Communication between one province and another, even between one town or village and another, was difficult or impracticable. Every traveller was more or less exposed to be robbed or to be killed by the independent Indians; but these enemies, formerly fierce and implacable, yielded by degrees to the efforts of the missionaries, and to the acts of good-will on the part of the strangers, which replaced the barbarities of a more savage age. Notwithstanding the bounties of nature in this region, many of its provinces drew their subsistence from Europe or from North America. The cost of transport from place to place forbade the culture of grain in the interior beyond the amount requisite for each individual locality.
1774.
The town of Santa Fè de Bogotá is situated at the foot of a height at the entrance to a vast plain. In 1774 it possessed three thousand two hundred and fifty families, or about sixteen thousand inhabitants. It was the residence of an Archbishop, holding a jurisdiction of immense extent, and who, as Metropolitan, was inspector of the dioceses of Quito, Panamá, Caracas, Santa Marta, and Carthagena. It was by way of the last-named place, although it was distant three hundred miles, and by the river Magdalena, that Santa Fè de Bogotá communicated with Europe; whilst the same route led to Quito.
The province of Quito was likewise of immense extent, but was for the most part covered with forests, or composed of marshes or deserts, inhabited here and there by wandering savages. Spaniards can only be properly said to have occupied and governed a valley of some eighty leagues in length and fifteen in breadth, formed by two branches of the Cordilleras.
Quito is one of the most lovely regions which the world possesses. Being in the centre of the Torrid Zone, it enjoys a perpetual spring. Nature has here gathered together all the influences which can modify the heat of the tropics, the neighbouring mountains being covered in their vast extent by snow; whilst constant breezes refresh the plains throughout the year. But, as might be expected, so elevated a region, and one having an atmosphere so charged with electricity, is often the scene of the most violent tropical thunder-storms, the terrors of which are not unfrequently added to by earthquakes. The excessive humidity at one time is often fatal to the cultivation of grain; whilst, on the other hand, contrasting seasons of heat produce dangerous maladies. Nevertheless, on the whole, the climate is a very healthy one. The air is perfectly pure, and is free from the presence of the disagreeable insects so prevalent in other parts of the continent.
The humidity of the atmosphere, and the action of the sun, succeeding each other in constant alternation, and being always sufficient for the development of plants, an almost perpetual succession of vegetation ensues; for no sooner is one plant gone than another begins to arise in its place. The trees are covered perpetually with green leaves, and adorned with sweet-smelling flowers, or laden with tropical fruits in every stage of development. This province was said to be the most populous in America. It possessed a number of towns with populations varying from ten to thirty thousand. The people of Quito had, fortunately for themselves, escaped the lot of labouring in the mines; since those which this district possessed were too poor to pay the expenses of working them. They must have been poor indeed, since the Spaniards consented to relinquish a mode of acquiring riches which cost them nothing but the blood of their slaves. Freed from this source of labour, the inhabitants of Quito were more usefully employed in manufactures, the produce of which was exchanged for wine and oil, and other commodities which were foreign to this elevated region. Notwithstanding, however, its natural advantages, Quito, in the latter part of last century, had sunk into an extreme degree of poverty.
This province possessed, in quinine, one production which has been ever since its discovery of the highest value to the human race, and which formed, in the colonial period, the sole article of export. The only precious portion of the quinquina tree is its bark, which requires no other preparation for its use than being dried. At one time the quinquina was supposed to be peculiar to the territory of Loxa, the finest quality being produced on the mountain of Caganuma. Later researches, however, prove that the same tree exists at Riobamba, at Cuenca, and at Bogotá. Europe is indebted for the introduction of this most precious article to the Jesuits, who made its invaluable qualities known at Rome in the year 1639. In the following year its use was established in Spain by Juan de Vega, physician to the Vice-Queen of Peru, its price being a hundred crowns a pound. The price which the invaluable article commanded and deserved, led, as a matter of course, to adulteration; and even the distant inhabitants of Loxa, being unable to supply the demand for genuine quinquina, filled up the void by a mixture of the bark of other trees. This proceeding, however, rebounded on themselves, since it deprived their special product of its unique reputation; whilst, at the same time, it led to a more diligent search for the same plant elsewhere. The natives of the region which furnished quinquina were in the habit of using a simple infusion of the bark in cases of fever, before they were taught by M. Joseph de Jussieu to produce the extract.
1728.
1731.