VENEZUELAN SOLDIER OF 1870.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 nobody.
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 constitutional 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 Constitution 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 lassoing 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 classes abstained from politics, the people became tired of his busybody tyranny, thepeons were still an inert and ignorant mass, 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 accumulating, 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 pronunciamentos, 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 accumulate 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 grewlike a rolling snowball by forced enlistments, and though the sturdy 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.
VENEZUELAN GUERILLAS.VENEZUELAN GUERILLAS.
ECUADOR COLOMBIA AND VENEZUELAECUADOR COLOMBIA AND VENEZUELAClick here for a larger image
Click here for a larger image
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 byEuropean powers might give the latter a military hold in the western continent which would embarrass 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.
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 passed during the last twelve years, the vast majority of the intelligent and property-holding classes 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 mass 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 class may perish once for all with startling suddenness when the right stage in national development is reached.
COLOMBIA
When Alonso de Ojeda coasted along the Venezuelan shore 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 á Dios, near the present boundary between Nicaragua and Honduras. Thence he sailed south-east along a pestilential shore for eight hundred miles, finally arriving nearthe point where Bastida had left off his explorations. It is said that Bartholomew Columbus founded a settlement on the Atlantic shore 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 accumulated 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 á Dios. In 1510 one of Ojeda's lieutenants founded a town called Sebastian on the eastern shore 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 Nuñez 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 shores 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 theline 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 shores 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 á 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 shore 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 shores.
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 densetropical forests are uninhabitable and practically impassable. 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 mass 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 Apuré and finally the plains of Casanare lying east of Bogotá, which now belong to Colombia.
OLDEST FORTRESS IN AMERICA, AT CARTAGENA.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 quantities 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 multitude 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 thesearch. 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, passing 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 bloody 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 foundingof 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 massed 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 thewestern 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 passed 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, interruptedby valleys and ridges, stretched from Pamplona to beyond Bogotá—a distance of more than two hundred miles. This region was then and remains to this day the populous heart of Colombia, the principal seat of power, wealth, and national civilisation. However, it is so isolated that it has never constituted a nucleus around which the widely separated provinces of Colombia could unite into a well organised nation. To reach Tolima, Bogotá'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.
TRAVELLERS DESCENDING A MOUNTAIN ROAD.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 assembled 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 Bogotá 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 Bogotá, 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 Bogotá. 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 fameof 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 Bogotá 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 Bogotá, 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.
NATIVE BOATS, MAGDALENA RIVER.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 Bogotá, 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. Three great territorial divisions corresponded to the three directions in which the conquest had been effected. From Cartagena, Antioquia and the lower Cauca had been settled; from Quito, Popayan, Pasto, and the upper Cauca; and Bogotá was the centre of the region extending from Pamplona south along the plateaux and into the valley of the upper Magdalena. This division of the country soon brought on disputes as to pre-eminence andjurisdiction between the authorities, foreshadowing the demand for local independence which desolated Colombia with civil war during so many years of the last century. Lugo, the new adelantado, who had displaced Quesada, deprived many of the original conquerors of their grants of lands and Indians, and the old and new comers fell to fighting among themselves. But their numbers were too small to make their disagreements really threatening to the interests of the Spanish Crown. In 1545 the Spanish government sent out a commissioner to reduce the country to order. The first royal commissioner was replaced by a second in 1553, who carried things with a high hand, depriving proprietors of their grants, nominating members of his own family to the lucrative posts, and finally even exiling Quesada himself and executing some of the most famous of the original conquerors. Under instructions from Madrid he promulgated many laws for the protection of the Indians from the exactions and tyrannies of the encomenderos—regulations which, as in Peru, excited great dissatisfaction among the colonists and were constantly evaded. It was forbidden for any encomendero to be military governor of his district, and the original conquerors were replaced in all positions of authority by officials newly brought out from Spain. However, the office of commissioner was an irregular and extraordinary one and his powers ill-defined. Even at Bogotá his authority was defied by the audiencia and the municipal councils, and over the remote provinces of Antioquia and Popayan, Cartagena and Panama,his power was a mere shadow. The Spanish government resolved to erect Quito and Bogotá into presidencies, whose governors would be responsible directly to Madrid and have greater authority over subordinate officials.
In 1564 the president arrived in state with all the trappings appropriate to his high rank. His powers were most ample; he was practically vicegerent of the Castilian king; his jurisdiction extended not only over the Bogotá-Pamplona plateaux and Tolima on the upper Magdalena, but also over Santa Marta, Cartagena, Antioquia, and even to Panama and the Mosquito coast. The name of New Granada, which Quesada had given to his conquests in honor of his native province in Spain, was extended to the whole presidency. To it were also attached, though loosely, the provinces that now make up the republic of Venezuela. But access to the Venezuelan coast from Bogotá was so difficult as to prevent that region from ever being really a part of the New Granada presidency, and it became an independent captaincy-general in 1731. The eastern boundary of the president's immediate jurisdiction included the provinces which naturally communicated with the Colombian plateaux, but the extension of the Andes north-east from Pamplona alongthe Venezuelan coast was left to be settled from Coro. For similar reasons the valley of the upper Cauca—Cali and Popayan, as well as Pasto—was attached to the presidency of Quito, and the subordination of its governor to Bogotá was only incidental and gave rise to many disputes and conflicts. The administrative entity of New Granada may be said to have included the territory which the Spaniards had reached by the line of the Magdalena, and in addition the Cartagena region and the Isthmus. The last named province was a source of constant trouble, because the difficulties of communication and the diversities of interests really made it separate from the rest of New Granada. Panama's governor and independent audiencia frequently defied the commands received from Bogotá.
THE NATURAL BRIDGE AT GUARANDA.THE NATURAL BRIDGE AT GUARANDA.
The disorders near Bogotá ceased after the arrival of the first president, Neiva. He actively engaged in promoting new colonisation, founding the city of Ocana in the Maracaibo watershed north-west of Pamplona, as well as Leiva and several other towns. He opened a road down from Bogotá to Honda at the head of navigation on the Magdalena, and in his time great flatboats were introduced. These were poled against the river's rapid current, and they continued the sole means of river freight transportation for nearly three centuries. The cornerstone of the Bogotá cathedral was laid, and schools established which soon counted among the most successful and famous in Spanish America. The country prospered after a fashion. The fertile plateaux from Bogotá to the north were admirably adapted to the residence of Europeans, and the rich soil soon produced large crops of wheat and fed great herds of cattle. This region was so attractive that the Spaniards became attached to the country and contentedly established themselves as semi-feudal proprietors of estates cultivated by the docile and industrious Indians. A considerable proportion of the successive generations of office-holders sent out from Spain, applied for land-grants and remained in the country, founding new Creole families. Mixture with the aborigines occurred on a large scale and the process of Caucasianising the population made greater progress than in many other parts of Spanish America. The region was too far from thesea-coast to attract haphazard adventurers or to serve as a Botany Bay for convicts; the Spanish settlers belonged as a rule to good families; and the standard of living, education, and manners was exceptionally high. Bogotá became one of the principal centres of Spanish American culture, and Colombian authors are celebrated for their excellence throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In the invigorating climate the Creoles retained their physical vigour and the concentration of population on these densely inhabited plateaux increased their mental alertness. Living, however, as a superior class in the midst of a subject population, they acquired no taste or capacity for commerce or industry. A Creole was by birth a gentleman and exempt from manual labour. The Colombian plateaux made little material progress, and settled down into an eventless, patriarchal existence.
FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA.FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA.
Conditions were entirely different in the deep, hot valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca and on the sweltering sea-coast plain. The semi-savage Indians did not make good labourers, and were massacred or driven into the fastnesses on the mountain sides, while their places were taken by negro slaves. The white population fell into much the same position as it occupies in the West Indian Islands. In the mining regions the Indians were pretty nearly exterminated. Antioquia, the great mineral province, has always contained a larger proportion of white blood than any other part of Colombia, and with the decline of its mines it became a centre whence white emigration poured into the other departments.Still different conditions prevailed in the extreme south, where the highlands of Popayan and the dry, cold tablelands of Pasto offered the same aspect as adjoining Ecuador. In those utterly isolated and comparatively unattractive regions the Indian population remained predominant.
In Colombia, as in all the other Andean countries, the impulse toward conquest, expansion, and colonisation seems to have died out completely with the disappearance of the first generation of conquistadores. We read of the foundation of new cities from time to time, but it usually means that previously existing villages were given municipal charters. After one brief spurt the Spaniards settled down to enjoy the fruits of their ancestors' heroic marches and battles. Except near Panama the rainy Pacific coast was left untouched, and the forests of the Amazon in the south-east could not be penetrated. The open prairies of the Orinoco north-east of Bogotá could be occupied and the province of Casanare at the foot of the eastern Andean range became a stock region, inhabited by the same hard-riding, semi-civilised llaneros as the adjoining Venezuelan plains.
The Spanish government applied its restrictive colonial system with the utmost rigour. The obnoxious market tax was imposed as early as 1690; tobacco and salt were made monopolies; the exportation of agricultural products was discouraged; and the production of gold, emeralds, platinum, and silver, was jealously watched and heavily taxed. In the early history of the colony the profits ofmining were prodigious, but during the seventeenth century, after the cream of the surface placers had been skimmed, progress was slow. The unhealthful climate of the mining regions almost exterminated the settlers; the native population diminished so rapidly that soon the mines were short-handed; and the importation of negro slaves was so costly that the smaller proprietors could not operate on their own account, and even the great mine owners had to be content with moderate profits. One-fifth of the gross product was required to be paid to the government, and there were other fiscal exactions. The efforts of the authorities to prevent the smuggling of gold introduced a swarm of soldiers, collectors, and guards with whom the miners were in a constant turmoil.
The influence of the Church was very powerful, and the population became devotedly Catholic. Great tracts of the best lands were given to the bishoprics and the religious orders. Piously disposed persons left property in trust charged with the payment of so many dollars a year for the saying of so many masses, and the stewardships, or rights to administer these estates, were the subject of sale or descended from father to son. In 1630, a daring president, Jiron, presumed to arrest and banish the archbishop of Bogotá, but fifty years later one of his successors wrote back to Spain that "in New Granada there is much Church and little king." The poor Indians were decimated not only by war, massacre, and forced labour in the mines, but the white man's diseases played havoc withthem. The small-pox was introduced on the plateaux within a few years after the conquest, and continued to ravage the country throughout the early part of the seventeenth century. The third president died of the leprosy within a few months after his arrival in 1579, and the first case of elephantiasis, which has proved a curse to Colombia, occurred in 1646.
The quarrels and disagreements between the president and the governors and audiencias of the associated provinces, especially Panama, to say nothing of the disputes with the president of Quito and the governor of Venezuela on account of conflicting jurisdiction, became so acute early in the seventeenth century that the Spanish government determined to erect New Granada into a viceroyalty, extending the power of the Bogotá central authorities over Ecuador and Venezuela. The first viceroy was inaugurated in 1719, but he recommended a return to the old system. In the year 1740 the viceroyalty was re-established and all connection with Peru ceased. Although in the meantime Caracas had been made a captaincy-general, it was placed nominally under the viceroy's jurisdiction, and Ecuador was again detached from Lima. Within a few years the attempt to govern Maracaibo, Cumaná, Margarita Island, and Guiana from Bogotá was abandoned, and these provinces transferred to the Venezuelan captaincy-general. But the high rank and royal powers of the viceroys did not save them from troubles. They were engaged in an almost continual struggle against the encroachments of theclergy, while the laity protested vigorously at the constantly increasing taxation. A special royal commissioner came out in 1774 to perfect the tobacco monopoly, and five years later another agent arrived with instructions still more irritating. The Creoles of Santander arose in the "Rebellion of the Communes" and so formidable was the insurrection that the authorities were compelled to make a feint of yielding to the people's demands. They promised to expel the obnoxious commissioner; to abolish not only the tobacco monopoly, but the market-tax on the sale of domestic products, the requirement that every shipment be accompanied by a high-priced official invoice, and the poll-tax; to lower the stamp duties, the curates' tithes, and the Indian tribute; to cease burdening commerce with unreasonable highway, bridge, and ferry dues; and to require the priests to give up the practice of forcing the Indians to pay for masses. The viceroy also promised to open public employments to Creoles, to permit the establishment of a militia, and to concede to the people the right to confirm the governors nominated by the Crown or viceroy. But no sooner had the insurgents dispersed, than the government repudiated all these pledges and dragged the popular leaders to the scaffold.
NATIVE HOUSES IN COLOMBIA.NATIVE HOUSES IN COLOMBIA.
The foreign commerce of the viceroyalty had diminished until only one small fleet came each year to Cartagena and Porto Bello, and though, during the latter part of the colonial period, certain viceroys did something to open up roads by which wheat, sugar, cacao, and hides could be exported at a profit, no measures could prove effective while the enormous fiscal exactions of the Spanish government continued. During the last few years of the eighteenth century, commerce was made nominally free, but this meant simply that the old prohibitions on private shipments by sea were abolished, and the ports opened for trade with Spain and the other colonies. These wise measures were, however, accompanied by such an increase in taxes that their effect was nugatory.
Meanwhile New Granada had also had her external troubles. In 1586 Sir Francis Drake reached Cartagena and forty years after the Spanish government fortified the place at great expense. Nevertheless Ducasse took it in 1695 though Admiral Vernon, with a great fleet and army, unsuccessfullybesieged the place in 1741, after having captured Porto Bello. The unsettled Central American coast north from the Isthmus was nominally a part of the vice-royalty, but had been completely neglected by the Bogotá authorities, and in 1698 a colony of twelve thousand Scotchmen, with authority from Parliament and backed by a vast popular subscription, landed on the north shore of the Isthmus. They purposed the establishment of a general emporium for all nations on the spot which the great financier, William Paterson, who originated the scheme, regarded as "the key of the commerce of the world." There was to be free-trade; the Indians were to be protected; religious liberty was to be established; and the Spanish monopoly of South and Central America destroyed. The far-sighted Paterson hoped to found a colonial empire and to enrich his own country by the resulting trade. But the enterprise was wrecked by the fatal climate and the supineness of the British Government. Provisions fell short, and within a year the survivors re-embarked in a miserable plight. Two small supplementary expeditions arrived in 1699 to find assembled a Spanish fleet and army against which no serious resistance could be made. After a little half-hearted fighting the Scotchmen capitulated and the colony was definitely abandoned. The Bogotá government continued to neglect that coast. It was placed under the jurisdiction of the captain-general of Cuba, and the claim that Colombia set up after she became an independent nation has never held good against the Central American republics.