbitration. To the weight of the sentiment that international money claims should not be enforced by warlike measures was added the existence of a current of opinion in the United States which favoured arbitration as in this instance certainly the best method of adjustment.

The temporary occupation of ports on American soil by European powers might give the latter a military hold in the western continent which would embarra.s.s and complicate more important relations. The submission was quickly and amicably arranged, the claims of the citizens of other countries are to be ascertained at the same time, and the matter is now before The Hague international tribunal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ECUADOR COLOMBIA AND VENEZUELA]

By a resolution of congress General Castro is empowered to hold the office of president for six years from 1902. Bitter and costly as have been the experiences through which Venezuela has pa.s.sed during the last twelve years, the vast majority of the intelligent and property-holding cla.s.ses realise more clearly than outsiders possibly can that internal stability will alone ensure the commercial development of the country; that Venezuela united is far more likely to prosper than if separated into always jealous and often warring provinces. The ma.s.s of the people are industrious and peaceable. Real progress has been made since the time of Bolivar in the almost impossible task of adjusting republican forms and procedure to a people who by inheritance and tradition knew nothing of the difficult art of self-government. It cannot fairly be said that Venezuela as yet sees her way clear to a solution of the problem, but her commercial statistics for the last thirty years prove that her people have acquired industrial capacity, and the history of other Spanish-American countries shows that the power for evil of the turbulent military cla.s.s may perish once for all with startling suddenness when the right stage in national development is reached.

COLOMBIA

CHAPTER I

CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT

When Alonso de Ojeda coasted along the Venezuelan sh.o.r.e in the spring of 1499 he stopped short just west of the Gulf of Maracaibo, near the present boundary between Venezuela and Colombia. The following year Rodrigo Bastida doubled the Goajira peninsula and pursued his voyage to the west, catching sight of the giant snowclad mountains of Santa Marta and of the low land which lies between them and the sea. Coming to the mouth of a great river on the day sacred to Saint Magdalene, he named it the Magdalena, and farther to the south-west found the fine harbour where the city of Cartagena now stands. At the head of the Gulf of Darien he came to another great river, the Atrato, and here his explorations stopped.

More than a year later the great Columbus himself, on his fourth and last voyage, sighted the Central American coast at Cape Gracias a Dios, near the present boundary between Nicaragua and Honduras. Thence he sailed south-east along a pestilential sh.o.r.e for eight hundred miles, finally arriving near the point where Bastida had left off his explorations. It is said that Bartholomew Columbus founded a settlement on the Atlantic sh.o.r.e of the Isthmus, but it was soon destroyed by the neighbouring Indians. The long stretch of coast was unfit for the abode of Europeans, but the Indians had gold in abundance, and the Spaniards were satisfied that the interior was full of mines. Hundreds of fortunate adventurers had acc.u.mulated fortunes in the placers of Hayti, and with a view of repeating their successes on the mainland, Alonso de Ojeda solicited and obtained from the Spanish Crown the grant of the territory from Goajira to the Atrato, while Diego de Nicuesa was given the coast from the Atrato to Cape Gracias a Dios. In 1510 one of Ojeda's lieutenants founded a town called Sebastian on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Gulf of Darien. The Indians soon destroyed it, but Antigua was established across the gulf. This place was in fact on the Isthmus of Panama, and not much more than one hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, of which the Spaniards then knew nothing. Among the military adventurers who had followed Ojeda to Darien were Nunez de Balboa and Francisco Pizarro. In 1511 the former went a short distance into the interior looking for gold, and fell in with an Indian chief who told him that only a few leagues south lay a great sea whose sh.o.r.es were inhabited by numerous rich and civilised nations. Two years later he headed an expedition from Antigua which resulted in the epoch-making discovery which has immortalised his name. As the band of Spaniards approached the line of hills from which the natives told them they could see the mysterious ocean, Balboa hastened ahead of his men and was the first to catch a glimpse, but in the headlong rush for the honour of first touching its waters he was beaten by Alonso Martin and that lean and tireless soldier who was afterwards to conquer Peru--Francisco Pizarro.

The Pacific side of the Isthmus proved to be more healthful and habitable than the marshy sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic, and the settlers at Antigua were soon driven by fevers and dysenteries, torrential rains and sweltering heat, to the more healthful region of Panama. Nicuesa likewise had been able to do nothing with his long stretch of Isthmian and Central American coast. Nombre de Dios, not far from the present site of Colon, was the only town which he succeeded in establishing, and that maintained itself only as landing-place on the way to Panama. To this day the Caribbean coast from the Atrato delta as far as Gracias a Dios is practically uninhabited by white men; on the site of Antigua there is left not a trace; the Indians in its neighbourhood are still independent savages; and the north sh.o.r.e of the Isthmus has been a hospital and a grave for successive generations of white men during four hundred years. Only its position at the strategical gate to the great South Sea has induced men to go to its noisome sh.o.r.es.

The Isthmian settlements were, as they remain, separated from the continent of South America by the deep and broad valley of the Atrato, where the rainfall is the greatest known, and whose dense tropical forests are uninhabitable and practically impa.s.sable. No land communication exists between Panama and Colombia proper. However, the coast east of the Atrato delta is dryer, and at Santa Marta, beyond the mouth of the Magdalena and at the foot of the great outlying mountain ma.s.s of Colombia's north-eastern peninsula, was founded in 1525 the first permanent settlement in Colombia proper. It was nothing more than a kidnapping station, whence expeditions scoured the interior for slaves to be sold to the Haytian gold mines. Meanwhile from Coro, established two years later, on the eastern side of Maracaibo Gulf, murdering and slaughtering expeditions were sent across the gulf, returning to Venezuela after making a circuit among the mountains lying south of Maracaibo Bay. Later these expeditions from Coro penetrated over these mountains, reaching the llanos of the Apure and finally the plains of Casanare lying east of Bogota, which now belong to Colombia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLDEST FORTRESS IN AMERICA, AT CARTAGENA.]

The exploring parties from Santa Marta and Coro, and information picked up along the coast, gave the Spaniards a pretty fair idea of the geography of the interior, and the existence of immense quant.i.ties of gold and of civilised nations living on the high plateaux was verified from many sources. The conquest of the fertile and salubrious interior of Colombia was effected from three distinct centres,--Cartagena and Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast, and Quito on the Ecuador table-land.

Serious colonisation began with Heredia's foundation of Cartagena in 1533. The new leader set vigorously to work to establish himself firmly on the magnificent harbour and seek for gold. Cortes' and Pizarro's marvellous successes had brought a mult.i.tude of adventurers to the new world, all of whom were eager for a share in the spoils of the yet independent Indian kingdoms. Heredia found the rocky hills which rise not far south of Cartagena full of profitable gold washings, and the Indians reported that only a short distance in the interior, where the mountains rose higher, there was a region called Zenufana which produced the precious metal far more abundantly. Their story was true, and Zenufana was none other than the present state of Antioquia, which has produced hundreds of millions of dollars of gold. No time was lost in starting on the search. Heredia's first expedition penetrated to the headwaters of the river Sinu, which flows into the Caribbean not far south-west of Cartagena, and though successful in finding gold he was unable to force his way over the high sierra of Abibe, the most northern bulwark of the great Maritime Cordillera, which barred his way into Antioquia and the valley of the Cauca. In 1535 the town of Tolu was founded between the mouth of the Sinu and Cartagena, and the expeditions skirted the northern end of the Andes until they reached the river Cauca where it debouches into the Magdalena. In 1537 Spanish expeditions succeeded in crossing the formidable Abibe Mountains, and penetrated east into the coveted mining country. Up the Cauca they followed for two hundred miles, pa.s.sing the rapids which place an almost inexpugnable barrier between the upper and lower river. Not far from the present city of Cartago they found traces of white men, and learned that while they themselves had been pushing south the indomitable companions of Pizarro had extended their explorations and conquests more than a thousand miles north from their landing-place on the Peruvian coast. The men from Cartagena went on to Cali, where the conquerors of Popayan had their headquarters, and there an expedition was fitted out which, under the leadership of Jorge Robledo, returned down the Cauca and conquered Antioquia after much b.l.o.o.d.y fighting with the Indians. It is said that each of Heredia's men received a larger amount than the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. Certain it is that the founding of Cartagena resulted in putting the Spaniards in possession of the valley of the Cauca and the wonderful gold mines of Antioquia as far south as the 5th degree.

Benalcazar, one of Pizarro's lieutenants, after conquering Quito in 1533, had proceeded north along the Andean plateau between the two Cordilleras. A hundred miles from Quito he entered the high region of Pasto, inhabited by vigorous, semi-civilised Indians much resembling those of Ecuador. Near this point the Andes, heretofore ma.s.sed in one great chain, split into three parallel ranges. The western and central chains are separated from each other by the valley of the Cauca and near the Caribbean dip down to sea-level. The eastern range bears off a little to the right, with the Magdalena valley between it and the central mountains, and six hundred miles north turns north-east and enters Venezuela just south of Maracaibo Bay. Benalcazar went straight north from Pasto and entered the region where the Cauca gathers its headwaters. This was Popayan, a lower country than Pasto, but still high enough to be healthful, pleasant, and densely populated. In rapid succession the tribes inhabiting the whole upper Cauca valley were conquered, and Benalcazar's officers only stopped when they met their countrymen coming up from Cartagena. The city of Cali was founded in 1536, Popayan in 1538, Pasto and Anserma in 1539, and Cartago in 1540.

This beautiful valley is one of the most isolated regions on the globe.

To the east and west the high walls of the Quindio, or central, and of the western Cordillera shut it off from the Magdalena valley and from the Pacific, and the rapids near Cartago make communication with the Caribbean almost impossible.

Benalcazar himself had returned to Quito and it was not until 1538 that he was able to undertake the conquest of the upper Magdalena and those lovely plateaux and rich kingdoms which nestled on the broad top of the eastern Cordillera. In the meantime he had been forestalled by an expedition coming from the Caribbean. In 1536 Jimenez de Quesada sallied forth from Santa Marta with eight hundred men and one hundred horses.

Avoiding the swampy delta of the Magdalena, he pa.s.sed through the Chimilas mountains which lie east of it, and reached the solid ground of the foothills that approach the river banks some three hundred miles above its mouth. Along these he made his way through incredible difficulties and hardships, months being consumed in the journey, and his men perishing by scores from fatigue, starvation, and continual fights with the savage natives. When he reached the river Opon, he determined to climb to the plateau, near the site of Velez, where he was told that the mountain top was inhabited by a civilised race. After fighting his way through the unconquerable savages of the Opon valley he found himself in the centre of a series of lovely table-lands, many of them the beds of ancient mountain lakes whose alluvial bottoms were inexhaustibly fertile, where the climate was perfect and all the products of the temperate zone grew luxuriantly. The plateaux, interrupted by valleys and ridges, stretched from Pamplona to beyond Bogota--a distance of more than two hundred miles. This region was then and remains to this day the populous heart of Colombia, the princ.i.p.al seat of power, wealth, and national civilisation. However, it is so isolated that it has never const.i.tuted a nucleus around which the widely separated provinces of Colombia could unite into a well organised nation. To reach Tolima, Bogota's nearest neighbour in the upper Magdalena valley, it is necessary to descend thousands of feet of steep mountainside, along which the sure-footed mule can hardly climb. To reach Cauca, not only must the Magdalena valley be crossed but the enormously high Quindio range must be climbed, and before getting to the Pacific, still another mountain chain intervenes, while the populous gold regions of Antioquia can only be reached by following down the Magdalena and up the Cauca. Weeks of the most difficult journeying are required to get to the seacoast or any of the other states, and Panama might as well be on the other side of the globe so far as practical communication goes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAVELLERS DESCENDING A MOUNTAIN ROAD]

Quesada had lost three-fourths of his men in reaching the promised land, but once there he encountered fewer difficulties than any of the other great Spanish conquerors. The numerous nation of the Chibchas inhabited the southern plateaux, who acknowledged allegiance to the zipa of Meuqueta. But their so-called empire possessed no military force or cohesion, although they had carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection. They manufactured cotton cloths, mined gold and emeralds, worked artistic ornaments, had a circulating medium and a calendar, lived in houses, built splendid temples, and had tools hard enough to carve stones into elaborate sculptures. Their government was absolute; crimes were severely and relentlessly punished; the caste of priests wielded great power. Altogether they appear to have reached a stage of material civilisation not much inferior to the aztecs of Mexico, the caras of Ecuador, or the incas of Peru, but in efficiency of governmental and military organisation they fell far below those great peoples. Spanish chroniclers have amused themselves with recording traditions of great wars in which the Chibchas had a.s.sembled armies of hundreds of thousands not long before the conquest, but the fact remains that less than two hundred Spaniards overcame them and reduced them to unquestioning obedience within a few months and without serious loss. Indeed, Quesada's successors had more difficulty with the smaller nations who inhabited the northern plateaux of Tunja, Socorro, and Tundama, and the most serious resistance was made by the semi-savage tribes of the upper Magdalena, who fought nearly as desperately as the Indians of Antioquia and the Caribbean coast.

Quesada chose the site of the ancient Chibcha capital for his city and there Bogota was founded on the 7th of August, 1538. It lies on the eastern border of a magnificent level plain, the bed of the largest of the prehistoric lakes, thirty miles broad and sixty long, and nearly nine thousand feet above sea-level. One hundred and fifty thousand people live on that plain to-day, and the population in Chibcha times was probably even larger. The same year Benalcazar reached the neighbourhood of Bogota, having come down the valley of the Magdalena from Quito and Pasto, and at the very same moment arrived an expedition from Coro in Venezuela, which had crossed the mountains south of Maracaibo and followed south along the llanos lying at the eastern base of the Colombian Andes, thence climbing the sierra to Bogota. Remarkable as it may seem, these three bands of indomitable Spaniards, starting from widely separated points on the coast, met each other in the remote interior of the continent, brought to the same place by the fame of the fertility and riches of the Chibcha kingdom. The Venezuelans under Federmann, and the Ecuadoreans under Benalcazar, accepted the bribe which Quesada offered them not to interfere with his conquest, and the three chiefs, laden with gold, returned to Spain in the same ship.

Quesada left his brother in nominal command of the colony, but each of the conquerors was a law unto himself. When the governor of Santa Marta came up to Bogota they refused to recognise his authority. Tunja and Velez were founded in 1539 on the plateaux north of the capital, and a year or two later Quesada's brother wasted a great part of his forces in a fruitless expedition to the mountains of Pasto in search of the Eldorado. Meanwhile, in 1539, the Portuguese Geronimo Mello had succeeded in entering the mouth of the Magdalena, making his way for a considerable distance upstream. The great river proved to be perfectly navigable from the sea to a point nearly as far south as Bogota, and the Spaniards immediately utilised it as a route to Santa Marta and Cartagena far preferable to the track through swamps and foothills which Quesada had followed. Each of the plateau provinces lying on the mountains which follow its eastern bank had its own paths down the slopes to the river, and a practicable though tedious and expensive communication with the Caribbean was developed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVE BOATS, MAGDALENA RIVER.]

In 1542 Lugo, an adventurer who had successfully intrigued against Quesada, arrived with a commission as adelantado and considerable reinforcements. New cities were founded among the gold mines of the upper Magdalena at Tocaima, Ibague, and Neiva, as well as at Pamplona at the northern end of the plateaux. The tribes of Bogota, Tunja, Velez, Socorro, and Pamplona submitted without appreciable resistance, and their fertile fields were divided into great estates among the Spaniards. But the more savage tribes in the gold-bearing valleys of the Upper Magdalena and Cauca and in Antioquia struggled hard to escape impressment into the mines, and war almost exterminated them. The same thing happened on the plains of the Caribbean coast, although in that region some tribes maintained their independence. To work the mines and plantations negro slaves had to be imported, with the result that black blood predominates in the lower regions of Colombia, while the descendants of the aborigines are in a majority on the eastern plateaux.

Within twenty-five years after the establishment of the first permanent Spanish post at Santa Marta, the whites were in undisputed control of practically all Colombia which is now inhabited by civilised people.