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 Bogota 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 and jurisdiction 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 Bogota 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 Bogota

into presidencies, whose governors would be responsible directly to

Madrid and have greater authority over subordinate officials.

CHAPTER II

COLONIAL TIMES

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 Bogota-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 Bogota 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 along the

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 Bogota 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

Bogota.

[Illustration: THE NATURAL BRIDGE AT GUARANDA.]

The disorders near Bogota 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 Bogota 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 Bogota 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 Bogota 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. Bogota 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.

[Illustration: 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 Bogota 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 Bogota, 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 Bogota

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, Cumana, Margarita Island, and

Guiana from Bogota 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.

[Illustration: 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,

unsuccessfully besieged 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 Bogota 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 Bogota 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.

CHAPTER III

THE WAR AGAINST SPAIN

The stirring events of the year 1808 in Spain and the disorganisation of

the monarchy produced great excitement in the New Granadan cities. When

the news of the establishment of a junta at Quito came in September of

the following year, Amar, the Bogota viceroy, summoned an assembly of

the authorities and leading citizens for consultation. The Creoles

favoured an independent junta, but the prestige of the Spaniards and

Amar's popularity prevailed, and it was resolved to recognise the home

revolutionary government, and to send an expedition to crush the Quito

junta. Meanwhile the Ecuador patriots had despatched troops to Pasto,

but the sturdy conservative mountaineers resented the invasion and

repulsed the Quitenos. Thenceforth to the end of the war Pasto remained

a loyalist stronghold. Though Quito soon laid down its arms under

promise of amnesty, the re-established Spanish government massacred the

insurgent leaders, and reports of these cruelties threw the Creoles of

the cities into effervescence, though the Indian and negro population

of the rural districts remained indifferent. On May 22, 1810, the

citizens of Cartagena demanded and obtained an independent revolutionary

junta; shortly after an insurrection broke out among the llaneros on the

Orinoco plains north-east of Bogota; on the 4th of July Pamplona

followed Cartagena's example and set up its own junta; and a little

later Socorro did likewise. By this time things were ripe in Bogota for

an anti-Spanish revolution. Ambitious Creoles intrigued among the

people; the natural feeling of jealousy and hatred between Spaniards and

Americans became inflamed; a contemptuous remark about Creoles made by a

Spaniard in the streets was the signal for the gathering of a great mob

which rushed tumultuously to the public square and howled for an open

cabildo and the immediate appointment of a junta. With six thousand

armed men in front of his palace the viceroy had no choice. The junta

was named and a circular sent to the other cities inviting them to name

deputies for a congress to arrange a federal union. But local

jealousies, hardly held in check by the rigid colonial system, now

flamed forth; the people instinctively grouped along geographical lines;

and divergencies of opinion and ambition among leaders increased the

confusion. Cartagena and other provinces declined to send delegates to

Bogota, preferring to act independently until the re-establishment of

regular government in Spain.

When the congress met it represented only a part of the territory, and

but a small percentage of the population. Narino and other popular young

leaders in Bogota intrigued for a centralised system in which Bogota

was to be master province. An insurrection against the junta installed

him as dictator, and congress fled from the capital. The royalists had

made no effort to oppose the revolution in the centres of population,

contenting themselves with sending expeditions from Quito to occupy

Pasto and Popayan, with keeping possession of the Isthmus, and

establishing themselves on the lower Magdalena. Cartagena was thereby

isolated from the rest of the revolted provinces, and Bogota cut off

from communication with the sea. In March, 1811, the patriots marched up

the Cauca from Cali and defeated the Spaniards in Popayan. Quito rose in

rebellion a second time, and the Ecuadoreans advanced north into Pasto,

only to be beaten once more by the loyalist peasantry. The Granadans,

who invaded by way of Popayan, met with no better success, and their

forces under the command of a North American adventurer, Macaulay, were

annihilated. The re-establishment of the royal authority at Quito

followed, and Bogota again lay open to attack from the south.

While the royalist reaction was thus closing in around the revolution in

central New Granada, the mass of the people cooled, the patriot leaders

fought among themselves, and the interior was a prey to anarchy.

Dictator Narino had broken completely with the ambulatory congress, and

was sending his troops into the adjacent provinces. Congress protested

and a civil war broke out in central Granada. Narino was defeated in an

attack on Socorro, but the federalists were in their turn repulsed when

they lay siege to the capital, and Bogota declared itself an independent

state. In the midst of these disorders, the alarming news was received

that General Samano, advancing from Quito and Pasto, at the head of two

thousand well-equipped men, had retaken Popayan, and was already

menacing Antioquia and the lower Cauca. In the face of this common

danger Narino and congress came to terms. The latter advanced to meet

Samano and badly defeated him at the battle of Calivio, January 15,

1814. The re-occupation of Popayan was the only result of this victory.

Pasto remained faithfully loyalist--a Vendee into which many republican

armies were destined to dash in vain. The Spaniards brought up

reinforcements, and when Narino again advanced his army was overwhelmed

and himself captured. However, the loyalists were not able to equip an

army large enough to justify undertaking the conquest of central

Granada, so the jarring factions and provinces were left alone for the

present to waste their energies in internecine conflicts.

[Illustration: ROPE BRIDGE OVER THE MAGDALENA RIVER.]

Cartagena had all the while remained independent, and in 1813 Bolivar,

flying from his native Venezuela after the suppression of its first

insurrection, took service with the Granadan city. With a handful of

militia he drove the Spaniards from the lower Magdalena, and retook the

important city of Ocana near the Venezuelan border. His unexpected

success created such enthusiasm that the Cartagena dictator gave him a

small body of regulars, and with them the daring Venezuelan began that

marvellous campaign which for the second time expelled the Spaniards

from Venezuela. His triumph was shortlived, and by September, 1814, his

forces had been dispersed by the loyalist llaneros and he was back in

New Granada. He now offered his services to the federated provinces, and

in spite of his recent defeats, the prestige of the 1813 campaign

secured him the command of the army which was about to march on Bogota

to force that recalcitrant province into the union. At the head of

eighteen hundred men Bolivar prosecuted the campaign with all his usual

activity. The outlying towns of the province surrendered at his

approach, and the capital itself, which had been denuded of troops by

Narino for his ill-fated expedition against Pasto, and which in fact

was tired of the dictatorship, could not make much resistance. The seat

of the federal government was transferred to Bogota, and the victorious

general, though a Venezuelan, became captain-general of its forces, and

to his title of "Liberator" was added that of "Illustrious Pacificator."

If the adhesion of Cartagena could be secured, the union of New Granada

would be well-nigh complete; so with two thousand men he proceeded to

the lower Magdalena and established his headquarters just above the

delta and within striking distance of the sea-port. However, his

intrigues with its government led to nothing. Cartagena refused to

co-operate with the confederation on any terms, and finally Bolivar made

a foolish attempt to besiege the strongest fortress in America without

artillery. He soon came to his senses, raised the siege, gave up his

command of the Granadan army, and withdrew to Jamaica to wait a new

opportunity to make war on Spaniards.

The revolutionary cause was in a bad way. The loyalists of Venezuela,

Ecuador, and southern New Granada had put down the insurgents in their

own provinces. Bogota was only held back by the military pressure of a

few resolute republicans from declaring for the king, and the other

provinces were disgusted with civil disorder and wavered in their

allegiance. However, they were destined not to be given the opportunity

to return peaceably to obedience on reasonable terms. Wellington's

peninsular campaigns and Napoleon's fall changed the face of affairs in

Spain. Ferdinand once more on the throne of his fathers, and absolute

government re-established, all thought of compromising with the

American rebels on the basis of autonomy or representation in the Cortes

was abandoned. In April, 1815, Marshal Morillo, Spain's ablest general,

arrived on the Venezuelan coast with more than ten thousand veteran

regulars. Having reinforced himself among the Venezuelan loyalists, and

leaving a large garrison of Spaniards in Venezuela, he proceeded to

Cartagena at the head of over eight thousand troops. The defenders

numbered less than four thousand, but behind the strongest

fortifications in America they prepared to make a desperate resistance.

So formidable were the walls that Morillo did not try to take the place

by assault. His main body landed at Santa Marta and crossed the

Magdalena to blockade the city from the rear, while his fleet cut off

communication by sea. The besiegers suffered terribly in the

pestilential swamps, but the defenders were reduced to the most horrible

extremities during four months and a half. The provisions ran out;

fevers decimated the people; the starving garrison ate rats and hides,

sentinels fell dead at their posts; the commander drove out of the city

two thousand old men, women, and children, and of this procession of

spectres only a few reached the Spanish lines. Finally, the surviving

soldiers escaped by boats in the midst of a storm which dispersed the

Spanish squadron, and Morillo entered a deserted city where the very air

was poisoned by the rotting bodies of famished people. It is calculated

that six thousand persons died of hunger and disease. The Spaniards

hunted down and shot the revolutionary leaders; the absolute powers of

the governor were revived; and even the inquisition re-established.

While Cartagena was being besieged, a Spanish army advanced along the

Venezuelan Andes to the Granadan border and climbed to the Pamplona

plateau. There they defeated the local patriots, and the latter fled

from the province after killing all the Spanish non-combatants on whom

they could lay hands. Desperately alarmed, the congress at Bogota made

Camilo Torres dictator, and he resolutely advanced with twenty-five

hundred recruits against Pamplona. The Spanish general retreated to

Ocana, with the patriots following, but receiving reinforcements, turned

upon Torres, and on the 22nd of February, 1816, utterly defeated him.

The revolution lay helpless at Morillo's feet. The royalist forces

promptly occupied the great plateau provinces of Pamplona and Socorro,

as well as Antioquia. Bogota had in fact long been disaffected to the

insurgent cause and now became openly royalist. Torres resigned, and

when Madrid, whom the revolutionary chiefs appointed in his place,

called for volunteers only six men presented themselves. Congress

dissolved, and the dictator and a few determined leaders, with a remnant

of the army, fled north to Popayan. There they joined a band of local

patriots under Mejia, and gave unsuccessful battle to General Samano,

who had advanced from Quito. This fight of Tambo seemed the revolution's

_coup de grace_ in New Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Only on the

plains of eastern Venezuela, and in the llanos on the Apure and Casanare

headwaters, did a few guerrilla bands maintain themselves. In far away

Argentina, the town of Buenos Aires and the gauchos were still defiant,

but elsewhere in all Spanish South America resistance to the King's

generals had ceased.

Marshal Morillo fully appreciated how dangerous to Spanish domination in

New Granada and Venezuela were the fierce, hard-riding, llaneros,

uncatchable and unconquerable in the vast Orinoco plains. Fighting on

the royal side under guerrilla chiefs they had beaten the republicans

and Bolivar, but they turned insurrectionist the moment Spanish regular

officers assumed command. Morillo resolved to crush the towns

completely, and hoped gradually to wear out or exterminate the llaneros.

In pursuance of this policy all officers above the rank of captain were

denied amnesty, and shot wherever found. The same fate was reserved for

those who had held high civil office during the insurrection. The

Marshal came to Bogota in person to see that his bloody orders were

carried out. The city's prisons were filled with unfortunates whose

wives and daughters pleaded in vain for mercy. The most prominent

patriots were shot in the back as traitors and their bodies hung on

gibbets. The great scholar, Caldas, the pride of Bogota for his

world-wide reputation as a scientist, suffered a not much better fate.

In the capital alone one hundred and twenty-five of New Granada's

brightest and best perished on the scaffold, their property was

confiscated, and their families reduced to abject poverty. Because they

had not actively resisted the rebellion, the entire male population were

adjudged to have forfeited all civil rights, and gangs of Granadan

youth were impressed into the army, or, worse still, forced to work on

the public roads. Even the ladies of Bogota were sent to country towns

to remain under police surveillance with women of doubtful character.

While thus engaged in stamping out the revolutionary embers in New

Granada word came to Morillo that the Venezuelan llaneros had risen

against his lieutenants, and that Bolivar had landed near Valencia.

Leaving a garrison of Venezuelan and Pasto royalists at Bogota under the

command of Samano, the Marshal, with four thousand Spanish troops, took

the plateau road to the frontier, carrying with him some prisoners to

shoot on the line. Samano's first act on assuming the government of

Bogota was to erect a gallows in the great square facing the windows of

his palace, and to set up four execution benches on the public

promenade. Of the victims who sat thereon with their backs to the firing

squad, one of the first was the beautiful Policarpa Salabarrieta, with

seven men also implicated in sending information to the llanero

insurgents. She died exhorting her companions to meet their fate like

men, and under the name of La Pola her memory is preserved in the songs

of the Colombian people. Sixty years after her death the Colombian

congress voted a pension to her surviving relatives.

[Illustration: THE HOME OF BOLIVAR.]

Morillo never returned to New Granada. Before he arrived in Venezuela,

Bolivar had temporarily retired, and the llaneros retreated to the vast

solitudes in which they were unconquerable. Though the Spanish regulars

won battle after battle their victories were fruitless, and Bolivar

soon returned to Venezuela to be again placed at the head of the

patriots and to wage unremitting warfare with cavalry from a secure base

in the llanos, while he imported British mercenary infantry capable of

making headway against the Spanish regulars. From 1816 to 1819 New

Granada suffered hopelessly and silently the bloody despotism of the

Spanish generals, while the tide of war rolled to and fro in Venezuela.

In the early part of the latter year Samano sent a small expedition down

the steep Cordillera slope against the guerrillas in the Casanare plains

north-east of Bogota. This gave Bolivar a great strategical idea. He

knew that the tableland of New Granada had been denuded of troops; but

it was useless to try an attack from the direction of the provinces

south of Maracaibo Bay because this well-travelled route and its

populous towns were in secure possession of the enemy. Where Spaniards

could go he could follow--so he reasoned--and determined to assault

Bogota directly from the Orinoco plains, thus striking the centre of the

Spanish line.

With a mixed army of British mercenaries and hardy Venezuelans the

Liberator mounted the difficult pass which leads from Casanare up to

Tunja. Samano had only three thousand troops and these he sent under the

command of General Barreiro to meet Bolivar. Though the patriots were

somewhat inferior in numbers and arrived on the plateau fatigued,

starving, and without horses, Barreiro, not knowing their real numbers,

hesitated about attacking. Bolivar was given time to rest and remount

his men, and then took a vigorous offensive. His rapid movements

confused the Spanish commander, and the latter allowed the patriot army

to get between him and Bogota. Thus cut off from his base, Barreiro made

a desperate dash to reach the capital, but ran against the patriots

posted directly across his path at Boyaca, on the 7th of August, 1819.

The loyalists attacked at a disadvantage and without hope. After losing

a hundred men they fled in disorder and the whole army dispersed or was

captured. The way to Bogota lay open, and Samano had no forces to defend

the city. Within three days Bolivar had traversed the hundred miles from

the battlefield, and Samano fled in such precipitous haste that he left

behind the government archives and even the money in the treasury. A

month later the whole of New Granada, except the stubbornly loyalist

Pasto and the fortress of Cartagena, was free. Bolivar had himself made

president and military dictator, naming Santander vice-president, and

giving each province two governors, one military and the other civil,

responsible directly to Bogota. The municipal governments were

preserved, and the Spanish system of taxation continued, but patriot

republicans displaced loyalists in all the offices.

Bolivar soon returned to his Venezuelan headquarters on the Orinoco to

fight Morillo and organise the grand republic he had dreamed of so many

years. Though all of Venezuela except the Orinoco valley, all of

Ecuador, and the sea-ports and southern provinces of New Granada still

remained in the hands of superior Spanish armies, and although the

Creole ruling class had already proved strongly prejudiced in favour of

local autonomy and the tearing down of aristocratic forms, his

imagination vaulted all obstacles and he planned the new state down to

its minutest details. His idea was a centralised system with himself at

its head as life president, backed by a hereditary senate, and ruling

the three grand divisions of his empire through docile vice-presidents.

But his military power and prestige were insufficient to overcome the

opposition of jealous generals and ambitious lawyers. He spent the year

of 1820 in futile intrigues among the politicians, and in unsuccessful

campaigns against the Spaniards in Venezuela, while the patriots

trembled at the news that a great army was assembling at Cadiz which

would surely sweep them out of existence. A liberal revolution in Spain

came opportunely to interrupt military operations.

Bolivar was obliged to compromise with the advocates of federalism and

democracy. A congress representing the Granadan and Venezuelan provinces

then in the hands of the patriots assembled at Cucuta early in 1821.

Composed of ambitious civilians it was opposed to centralisation or

military rule, and in spite of the Liberator's protests adopted a

compromise Constitution. Though Bolivar was conceded the title of

president, he was required to give up his civil authority whenever he

took command of the army, and this meant an abolishment of the

dictatorship. The idea of a life presidency or a hereditary senate was

abandoned, and the only part of his system which Bolivar managed to

retain was the subordination of the provinces to the central government.

The Liberator now devoted himself to the direction of the war, leaving

that long-headed schemer, Santander, in power at Bogota as

vice-president. The winning of the battle of Carabobo in Venezuela in

June, 1821, and the surrender of Cartagena in September, made necessary

the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the Isthmus. Panama

immediately declared itself independent, in November, 1821, and

announced its intention of joining the great confederation of Colombia,

then composed of the provinces of Venezuela, and New Granada, and later

of those of Ecuador.

Pasto alone remained in the hands of the Spaniards. Bolivar determined

to expel them from this province, and also from Quito and Guayaquil,

while visions of conquests in Peru and Bolivia, and of returning to his

dazzled countrymen in Colombia crowned with laurels gathered on southern

battle-fields, floated through his mind. Congress gladly gave him leave

of absence and Santander promised supplies of money and soldiers. In

1822 he advanced against Pasto, sending his able lieutenant, Sucre,

around by sea to Guayaquil to take Quito from the south. Gathering three

thousand men at Popayan he marched into Pasto and on the 7th of April

came upon the royal army at Bambona. A bloody battle followed and

Bolivar by inciting his men to reckless charges remained master of the

field. However, he lost three times as many men as the royalists; the

latter retired in good order, and the Liberator, after encamping eight

days on the plateau, surrounded by a hostile population, hampered by the

difficulties of the mountain paths, with a strong enemy in front, was

compelled to retreat on Popayan, leaving his sick and wounded. He

remained inactive until the glorious news of Sucre's overwhelming

victory at Pichincha arrived. The loyalists in Pasto were now completely

isolated. The Spanish commander made terms with Bolivar and the

indomitable mountaineers were induced to submit on the promise that they

should be allowed to retain their local laws and customs.

[Illustration: PANAMA FROM THE BAY.]

CHAPTER IV

MODERN COLOMBIA

After Bolivar's departure for Peru, a period of relative quiet ensued.

Nevertheless, ambitious local politicians constantly intrigued against

Santander, who in his turn was suspected of encouraging federalist

agitation in the hope of overthrowing Bolivar. The United States and

England recognised the independence of Colombia shortly after the

expulsion of the Spaniards, but foreign troubles arose when the new

republic faced the question of paying the immense debt contracted by

Bolivar's agents in recruiting and equipping the mercenary troops and

buying ships, artillery, and ammunition. This debt had been enormously

swollen by the dishonesty of some Colombian commissioners and by the

greed of money lenders who insisted on receiving bonds for double the

amount they had really advanced. The temptation to borrow more when it

was refunded was too great to be resisted, and Colombia soon saw herself

burdened with foreign obligations amounting to nearly seven millions

sterling. All the revenues were insufficient to pay interest on this

sum--a truly stupendous one for so poor a country. The payments fell

into arrears, and though the debt has been scaled down repeatedly,

interest has rarely been paid. At the very beginning of her independent

existence Colombia's credit was ruined, and the three countries into

which she was shortly divided have remained burdened to this day with

the debts then contracted, their finances disorganised, their attempted

operations blighted by the reputation of bankruptcy, and their

diplomatic relations hampered by the clamours of bondholders.

Santander's administration was further embarrassed by Bolivar's demands

for money and troops with which to pursue his conquests in Peru and

Bolivia, and still graver difficulties soon arose. Paez, left in command

of the army in Venezuela, became involved in disputes with the

authorities of the Venezuelan cities and with the ministers at Bogota,

all of whom he despised as mere civilians or as foreigners who had no

right to interfere.

Finally, in 1826 the central government formally deprived him of his

position and summoned him to Bogota, but a revolution which promptly

broke out in Caracas made him dictator. The news brought Bolivar back

from Lima, where for two years he had reigned an absolute monarch,

leading the life of a voluptuous eastern prince. For the next four years

the Liberator struggled in vain to repress the rising tide of federalism

and radicalism in Venezuela and New Granada. The republican theorists

could not forget that he had re-established the convents, placed the

schools under priestly control, abrogated government contracts for

personal reasons, introduced aristocratic decorations, and schemed for a

hereditary senate and a life tenure of the executive; nor that his

influence had stopped the Cucuta convention in the path of political

reform, prevented the abolition of slavery and capital punishment, and

retained the connection of Church and State, and the exemption of the

army and clergy from civil jurisdiction. Santander was more liberal and

a better practical politician. He had shown much ability during the

Liberator's absence, and risen to be the head of a considerable party.

Bolivar succeeded in temporarily crushing some of the opposition in

Venezuela and in cajoling Paez, and on his return to Bogota he made a

feint of resigning the presidency. Congress, however, was still under

his spell and re-elected him. He then made an attempt to secure legal

sanction for his system by summoning another constitutent convention.

But news had come of Peru's and Bolivia's defection, and the agitation

of the transcendental liberals, the universal desire for local

self-government, and the ambitions of a hundred intriguers for high

office, proved too much for him. A majority of the convention which met

at Ocana in 1828 were partisans of Santander and opposed Bolivar's

proposals although the Liberator at the head of three thousand soldiers

watched the proceedings. Though he did his best to intimidate the

majority, he shrank from frankly playing the role of a Cromwell, and

contented himself with ordering his supporters to withdraw, leaving the

convention without a quorum. It dissolved and the country trembled on

the verge of disintegration. His friends called an assembly which

obediently proclaimed him dictator. The Liberator accepted, and deprived

Santander of the vice-presidency. The press was muzzled, protesters

banished, and military rule established. Some fiery young republicans,

determined to emulate the example of Brutus, struck down the palace

guards at midnight and rushed into the house to kill the dictator. But

his mistress, Manoela Saenz, awakened by the noise, directed him to a

window. He dropped a few feet to the pavement and ran and hid himself

under a bridge, while the woman, in her night clothes, met the assassins

on the stairs and told them they could enter only over her dead body.

They pushed her aside with their bloody hands only to find the quarry

escaped. The next day Bolivar returned to the palace and his spies soon

hunted down the criminals. Santander, suspected of knowledge of the

plot, went into banishment, and for the moment civil war was averted.

[Illustration: SCENE IN THE ANDES, EN ROUTE TO BOGOTA.]

But the incident did not revive Bolivar's waning popularity. News came

in 1829 that Paez had again assumed the dictatorship of Venezuela. This

was fatal to Bolivar's hopes. With New Granada in a ferment behind him

he could not expect to conquer Paez and the formidable llaneros. He made

a half-hearted attempt to raise an army, but recoiled before the

insuperable difficulties. Again he resigned the presidency, protesting

that he was ready to sacrifice all personal ambition to secure the

integrity of the Colombian union and the establishment of a strong and

ordered government. Again he was re-elected, but meanwhile civil war was

raging in Ecuador, where his own troops disavowed his authority.

Rebellion also broke out in Pasto, and Peru intervened in Ecuador and

sent a fleet to capture Guayaquil and an army to invade Cuenca. Bolivar

exhausted his last resources in despatching troops to meet the Peruvian

onslaught, but the principal result of the war was to put General Flores

in a position to make himself independent dictator of Ecuador.

Despairing of longer maintaining himself, but loath to give up his

ever-cherished idea of union, the Liberator entered into negotiations

with European diplomats to appoint a prince of a reigning family as king

of Colombia. But the idea was impracticable. There was no place for a

monarch, either native born or foreign, on the Granadan highlands, and

Venezuela had already virtually separated. Although a rebellion in

Antioquia headed by his old companion in arms, General Cordoba, failed

in the fall of 1829, at the end of the year word came that Venezuela had

formally declared her independence and had pronounced a sentence of

perpetual banishment against the Liberator. This was the last straw, and

Bolivar made no further resistance to his fate, but summoned a congress

and retired to his country house penniless, sick, and heartbroken. All

his vast estates had been sacrificed to the cause of independence; the

hardships of his innumerable marches over the cold mountain roads had

broken his health; and his mode of life during the intervals of peace

had not tended to restore it. Although only forty-seven he was a dying

man. Still he clung to his hopes of vindication and re-election, but

seeing that even the bulk of his own friends opposed, he at last sent in

a formal resignation. He lived only a few months after congress had

elected Mosquera president.

Though Bolivar's overthrow was a triumph for the federalists and red

republicans, congress shrank from going too far and installed a wealthy

aristocrat as president. However, his feeble administration was soon

driven from power by the revolt of General Urdaneta, who made use of

Bolivar's name as a rallying cry, but who in fact was actuated alone by

personal ambition. The federalists and anti-Bolivarists did not leave

him long in possession, and in May, 1831, he was expelled in his turn.

Obando and Lopez, both bitter enemies of the Liberator during his

lifetime, and the latter suspected of complicity in the cowardly murder

of the great Marshal Sucre, came to the head of affairs. New Granada's

intestine troubles made her too weak to attempt the coercion of

Venezuela and Ecuador, so their independence was recognised and the

Colombian republic ceased to exist.

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL--PANAMA.]

A federalist Constitution for New Granada was framed in 1832, and

shortly afterwards Santander became the first legal president.

Unquestionably the strongest man in the nation, a good administrator and

a shrewd politician, he was helpless to check the tendency toward

disintegration, though he reduced Bolivar's army of twenty thousand to

less than one half, and did much to establish civil administration.

His energy in enforcing order earned him the title of the "Man of Laws,"

and many Granadans regard him as the real founder of their nationality.

Marquez, who succeeded to the presidency in 1837, was not radical enough

to suit the advanced federalists and republicans, although the first

serious rebellion which broke out against him was caused by his

suppression of convents in reactionary and Catholic Pasto. At the same

time Obando was intriguing against the government, and many of the

provincial governors aided the plots. When summoned to trial, Obando

fled to the wilds of Popayan and Pasto, and civil war raged through 1839

and 1840. In this latter year Panama successfully revolted, maintaining

its independence until 1842. Tomas Mosquera, the minister of war, with

the help of his son-in-law, General Herran, eventually triumphed over

the rebels. In 1841 the latter became president, and set vigorously to

work to strengthen the power of the central government.

By this time, all the people who took any interest in politics had

divided into two parties. The liberals insisted on universal suffrage,

the separation of Church and State, the granting the provinces the

fullest autonomy, the division of the greater portion of the national

revenue among the provincial governments, and even opposed the

theoretical right of any government to impose its will on the individual

citizen. The conservatives believed in respecting the clergy, in

continuing the old system of education under priestly control, and

resisted any further emasculation of the national government. Herran

recalled the Jesuits, and under his direction a conservative convention

framed a more centralising Constitution than that of 1832. Bolivar's

ashes were delivered to the Venezuelan government with impressive

solemnities, and his memory apotheosised as the father of the nation and

the apostle of centralisation. Herran was succeeded by his

father-in-law, Tomas Mosquera. During his administration, which lasted

until 1849, steam navigation was introduced on the Magdalena, the Panama

railway was begun, the finances were brought into some sort of order,

the army was further reduced, and the post-office system was improved.

[Illustration: CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN 1850.]

The liberals and federalists were constantly becoming more powerful and

more discontented. Disturbances broke out from time to time and when

Mosquera's term expired, the attempt to elect a successor in an orderly

and constitutional manner utterly failed. Riots and bloodshed followed,

and it was officially announced that no candidate had received a

majority of the popular vote. The duty of making a choice fell upon

congress, and Lopez, a general of the war of independence who had taken

part in the overthrow of Bolivar, was installed. This meant a resumption

of the march toward complete decentralisation, temporarily checked

during Herran's and Mosquera's administrations. The Constitution was

reformed so as to reduce the power of the national executive and

guarantee greater privileges to the provinces. The latter were divided

and subdivided to suit the exigencies of local politicians until their

number reached thirty-five. Lopez had been a revolutionist himself and

did not know when he might be one again, and his abolishment of the

death penalty for political crimes met with the hearty approval of the

large number of Granadan politicians who were in the same case. The

central government transferred a large part of its revenues to the

provinces, and gave up to them the control of judicial administration,

of education, and of transportation. The tide of liberal legislation

also swept over the privileges of the clergy. Laws were voted

suppressing of tithes, giving the nomination of parish priests to the

civil authorities, taking control of education out of their hands,

separating Church and State, and establishing civil marriage. But it was

easier to pass such laws than to enforce their observance by the

Granadans. The clergy were enormously powerful among the common people

and the conservative aristocrats. The banishment of the archbishop and

several suffragans roused the conservatives. Politics became the

principal preoccupation of the educated classes. Hardly a village in the

country but had its political club, and more than a hundred party

newspapers, besides innumerable pamphlets, thundered against their

opponents. The conservative revolution broke out in 1851, beginning in

Pasto and immediately spreading over the whole western half of the

republic and even to the eastern plateau. Antioquia was the stronghold

of the clericals, and there they gathered a force of a thousand men

which was beaten at Rio Negro on the 10th of September, 1851, while the

insurgent bands in a dozen other provinces were reduced in detail.

Although the liberal government was thus triumphant in the field, the

danger had been too great and was still too menacing to make it safe to

maintain an uncompromising attitude on the religious question.

Lopez procured the election of Obando, another political general of the

same type and opinions as himself, as his successor in the presidency.

The new president's first act was to summon a convention which abolished

the last traces of Herran's moderately centralising Constitution, and

depriving the executive of the power of naming provincial governors.

Obando gave satisfaction to no one, and in 1854 General Melo, commander

of the cavalry in Bogota, incited the garrison and workingmen of that

city to join him in an insurrection. However, the chiefs of the

conservative party would have none of him; the recent concessions to the

clergy had removed the strongest motives for rousing fanaticism to arms;

and the clericals declared in his favour in only a few provinces. The

property-holding and educated classes were practically unanimous against

him. Mosquera and Herran, the most powerful men in New Granada and the

historical chiefs of the moderate conservatives, had modified their

views to suit the exigencies of the situation and become in effect

moderate liberals. It was Mosquera himself who led the provincial

militia against Bogota and overcome the dictator after much bloody

street fighting.

[Illustration: TYPES OF COLOMBIAN NATIVES.]

The unhappy country, tired of continual internecine disorder and

exhausted by the harrying civil wars, rested willingly for two years

under the compromise administration of Mallarino in which

representatives of both parties and most of the principal factions had a

voice. As a matter of fact the federal government had almost ceased to

exercise the greatly reduced functions which nominally remained to it.

The executive had only the shadow of a control over the provinces, its

revenues sank to well-nigh nothing, its army was reduced to eight

hundred men. The very name of the country was changed from the "Republic

of New Granada" to the "Granadine Confederation," and the organisation

of powerful and independent federal departments was begun, foreshadowing

the abolition of the old provincial system. In 1857 three candidates had

presented themselves--Ospina, representing the clerical conservatives;

Murillo, the advanced liberals; and Mosquera, the moderates. Suffrage

had been made universal, and under the conditions necessarily

prevailing among a population almost entirely illiterate and used for

centuries to monarchical and military government, a satisfactory

election was impossible. On the face of the returns Ospina received a

plurality, but the radicals were able to force the adoption of a new

federal Constitution in 1859 which abolished the old provinces. However,

the new system had not the sympathy of the conservative and clerical

president. He tried to usurp control of the elections, the liberals

accused him of acting unconstitutionally, insurrections broke out in

various parts of the country, and the confusion became worse confounded.

In the state of Bolivar, the liberal insurrectionists triumphed, while

in Santander the conservatives themselves started a revolution which

Ospina only succeeded in suppressing by the bloody battle of Oratorio.

Meanwhile Mosquera had become governor of Cauca, and when the

conservatives of that state tried to expel him, he beat them and took

advantage of his victory to declare himself independent of Ospina. The

latter advanced, but Mosquera defeated him, and invaded the upper

Magdalena, gaining the battle of Segovia. In every state there was an

insurrection against Ospina, and three ex-presidents accompanied the

insurgent armies. On the surface the civil war appeared to be a mere

contest for personal power between Mosquera and Ospina, but the former

had ensured a large support by raising the banner of federalism, and the

latter's triumph would probably have meant a strengthening of the

national government and certainly a reaction from the radicalism which

had gained ground year by year since the fall of Bolivar. Supported by

the clericals, conservatives, and reactionists, Ospina fought

tenaciously and with a fair prospect of success. But the federalist

armies advanced relentlessly from both north and south, and one after

another the provinces of the eastern plateaux were wrested from him by

bloody and well-contested battles. Bogota was finally taken and the

president imprisoned, but Mosquera's opponents kept up the conflict for

some time in the states of Panama, Santander, and Antioquia, and it was

near the end of 1861 before the federalists were everywhere triumphant.

With Mosquera at the head of affairs, under the title of "Supreme

Director," a congress was summoned whose members were called, not

deputies, representatives, or delegates, but "plenipotentiaries" of the

sovereign states. This congress adopted a new constitution, New

Granada's sixth since 1830. The triumphant liberals expelled the

Jesuits, abolished ecclesiastical entails, extinguished the monastic

orders, confiscated Church property, decreed the absolute separation of

Church and State, imprisoned the archbishop, and secularised the

schools. Suffrage was made nominally universal, and the death penalty

abolished. The name of the country was changed to the "United States of

Colombia," and it became little more than a league of nine federal

states for the purpose of defence against foreign attack. The national

government was expressly prohibited from interfering in the affairs of

the states, even for the preservation of order, and a clause of the

Constitution provided that "when one sovereign state of the union shall

be at war with another, or the citizens of any state shall be at war

among themselves, the national government is obligated to preserve the

strictest neutrality." The federal judiciary had no power to decide any

constitutional questions nor could its decisions bind the state

authorities. The national government was deprived of half its revenue

for the benefit of the states, and the receipts of the latter equalled

the federal income. This Constitution remained in force for twenty-two

years, during which civil wars and factional disputes continually racked

Colombia.

[Illustration: POST-OFFICE AT BOGOTA.]

Moreno, the clerical dictator of Ecuador, had aided Ospina during the

civil war, and to punish him Mosquera undertook a campaign which

resulted in a Colombian victory at Cuaspud on the 30th of December,

1863. However, he desisted from his announced intention of deposing

Moreno and installing an anti-clerical government in Ecuador, and

granted peace without the imposition of any onerous terms. Murillo was

elected president in 1864 for the ensuing two years, to which short

period the term had been reduced. The religious question would not down,

and he found a conservative revolution going on in the state of

Antioquia. It triumphed, and Murillo prudently recognised the successful

insurgents as the legal government. He followed this same policy in

regard to other revolutions in the states of Bolivar, Magdalena, and

Panama, and cautiously refrained from all intervention, even when

conservative insurrections occurred in the neighbourhood of Bogota

itself, or when the clericals of Antioquia invaded Cauca, and defeated

the liberals. One of the last acts of his administration was to impose

on the impoverished federal treasury the settlement of all the forced

loans and confiscations made during the three years of terrible civil

war. Mosquera, who succeeded Murillo in 1866, was not content to remain

a mere figurehead, although it was under his leadership that the federal

system had been definitely established. He bought ships and artillery

without authorisation from congress, and claimed the power of

intervening by force whenever the legal government of a state was unable

to maintain order. This attack on the right of revolution outraged the

radical republicans. According to their theory and practice the federal

government was merely an alliance between the peoples of the states, but

Mosquera's doctrine would tend to make it an alliance between the state

governments, creating a ruling oligarchy whose power might be continued

indefinitely. Denounced as the assassin of Colombian liberty, he broke

off relations with the liberal majority in congress, and in 1867 assumed

dictatorial powers. But the Bogota garrison was suborned by his enemies,

and its revolt was followed by his deposition and the substitution of

Acosta.

The new president renewed Murillo's policy of non-intervention. Colombia

had begun to reap a benefit from the increasing foreign demand for

tropical products. Exports grew in value, and with them, imports and

revenue. But expenditures grew faster; the poorer states demanded and

received subsidies from the federal treasury; public buildings and local

improvements were planned beyond the nation's ability to pay; and a

swarm of employees and pensioners battened on the public revenues. Under

the concession of 1850 the Panama railway had agreed to pay three per

cent. of its net revenue to the government, and the receipts from this

source amounted to fourteen thousand dollars a year. Colombia had

stipulated for the right to purchase the road in 1870 for the

ridiculously low price of five million dollars, but Acosta's

administration had no money to invest and was greedy for ready cash. So

the franchise was extended until 1966 for one million dollars down and

an annual subsidy of a quarter of a million. In 1880, under the pressure

of poverty, the installments until 1908 were alienated.

Under Gutierrez's administration (1868-69), when the governor of

Cundinamarca gathered troops and assumed a dictatorship, the president

deposed him. Even a liberal administration found it impracticable to

carry out the theory of non-intervention. An attempt was now made to

secure the nation's creditors by authorising the hypothecation of

specific revenue--a measure which left the administration insufficient

means to meet ordinary running expenses. Under Salgar (1870-72), the

acknowledged deficits amounted to fifty per cent. of the total revenue.

The increasing revenues had proved a curse instead of a blessing, for

the demands of the states and officials were insatiable, and the sums

spent in subsidies and internal improvements grew beyond all reason.

Meantime the most extreme and unrestrained liberalism dominated the

politics of the country. Congress passed a formal vote of condolence for

the death of Lopez, Paraguay's unspeakable tyrant, who had just

succumbed to Brazil and Argentina, after having devoted to destruction

nine-tenths of his people. All honorary and useless military titles and

employments were abolished, and the law on that subject contains the

following curious provision: "In naming the eight generals spoken of by

the Constitution, from whom must be chosen the commander-in-chief of

the army, all Colombians over twenty-one shall be considered as generals

of the republic."

Murillo was elected for a second term in 1872, and at once devoted

himself, and with considerable success, to the re-organisation and

regulation of the finances. The law of 1868, which had hypothecated the

revenues to meet the charges of the public debt, was repealed and the

foreign bonds were scaled down to less than one-third their face. By

such measures the president succeeded in paying the government employees

and taking care of pressing home necessities, and even showed a nominal

surplus at the end of his term.

During the administration of Santiago Perez (1874-76) the first

mutterings of the terrible storm of civil war soon to burst over the

country were heard. The state of Panama defied his authority and

imprisoned his officers, but he applied conscientiously the

constitutional doctrine of non-intervention, and disavowed a general who

on his own responsibility had deposed the governor. The governor of the

state of Magdalena took possession of the custom houses at the mouth of

the river, and the troops of the state of Bolivar attacked federal

detachments passing along the Magdalena--a river which is inter-state,

and whose navigation was free by the terms of the Constitution. The

popular election of 1875 was so disturbed that congress assumed the

power of selecting a president, and Parra was installed the following

spring. An internecine conflict broke out in Cauca; the president

started to intervene, and the states of Antioquia and Tolima declared

war against him. Although guerilla bands in Cundinamarca, Boyaca, and

Santander menaced the government's rear, twenty-five thousand recruits

were raised and sent against the rebelling states. Antioquia was beaten

at Chancos and Garrapata, and the rebels of central Colombia at La

Donjuana, in battles where the largest numbers of soldiers ever gathered

on Colombian soil were engaged.

[Illustration: RAFAEL NUNEZ, PRESIDENT OF COLOMBIA IN 1879-1883,

1885-1891.]

Peace was followed by a general amnesty, because the victorious

liberals dared not proceed to extremities against their adversaries.

Trujillo was installed as president without opposition, and the harried

country recovered somewhat from the exertions and disasters of the

terrible year of 1876. The finances were, however, in horrible disorder;

expenses amounted to enormous figures; the deficits became greater than

the total revenues; interest on the public debt, which had been

regularly kept up since 1873, was indefinitely suspended. Disturbances

soon began to break out again, and the national guard deposed the

governors of Cauca and Magdalena. The president showed an inclination

toward centralisation; he formed alliances with state governors,

encouraged them to prolong their terms, and systematically fostered

divisions in the liberal party. Trujillo was succeeded by Nunez,

nominally a liberal, but who at heart had also sickened of the

federalistic system and was looking for an opportunity to strengthen

presidential prerogatives. The Constitution stood during his first term

and those of his two successors, but when he was re-elected in 1884 the

policy which he followed soon caused him to be denounced by the liberals

as a traitor to the Constitution.

The failure of a liberal insurrection in 1885 was followed by a complete

unitarian and clerical reaction. In 1886 a new Constitution was adopted

which substituted a consolidated republic for the loose confederation.

The country's name was changed from the "United States of Colombia" to

"Republic of Colombia" in order to express the dominating principle of

the new regime. The sovereignty of the individual states was expressly

denied in the document, and the two most refractory ones--Panama and

Cundinamarca--temporarily reduced to territorial dependencies. The

governors were named from Bogota instead of being elected and the right

of federal intervention re-affirmed. Suffrage was limited by an

educational and property qualification; the clergy were admitted to

participation in politics; the Roman Catholic was declared to be the

national religion, although individual freedom of worship was permitted;

the presidential term was extended to six years; and an attempt was made

to insure judicial independence by a life tenure.

Under this Constitution there was for a long time less disorder. In

Colombia political hatreds are, however, incredibly virulent and

persistent because party differences are fundamental and irreconcilable.

The clericals regard their opponents as pestilent enemies of religion

and order, and the liberals anathematise the ruling party as a

reactionary, corrupt, and benighted oligarchy. The exiled liberals have

made repeated efforts to regain power, and the administrations have not

been able to avoid a constantly mounting national expenditure and the

continuation of deficits and repudiation. In 1899, a formidable

insurrection, aided from Venezuela, broke out, President Sanclemente was

imprisoned, and in 1900 Vice-President Marroquin assumed the executive

functions. This terrible civil war ended only in November, 1902, when

the insurgents surrendered their fleet and stores. President Marroquin

and the conservative government seem now firmly established, backed as

they are by the tremendous influence of the Church among the masses. The

people are returning to their usual avocations, though business has been

demoralised by the stupendous depreciation of the paper currency.

The vast expenditures of the French canal company boomed Panama, but the

resulting prosperity was confined to the Isthmus. The Bogota government

hoped for a great increase of income when the canal should be completed,

and the abandonment of the enterprise was a disappointment. The

principal subject of public preoccupation during 1903 was the

negotiation with the United States concerning the permission desired by

the latter to continue the work. Colombia proper has its outlet down the

Magdalena to the Caribbean, and therefore has no greater special

commercial interest in the building of a canal than Venezuela, Guiana,

or Cuba, but the Colombians of the continent regarded the possession of

the isolated Isthmian region as their most valuable national birthright,

and believed that this invaluable strategic position should be used so

as to obtain the utmost possible advantages for the Bogota government as

well as for the people of Panama. The revenue from the Panama railway

had been one of the important sources of government income and the

ruling political classes considered that they were entitled to have this

income largely increased if a canal was built.

The special congress summoned to consider the treaty already signed by

the executive failed to ratify the agreement and adjourned, after

empowering the president to try and negotiate a new one which would give

Colombia a larger bonus and revenue. But the rejection of the treaty was

followed by a declaration of independence on the part of the people of

Panama, who believed that the United States would pay no larger sum than

that already agreed upon and who saw their own interests being

sacrificed for the sake of a far-distant interior region with which they

had few commercial ties and whence invasion and coercion need not be

feared because of the lack of practicable routes of communication. The

United States and other powers promptly recognised the new nation, which

at once made a canal treaty similar to that rejected by the Bogota

congress.

At Bogota the first impression was one of profound dismay. The executive

offered to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and ratify the

rejected treaty in spite of the Senate. General Reyes, the foremost

living Colombian, immediately departed for Panama as a special envoy to

endeavour to persuade the people there to return to their allegiance,

but his overtures were rejected, and he went to Washington on the

hopeless errand of inducing the United States Government temporarily to

abandon its policy of forbidding fighting on the Isthmus, so that

Colombia might reduce the people of Panama to obedience. Meanwhile many

Colombians blamed the Marroquin administration for the irreparable loss

of Panama and ten million badly needed dollars. Some popular

demonstrations occurred, and the hot-headed demanded that war be

declared against the United States and an army marched across the Atrato

swamps to attack Panama from the land. But the financial and

topographical difficulties were so evidently insurmountable that the war

talk soon died down, the demonstrations against the Government ceased,

and most elements seem to have acquiesced in the election of General

Reyes to the presidential term which begins in 1904. It will be under

his able guidance that Colombia will start on the tedious road leading

to internal peace and regeneration, to financial rehabilitation, and to

the reconcilement of those fierce factions whose wars have drenched

their country's soil with blood for so many decades.

PANAMA

PANAMA

THE EVENTS LEADING TO INDEPENDENCE

The history of Panama is for the most part identified with that of

Colombia, which is narrated elsewhere in the present volume. It will,

however, be convenient to review certain movements and tendencies of the

last half-century in order to obtain a just understanding of the

position and prospects of the new republic.

All the principles of advanced democratic government were included in

the programme of the party which ruled Columbia from 1863 to 1883, and

the statute books of the time afford ample proof that the leaders

earnestly tried to put those principles into practical effect. They

dreamed a Utopia, but practically their efforts only aggravated the

anarchical tendencies bequeathed by the Spaniards and Bolivar. Colombian

liberals still insist that a persistent enforcement of the Constitution

and principles of 1863 would ultimately transform the character of the

people--that religious bigotry and priestly influence would gradually

disappear; that the progressive enlightenment of the masses would make

military despotism and revolutions impossible; and that in process of

time the relations of the states to the federal government would reach a

satisfactory and workable basis. But so far as the experiment went no

progress was made toward unifying the nation and pacifying the adverse

elements. Discontent, disorders, civil wars increased in violence as the

years went by. Though one-fifth of the federal revenues were spent on

the public school system, and one-tenth of the children were nominal

attendants, the clergy were permitted to have no share in their control,

and retaliated by excommunicating the parents. The devotedly pious

Creole mothers and wives, threatened with the closing of the

confessionals and the denial of absolution, threw their incalculable

influence against the atheistic government. The destruction of the

convents and the confiscation of the vast ecclesiastical estates

violently changed the ownership of two-thirds of the land in the

confederation, but this imposition of new landlords on the industrious,

oppressed, half-enslaved tenantry did not much modify real agricultural

conditions. No extensive subdivision of estates resulted, and the Creole

aristocracy continued to pay more attention to political intrigue than

to improving their property.

[Illustration: VIEW OF PANAMA.]

Not less disappointing in its practical working was the independence of

the states. Not only did the local bosses constantly abuse autonomy for

their own selfish purposes, but the presidents at Bogota often ignored

the constitutional rights of the states, and selected for coercion

precisely those states which were farthest from the capital and most

needed wide autonomous powers. Though Panama's position was isolated,

its population cosmopolitan, its commercial interests and social

structure peculiar, and though in colonial times its dependence on

Bogota had been only nominal, the liberal presidents usually ruled it

like a conquered province. Members of the Andean oligarchy poured in to

batten on its revenues; the autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution

proved illusory, and discontent led to repeated efforts to achieve

absolute independence.

Rival ambitions among its own leaders furnished, however, the immediate

cause of the downfall of the liberal party. A close oligarchy grew up

and that inevitable corollary, a powerful faction of dissident liberals,

while the clericals remained formidable and irreconcilable even after

their bloody overthrow in 1876. Rafael Nunez, a brilliant writer, a

resolute and ambitious party chief, and a leader in the confiscation of

church property, had been defeated in his candidacy for the presidency

in 1875. The younger and dissatisfied liberals rallied behind him in his

war against the oligarchy, and in 1880 the old-fashioned liberals could

not prevent his election to the presidency. He vigorously strengthened

the prerogatives of the federal executive and built up his personal

following, but although the issue of paper money and the discontinuance

of interest on the foreign debt--a debt which only ten years before had

been scaled down to $10,000,000, one-sixth its original amount, on a

solemn promise that at least this much would be faithfully paid--placed

large funds at his disposal, the old-line liberals were strong enough to

prevent his re-election in 1882. Their victory was illusory and

temporary. Nunez controlled both houses of congress and was able to

block President Zaldua at every turn. Eighty years old and in feeble

health, the latter died after a year of fruitless struggle.

[Illustration: STEAMERS ON THE MAGDALENA RIVER.]

After a short _ad interim_ administration in which Nunez's influence

predominated, he was re-elected to the presidency and installed in 1884.

By this time his centralising tendencies were manifest, and the measures

he adopted unmistakably pointed to the substitution of a unified

republic for the old loose confederation. Many of his liberal

supporters fell away and he was driven into an alliance with

the conservatives. Appointments of members of that party to

important positions were followed by the great revolt of 1885. The

insurrectionists delivered their main attack on the Caribbean coast,

whither the importation of arms was easy. Much of the department of

Magdalena fell into their hands, and they besieged Cartagena in force.

But when one of their expeditions invaded the Isthmus, burning Colon,

and interrupting traffic on the Panama Railway, the president appealed

to the United States, as previous presidents had done in similar cases,

to carry out the guaranty of free transit contained in the treaty of

1846. At the same time the government troops attacked and defeated the

isolated insurrectionists at Colon, and shortly afterwards the latter's

main army suffered a bloody repulse in an assault on Cartagena. This

broke the back of the movement against Nunez, and the liberals abandoned

the hopeless struggle.

The insurrection had been undertaken for the purpose of defending the

1863 Constitution, and its defeat meant the destruction of departmental

independence. As the logical and natural result of his victory, the

president proclaimed the abolishment of the Constitution and summoned a

convention to adopt a new one. Thenceforward until his death ten years

later Rafael Nunez and his political ideas were supreme in Colombia, and

Panama was held in the most rigid subjection. The old "United States of

Colombia" was replaced by the "Republic of Columbia," one and

indivisible; the departments became mere administrative divisions whose

governors were appointed from Bogota; the presidential term was

increased to six years; the radical liberal projects were abandoned; the

clergy regained many of their privileges; and the historical

conservatives continued the dominant party.

As long as Nunez lived there were few outbreaks and no serious civil

war, though the ousted liberals never ceased to plot the government's

overthrow. The centralising system held the departments in a rigid

control from whose inconveniences Panama suffered far more than the

mountain districts. Practically she was allowed no voice in either her

own or general affairs; the very delegates who nominally represented her

in the constitutional convention of 1885 were residents of Bogota

appointed by Nunez; military rule became a permanent thing on the

Isthmus; all officials were strangers sent from the Andean plateau; and

the million dollars of taxes wrung each year from the people of Panama

were spent on maintaining the soldiers who kept them in subjection. In

January, 1895, the harassed province broke out in a rebellion which was

suppressed by an overwhelming force of Colombian troops in April.

Meanwhile in Colombia proper the opposition to the ruling clique grew

stronger and stronger. Persecution united the liberals, and they began

organising for revolt all over the republic. The conservatives

themselves divided into two parties, one of which opposed the

administration. Nunez did not live to finish the second term to which

he had been elected in 1892, but his successor managed to suppress the

premature revolt of 1895, and in 1898 Sanclemente was elected, the

opposition refraining from going to the polls. The new president soon

found his position very difficult, and, unlike Nunez, was unable to

dominate his own party and hold the opposition in check. The French

Canal Company, whose concession, granted in 1878, would expire in 1904,

offered a million dollars for a renewal, desiring to recoup, by a sale

to the United States, a part of the two hundred millions sunk by De

Lesseps. Sanclemente's government wished to accept, but the opposition

and even the conservative congress insisted on the forfeiture of the

French rights. The administration rapidly lost prestige, the

discontented elements saw their opportunity, and the long-brewing storm

now broke on the hapless country. The liberals hurriedly completed their

preparations, and in the fall of 1899 a civil war began--the most

terrible and destructive that has ever devastated the republic. Before

it ended in 1902, more than two hundred battles and armed encounters had

been fought, and thirty thousand Colombians slain. The detailed history

of the campaigns has not yet been written, but it is apparent that the

insurrectionists at first gained many successes. The president declared

martial law, suspending the functions of congress, and the extension

desired by the French Canal Company was granted by executive decree. But

the pecuniary relief thus obtained did not materially help the

floundering administration. Sanclemente became a mere figurehead for his

more resolute ministers, and in July, 1900, the vigorous

vice-president, Marroquin, seized power by a _coup d'etat_, throwing

Sanclemente into a prison, where he remained until his death. Thereafter

the war against the rebels was prosecuted with more energy, and the tide

turned with the defeat of an army of Venezuelans, eight thousand strong,

which had invaded the eastern provinces, to co-operate with the

insurrectionists.

[Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE ON THE PANAMA R. R.]

However, the liberals were still strong in the west and north. On the

Isthmus four insurrections had broken out from October, 1899, to

September, 1901, and though each had been promptly suppressed, in 1902

the liberals were able to make a last great effort to establish

themselves at Panama. They had considerable forces near the mouth of the

Magdalena, and gunboats on the Pacific. The secure possession of the

Isthmus would have enabled them to reinforce this Magdalena army, cut

off Marroquin from the sea, and undertake a campaign against the

interior. At first all went well for them; their gunboats captured the

government's vessels on the Pacific side; they concentrated a

respectable army there and finally defeated and captured two thousand of

Marroquin's troops at Agua Dulce, near Panama. But this was their last

success. Marroquin poured reinforcements into Colon, and though the

American admiral at first refused to allow them to be transported over

the railroad to Panama, permission was granted when it became evident

that there would be no fighting near the line. News came of the defeat

of the liberal army near the Magdalena, and General Herrera, the victor

at Agua Dulce, found himself isolated. In desperation he sent an

expedition in October which surprised and captured Colon, but French and

American marines were promptly landed to prevent fighting in that city.

The expedition had no alternative but to surrender, and a few days later

General Herrera with the main body capitulated on the Pacific side.

The three years of war left Colombia in frightful demoralisation. The

victorious government was little better off than the defeated liberals.

Commerce and industry had been prostrated; revenues had dwindled to

nothing; the paper currency was worth less than one per cent. The

exhaustion of its adversaries, not its own strength, enabled Marroquin's

government to continue in power. In such a situation the administration

welcomed the opportunity which now offered of renewing the building of

the Isthmian canal. The United States government determined to undertake

this great work itself, and finally decided in favour of Panama as

against the Nicaragua route. Forty million dollars was agreed upon as a

just price for the work already done by the French Company, and nothing

remained but to obtain Colombia's consent to the transfer. The civil war

helped to delay the negotiation of a satisfactory treaty, but as soon as

it was over the Marroquin administration lost little time in coming to

an agreement with the United States. Colombia was to receive a bonus of

ten million dollars for consenting to the transfer and enlarging the

terms of the original concession; her sovereign rights were reserved

and guaranteed, although she agreed to police and sanitary control of

the canal strip by the United States.

When this treaty was submitted to the Colombian Senate for ratification,

opposition developed which the administration was not strong or resolute

enough to overcome. Among the politicians at Bogota, the opinion was

almost universal that the executive should have demanded more. The

Colombian people have ever regarded the political control of the Isthmus

as their most valuable national heritage, and cherished extravagant

hopes that some day they would be vastly enriched by the sale or rental

of this strategic bit of ground for its natural use as the greatest

artery of the world's commerce. Many now insisted, as they had done in

1898, on enforcing a forfeiture of the French rights, or at least on

receiving a proportion of the $40,000,000 to be paid for them. It was

also said that the Americans could well afford a larger bonus, and the

opponents of the treaty made the further point that the agreement was

unconstitutional and contained insufficient guaranties of Colombian

sovereignty. Against this storm the feeble administration probably could

do little and certainly did nothing. The Senate was allowed to adjourn

without ratifying the treaty, and an attempt was made to negotiate a new

one providing for a larger bonus and more stringent guarantees of

Colombian sovereignty.

The United States, however, absolutely refused to consider any other

terms than those already agreed upon, and the civilised world saw the

completion of an enterprise promising incalculable benefits to mankind

indefinitely postponed by the opposition of Andean provinces whom the

accidents of war and international politics had given an arbitrary

control over a region with which they had no natural connection. The

situation was particularly hard for the people of the Isthmus, whose

confident hopes were now disappointed of at last receiving, by the

prosperity which would follow the building of the canal, some

compensation for the oppression and losses they had suffered during

eighty years of misrule by the Bogota oligarchies. Hardly had the treaty

been rejected when plotting for a declaration of independence began. The

resident population was unanimous, and good grounds existed for

believing that even the Colombian garrison would offer no resistance

unless reinforcements should come from Bogota. In case of an armed

conflict with Colombia the people of Panama could count on the sympathy

of all America and Europe. The stockholders of the French Company had a

direct pecuniary interest in their success. If once they could establish

independence and a _de facto_ government, Colombia could not deliver an

effective attack without violating the neutrality and security of

transit guaranteed to the Isthmus by the United States. Everything

pointed to the success of a well-conducted movement.

Though the preparations for the revolt could not be concealed, the

Bogota government took no effective measures to forestall it. Warned

that trouble was impending, the United States sent ships to prevent

fighting that might interfere with transit. The new republic was

proclaimed at Panama on the 3rd of November, 1903. The Colombian

authorities made no resistance; the garrison surrendered without firing

a shot; and the entire population acquiesced in the appointment of a

provisional government, pending the calling of a convention and the

adoption of a Constitution. A small force of Colombians had been landed

at Colon, but the revolution at Panama found it still on the Atlantic

side. On November 4th the American naval commander refused to give these

troops permission to use the railroad for warlike purposes. Because the

vital portion of the new republic is virtually neutral under the treaty

of 1846, the provisional government having established itself in

peaceable possession was safe from external attack. The useless

Colombian troops at Colon either joined the people of Panama or retired.

The inhabitants of Colon and the outlying districts immediately sent in

their adherence, and the peace of the whole Isthmian region remained

unbroken. On the 13th of November the United States recognised the new

republic, being followed by France on the 18th, and then by all other

nations as soon as diplomatic formalities could be complied with. Dr.

Manuel Amador Guerrero was elected first president of the Republic of

Panama, being inaugurated on February 19, 1904. A treaty with the United

States for the building of the canal was framed on substantially the

same lines as the one which had been negotiated with Colombia. By the

end of February it had been ratified and proclaimed, and the United

States at once made preparations for the beginning of the work.

[Illustration: MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA]

INDEX

A

Abascal, General, Viceroy of Peru, 73-78, 163, 168, 260

Abibe Mountains, 408

Acha, General, 276

Aconcagua River, the, 223;

plain of, 168

Acosta, Juan, 56

Acosta, President of Colombia, 464, 465

Acre River, the, 280

"Adelantados," 26, 349, 414, 417

Agua Dulce, battle of, 484, 485

Alansi, valley of, 291

Alacantra, Francisco, 26, 46

Alfaro, President of Ecuador, 339, 341

Alfinger, Adelantado of Venezuela, 349

Almagro, partner of Pizarro, 23, 24, 27, 32, 36, 136, 239, 298;

at war with Pizarro, 41-43, 239, 301;

execution of, 43, 44, 136, 239

Almagro the younger, 49, 50

Alonso, President of Bolivia, 281

Alpaca, the, 3, 4

Alvarado, Spanish adventurer, 44, 88;

Governor of Guatemala, 298

Amar, Viceroy of Bogota, 430

Amat, Don Manuel, 154, 155

Amazon River, the, discovery of, 44, 114, 279, 293

Amazon, forested plains of, 4, 5, 40, 67, 303, 351, 424

Andagoya, Pascual de, 22

Andean plateau, the, 3, 235, 285, 288, 302, 312, 335, 342

Andean valleys, 10;

gold in, 349, 354

Andes, the, 4, 135, 245, 317, 342, 347, 409 et passim

Andes, army of the, 168, 173, 174, 185, 186

Andrade, Creole revolutionist, 396

Andueza, Creole revolutionist, 396

Angol, besieged, 145

Angostura (city), 374

Anserma, founded, 409

Antigua, founded, 404, 405

Antioquia, great mineral province of Colombia, 387, 407-409, 412, 416,

417, 419, 422, 433, 437, 451

Antioquia, state of, 407, 457, 461, 462, 467

Antofogasta, 119, 120, 122, 277

Apples, 66

Apure River, the, 355, 374-376, 406, 437;

army of, 372, 380

Aragua Valley, the, 350

Araucania, colonised, 216

Araucanians, the, independent spirit of, 138-147, 150, 151, 155;

treaty of, with Spanish, 150, 151;

missions established among, 201;

at war with Chile, 206, 216

Arauco, besieged, 145

Araure, battle of, 368

Arce, President of Bolivia, 278

Arenales, General, 81, 89, 258

Arequipa (city), founded, 44, 80, 99, 103, 108, 110, 112

Arequipa (province), 39, 41, 77, 104, 259

Argentina, 11, 13, 18, 71, 142, 245;

civilised tribes of, 58, 350;

revolution in, 76, 160, 161, 317;

civil wars in, 78, 186, 261, 267, 271, 323

Argentine, army, the, 80, 81, 98, 185, 186, 257, 258;

navy, the, 78, 79, 173, 183, 184;

pampas, 99

Argentine Republic, the, 140;

expansion of, 155, 230, 231;

boundary treaty of, with Chile, 209, 210

Arica (city), 108, 123, 125

Arica (province),

arrangement between Peru and Chile concerning, 127, 278

Asses, 66

Atacama desert, the, 239

Atahuallpa, Inca empire divided between Huascar and, 14, 308;

fratricidal war between Huascar and, 16-19, 238, 295, 296;

sends ambassador to Spaniards, 21;

treacherously captured by Pizarro, 30, 31, 48;

offers ransom, 31, 246;

murder of, 32, 238, 297

Atrato, River, the, 403-406;

Valley, 405, 472

Audiencias, royal, established, 67, 71, 250, 251, 254, 267, 308, 417,

420, 426

Auqui Toma, 294

Ayachucho, plain of, 95;

battle of, 96, 97, 256, 264, 266, 322

Ayohuma, battle of, 256, 258

Azuay, nudo of, 17, 291-293, 295, 298

Aztecs, the, 412

B

Balboa, Nunez de, discoverer of the Pacific, 22, 23, 404

Balcarce, General, 185

Ballivian, General, 273, 274

Balmaceda, Chilean Liberal leader, 214-216, 218-220, 222-225;

death of, 226

Balta, Colonel, President of Peru, 113, 114, 116

Bambona, battle of, 444

Bananas, 66, 303, 352

Baquedano, General, 213, 219, 225

Barcelona (city), founded, 352;

captured, 372

Barcelona (province), 362

Barinos (province), 362, 363, 366

Barley, 66, 303, 343

Barquisimeto, founded, 350, 351;

destroyed by earthquake, 363;

captured, 368

Barreiro, General, 377, 378, 441

Bastida, Rodrigo, 403, 404

Belgrano, General, 258

Bello, civil code prepared by, 200

Belzu, General, 274, 275

Benalcazar, Sebastian de, conquers Quito, 298, 299, 409, 410, 413, 414

Beni River, the, 246, 279, 280

Bermudez, Colonel, 130, 381

Biobio River, the, 138, 139, 141, 145-147, 150

Blanco, Guzman, Dictator of Venezuela, 391, 394-396, 398

_Blanco_, the, 119-121

Bogota, (city) 308, 312, 316, 317, 378, 384, 420, 448;

founded, 413;

one of the centres of Spanish-American culture, 422;

Archbishop of, banished, 425, 457, 461;

revolutionary junta in, 431;

seat of federal government, 435, 442, 470, 471;

punishment of, 438, 439

Bogota (province), 376, 416, 419, 434, 437;

vice-royalty of, 71, 250, 313, 327, 356, 385, 416, 420, 426;

jurisdiction of, 356, 420, 426, 429;

audiencia of, 417;

presidency of, 418;

named New Granada, 419;

declares itself an independent state, 433

Bolivar, Simon,

the "Liberator" of South America, 79, 86, 368, 382, 384, 435;

Dictator of Peru, 90, 98, 447;

military exploits of, 92, 264, 317, 321, 366, 367;

President of United States of Colombia, 99, 322, 378, 442, 443, 448,

450, 451;

plan of, for South American Confederation, 99, 267, 320-322, 384,

442, 443, 450, 451;

constitutions, 99, 101, 268, 270, 385, 386;

undertakes conquest of Quito, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, 101, 318,

383, 384, 447;

wins battle of Ayachucho, 264;

welcomed in Bolivia, 267;

political theories of, 268, 322, 448, 451;

forced to retire from Peru, 270;

drives Spanish from Venezuela and New Granada, 317, 370, 372, 374,

375, 378, 433-435, 439, 440, 444;

interview of, with San Martin, 321;

life of, devoted to South American independence, 366, 388, 451;

army of, 376, 380, 381, 440, 441, 452;

proclamation of, 376;

overthrow of, 323, 326, 448, 450, 451;

death of, 326, 387, 388, 452;

character and education of, 364-366;

native city of, 387;

apotheosis of, 455

Bolivar, State of, 460, 463, 466

Bolivia (Upper Peru), 235-281;

description of 235, 236;

Inca conquest of, 13, 18, 236, 238;

military roads in, 36, 239, 244, 251;

Spanish conquest of, 36, 239, 248, 250;

Inca cities in, 44, 59;

capital of, 44;

precious metals found in, 44, 238-242, 245-247;

railroads in, 54, 277, 279, 280;

audiencia established in, 67, 250 (_see also_ Charcas);

the battleground of war of independence, 76, 77, 86, 97,

255 _et seq._, 268;

republic of, created, 99, 267, 268;

Bolivar the Father of, 99, 266, 267;

named, 99, 268;

first president of, 99, 268-270;

constitutions of, 99, 268, 270, 273, 278, 322;

the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, 101-103, 105, 197, 270-273, 281;

boundary treaty of, with Chile, 117, 281;

at war with Chile, 118, 271, 272, 281;

secret treaty of, with Peru, 118;

nitrate territory of, 211, 278;

early civilisation of, 236, 239, 249;

rainfall in, 236;

fertility of, 238;

population of, 239, 244, 269;

character of population of, 239, 260, 269, 272, 273, 357;

Spanish cities in, 241, 242, 249;

cattle-raising in, 242, 243, 248;

Spanish colonial system in, 243, 245, 249;

taxation in, 243, 269, 270, 276;

missions established in, 245, 279;

printing-press, in, 245;

battles in, 257-260, 264-266, 272, 273, 281;

sturdy spirit of patriots in, 258-262, etc.;

commerce of, 267, 272, 281;

period of civil war and anarchy in, 272 _et seq._;

slavery abolished in, 273;

greatest silver producing country of the world, 277, 278;

rubber production of, 278-280;

without seaports, 278, 280, 281;

treaty of, with Brazil, 280;

international position of, 281

Bonaparte, Joseph, 311, 312, 360

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 77, 159, 311, 365, 435

Borrero, Antonio, President of Ecuador, 339

Bourbon dynasty, the, 70, 154, 250

Boves, organises troop of llaneros, 368, 369;

death of, 370

Boyaca River, the, 378;

battle of, 86, 256, 317, 378, 441

Boyaca, state of, 467

Brazil, treaty of, with Bolivia, 280;

loyalty of, 337

Brown, Admiral William, 78

Buccaneers, 69, 70, 150

Buenaventura, 49

Buenos Aires, viceroyalty of, 67, 71, 155, 251, 257;

smuggling in, 71, 152, 251;

revolutionary junta in, 76, 160, 161, 438;

pampas of, 78, 149;

importance of, 156, 158

Bunes, General, 198, 199

C

Cabildos, in Bogota, 431;

in Bolivia, 249;

in Chile, 160, 161;

in Ecuador, 313;

in Venezuela, 360, 361, 385

Cacao, native to South America, 66, 238, 303

Cacao industry in Colombia, 428;

in Ecuador, 303, 328, 332, 341;

in Venezuela, 352, 390, 395

Caceres, President of Peru, 126-131

Cacha, the last Cara shiri, 292, 294

Caciques, 64, 243, 244, 248

Cadiz, 70, 361, 380, 443;

monopoly, the, 152, 352

Cajamarca, 17, 20, 21, 29, 31

Calabozo, 368, 375

Caldas, Colombian scientist, 438

Calderon, Garcia, 126

Cali (city), 408, 409, 432

Cali (province), part of presidency of Quito, 420

Calivio, battle of, 433

Callao, engulfed by tidal wave, 71;

Peruvian fleet at, 104;

Spanish fleet at, 112, 184, 186

Callao Castle, 80, 84, 97, 321

Caluchima, 296

Camano, Jose, President of Ecuador, 339

Camargo, patriot leader, 258, 260

Campero, Narcisco, President of Bolivia, 278

Canan (province), 288, 291, 296, 298

Canaris, the, Indian tribe, 14, 16, 17, 296, 297

Candamo, Senor, President of Peru, 131

Cancha-Rayada, battle at, 176-178

Canete (city), founded, 143, 144;

besieged, 145, 146

Canete, Marquis of, the "good viceroy," 57, 58. _See_ Mendoza

Canizaries, Dona Manuela, 313

Canseco, General, President of Peru, 113

Canterac, Spanish commander, 85, 89, 93, 96, 97

Canto, Colonel, 223, 224

Cape Codera, 351

Cape Gracias a Dios, 403, 404, 405

Cape Horn, 69, 152, 209, 235

Cape San Roman, 347

Captaincies-General, 67, 71, 148, 355, 356, 419, 426

Carabobo, battle of, 86, 317, 381, 443

Caracas (city), revolutionary junta in, 76, 361;

founded, 350;

sacked, 351, 354;

made a captaincy-general, 356, 392, 426;

destroyed by earthquake, 363;

Bolivar's birthplace, 382, 386, 387;

under jurisdiction of Bogota, 426;

revolution in, 447

Caracoles, silver mines of, 208

Cara Indians, the, confederacy of, 11, 12, 16, 288, 289;

invade Ecuador, 11, 286, 287;

conquered by Incas, 11-14, 288-296

Caranquis, the Indian tribe, 13, 293, 294

Caras, description of, 286-290, 293, 412;

staple articles of food of, 290, 303;

conquered by Spanish, 299

Carbojal, Spanish commander, 53, 56

Caribbean Sea, 70, 71, 348, 405, 406, 414, 470

Carib Indians, the, 268, 290, 413

Carrasco, Captain-General of Chile, 159-161

Carrera, Jose, creole leader, 162, 164, 166, 167, 173, 182

Carrera, Juan, 162, 173, 181, 182

Carrera, Luiz, 162, 173, 181, 182

Carrillo, 126

Cartagena (city), revolutionary junta in, 366, 431;

Bolivar takes service with, 366, 433;

besieged, 380, 381, 429, 435-437, 480;

oldest fortress in America, 406-409, 428, 436, 442;

surrender of, 443

Cartagena (province), 417, 419, 420, 431, 432

Cartago (city), 408, 409;

Carujo, Venezuelan revolutionist, 389

Casanare (province), 424

Casanare River, the, 376, 377, 437;

plains of, 406, 440

Cassava, 66

Castilla, Don Ramon, President of Peru, 106-110, 112, 274;

character and ability of, 108;

death of, 113

Castilla, Don Ruiz de, President of Quito, 312, 314

Castilla, Marshal, 118;

Castro (city), 151

Castro, President of Venezuela, 396, 398, 399

Castro, Vala de, Governor of Peru, 46, 49, 50, 52, 300

Cattle, introduced into South America, 66, 151, 352

Cattle-raising in Bolivia, 243, 261;

in Colombia, 421;

in Venezuela, 354, 355, 390, 395

Cauca (province), northern division of Quito presidency, 324, 326;

State of, 460, 466, 468

Cauca River, the, 49, 312, 408, 409, 411, 412, 422, 432, 433

Caudillos, the, Bolivian, 256, 269, 270

Caupolican, Arauncanian chief, 144

Ceballos, Jose, 361, 368, 369

Central America, Colombia's claim to, 429

Cerro de Pasco Mountains, 4, 9, 11, 17, 18, 32, 36, 81, 262, 264, 289

Chacabuco, battle of, 78, 168, 170, 172, 256, 261, 317

Chanca Indians, the, 9

Chancos, battle of, 467

Charcas (Suere), Indian capital of Bolivia, 44, 59, 240;

audiencia of, 71, 250, 251, 267;

revolutionary junta in, 76;

Spanish capital of Upper Peru, 242, 249, 301;

jurisdiction of, 250, 251

Charles IV. of Spain, 311

Charles V., Emperor, authorises conquest of Peru, 25, 26, 41, 60;

appoints governor for Venezuela, 349

Chaves, Francisco, 47

Chibcho Indians, the, 412-414;

civilisation of, 412

Chile, Inca conquest of, 11, 12, 18, 135;

Spanish conquest of, 36, 43, 44, 60, 136, 139-149;

captain-general of, 67, 148, 154, 155, 158, 160, 161;

war of independence in, 76, 78, 112, 156 _et seq._, 190, 261, 317;

junta established in, 161;

at war with Peru and Bolivia, 104, 105, 118, 119, 208, 211, 281;

boundary treaty of, with Bolivia, 117, 118, 206;

boundaries of, 117, 147, 150, 155;

defeats allies, 121-125;

captures Lima, 125, 126, 213;

mineral products of, 117, 136, 138, 144, 148, 199, 208;

nitrate industry of, 117, 118, 126, 206, 211;

gains control of nitrate region, 212, 220-222;

navy of, 118-121, 183-185, 204;

characteristics of inhabitants of, 135, 136, 149, 150, 190;

area of, 135;

rainfall in, 135;

population of, 135, 136, 152, 230;

agricultural conditions in, 136, 148, 199;

battles in, 141, 143-145, 164, 167, 176-178, 180-182, 187, 223-225,

272;

Spanish cities of, 145, 151, 154, 155;

at war with Araucanians, 147, 206;

the colonial period in, 148-155;

immigration into, 149, 156, 199, 203;

growth of commerce in, 148, 152, 154, 158, 162, 199, 200, 203, 230;

smuggling in, 152;

taxation in, 152, 158;

prosperity of, 154-156, 158, 203, 208, 216;

universities in, 154, 198;

the capital of, 154, 158;

seismic disturbances in, 154;

Cuyo separates from, 155;

landed aristocracy of, 158, 159, 162, 189, 201;

liberal reforms in, 162, 168, 200, 206-208, 214-217;

slavery abolished in, 162;

Spanish authority re-established in, 163, 166, 168, 316;

independence of, proclaimed, 176;

civil wars in, 189 _et seq._, 200-203, 215-226;

constitutions of, 193, 196, 206;

strong government established in, 196, 197, 271, 272;

qualifications for suffrage in, 196, 206;

becomes dominant power on Pacific coast, 198;

political conditions in, 198-203, 207, 214, 215, 227-229;

financial conditions of, 98, 200, 211-213;

religious conditions in, 199, 201;

adopts civil and criminal codes, 200, 207;

at war with Spain, 203, 204, 337;

debt of, 208;

boundary treaty of, with Argentina, 209, 210;

boundary disputes with Argentina, 209, 210, 230, 231;

chief exports of, 211;

paper money issued in, 212;

under jurisdiction of Buenos Aires, 251

Chilean (city), 145, 151, 164

Chiloe Islands, the, explored, 143, 149, 188, 192, 197

Chimilas Mountains, 410

Chincha Islands, the, seized by Spain, 112, 203

Chinchon, Countess of, cure of, 70

Chinese coolies in Peru, 111

Chiquitos Indians, the, 245, 250

Chocolate, Europe indebted to Peru for, 66;

Ecuador supplies large amount of, 332

Chorrillos (city), 125

Coal mines, 208

Cochabamba (city), 243, 249, 258

Cochrane, Lord Thomas, Admiral, 79-83, 186-188, 190

_Cochrane_, the, 119-121

Cocoa palm introduced into South America, 66

Coffee-raising, 341, 390, 395