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 the sea-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.
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 of mining 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 with them. 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 the clergy, 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.
