Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 2

The fleets, which supplied the transatlantic colonies, were distinguished by the name of Galleons and Flotas, respectively, and were equipped annually, taking their departure from Seville and latterly from Cadiz. The galleons touched first at Carthagena and then at Porto-Bello. To the former port resorted the merchants of Santa Martha, Caraccas, New Granada, and other provinces; the latter port was the emporium which supplied Peru and Chili. At the right season of the year the product of these countries was transported by sea to Panamá; whence, as soon as the appearance of the fleet was announced, it was conveyed across the isthmus, on mules, and down the river Chagre to Porto-Bello, the noxious climate of which village gave it the unenviable distinction of being the most unhealthy spot in the world. For the greater part of the year it was the residence of negroes and mulattoes, but during the six weeks of the fair it was a Nigni-Novgorod, in which was transacted the richest traffic of two hemispheres. The Flota proceeded to Vera-Cruz, for the supply of Mexico.

The restrictive regulation of Spain, by which her enormous colonial trade was confined to a single port, had, of course, the effect of throwing the commerce into the hands of a few houses, who could regulate their own prices, with the result of checking enterprise and diminishing production. The object of the monopolists was, not to supply the colonies with as much goods as the latter could consume and could afford to purchase at prices remunerative both to producers and to merchants; but to throw upon the markets such a moderate amount of goods as might secure exorbitant prices. There were not wanting Spanish statesmen and political-economists who could discern the ruinous effects of such a state of things; and the most extravagant measures were suggested with a view to check them. It required, however, the convulsion produced by civil war, and the contact into which Spain was thus thrown with foreign nations, to rouse her into vigorous action.

The monarchs of the Bourbon line took measures to suppress a state of things which had overturned the system of Spanish trade with America. The trade with Peru was now thrown open to the French, whose King granted the privilege to the merchants of St. Malo, who, unlike their grasping competitors of Cadiz, furnished the Pacific Viceroyalty with European goods in liberal quantity and at a moderate price. The result was that the trade of Spain with her own chief colony was on the point of being extinguished. Peremptory instructions had accordingly once more to be issued, forbidding the admission of foreign vessels into any port of Chili or Peru.

But on her escape from this danger Spain found that she had incurred another. The treaty of Utrecht conveyed to Great Britain the Asiento for supplying Spanish colonies with negroes, and further granted to that country the privilege of sending annually to the Fair of Porto-Bello a vessel of five hundred tons with European commodities. British factories soon arose at Carthagena and Panamá; and the agents had ample means of becoming acquainted with the condition of the American provinces, with the result that contraband trade greatly flourished. Thus, by the aid of a system of wholesale bribery of the revenue officers, nearly the entire commerce of Spanish America fell into the hands of foreigners. The squadron of galleons was reduced from fifteen thousand to two thousand tons.

1739.

It was not to be expected that Spain should tamely submit to such a state of things. Her first measure, undertaken with the view of improving matters, was to establish along her colonial coasts a system of guardships, with the object of preventing smuggling. The British colonial commerce, with the Spanish settlements, was, however, so firmly established that it would not be put down; and the Spanish coasts were so extensive that no system of guardships could exercise a sufficiently vigilant watch. The consequence was, in the first place, complaints, and then, acts of violence; which brought on another war between Great Britain and Spain, the consequence being that the latter country was released from the terms of the Asiento granted by the treaty of Utrecht.

Left at liberty to regulate her own colonial trade, Spain now profited by experience in so far that she was induced to permit a considerable part of her commerce with America to be carried in register ships; which were fitted out during the intervals between the stated periods for the sailing of the galleons and the flota, by merchants at Seville and Cadiz, who obtained a license for this purpose. The advantage of thus regularly supplying the demand in the colonies was soon perceived to be so great that, in 1748, the galleons, which had been an institution during two centuries, were abolished; whilst the single vessels no longer proceeded to Porto-Bello; but, sailing round Cape Horn, conveyed directly the productions of Europe to the Chilian and Peruvian ports.

1764.

It may seem strange to a generation accustomed to read day by day the notice of events occurring in the most remote parts of the globe almost as soon as they happen, that a nation such as Spain, possessing as it did enormous foreign possessions, could have been contented with receiving news concerning their progress once only in the course of each year. Such, however, was nearly always the case, until about the year 1740, when register ships were permitted. Previously to that date the annual fleet of galleons was the sole means of postal communication between the mother country and her South American possessions. It is true that news of passing transatlantic events occasionally reached Spain through other nations, whose intercourse with her colonies it was her constant object to repress. It was not until the year 1764 that packet-boats were appointed to be despatched on the first day of each month from Coruña to Havana or Porto Rico; whence letters were conveyed in smaller vessels to Vera Cruz and Porto-Bello, to be forwarded from there to the north or to the south, as the case might be. A packet-boat sailed once in each two months for the river Plata, to supply the districts on the eastern side of the Andes. As these packet-boats were permitted to take out and to bring home a stated amount of produce, Coruña, from this time forward, shared with Cadiz the profits of the colonial trade.

1774.

The year 1774 marks a further advance in Spanish liberal colonial legislation, the Viceroyalty or provinces of New Spain, Guatemala, Peru, and New Granada, respectively, being permitted the privilege of free-trade with each other. This was followed, four years later, by the promulgation of an entirely new commercial code for the Indies, the consideration of which more naturally falls within the chapter relating to the Viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres. I may conclude this resumé of the Viceroyalty of Peru by a statement of the actual profit in specie, which the mother country is estimated to have derived from that possession.

The best Spanish authorities are agreed in considering that the Sovereign, owing to various causes, the chief being peculation and smuggling, was defrauded of about one half of the colonial revenue which legitimately belonged to him. But, notwithstanding corruption and illicit importation, the revenue derived by the Spanish monarch from his American possessions was still very considerable. It arose from taxes, which may be divided into three branches. The first includes what was paid to the King as Lord Superior of the New World, namely, the duty on the produce of the mines and the tribute exacted from the natives. The second branch comprehended the duties upon commerce. The third included such dues as came to the King in his capacity as temporal head of the colonial Church and as administrator of its funds. It is estimated that Peru yielded to the Crown a revenue of about a million sterling, one half of which may have been consumed in the expense of the provincial establishments. This amount, or whatever it may have been, it is to be remembered, accrued to the Spanish Crown from this important colony, in addition to the wealth derived from it by the parent state by means of its exclusive trade.

CHAPTER IX.

VICEROYALTY OF NEW GRANADA; CAPTAIN-GENERALSHIP OF VENEZUELA

1535-1790

For some time after the disastrous failure of the attempt of Las Casas to found a colony on the Pearl Coast of Cumaná, the northern portion of Spanish South America, from the Orinoco westwards, is almost lost to history. The powers working for good had signally failed, and the powers of evil seemed to have it almost all their own way. The regions discovered by the Spaniards were so vast, in proportion to the numbers of the discoverers, that many of them were long lost to view, and probably to memory. Such was the fate of the territory which borders the Orinoco, a great river flowing from the Cordilleras, and which throws itself and its many tributaries by forty outlets into the ocean.

It was in the year 1535 that the Spaniards first attempted to ascend this stream; but, not finding the mines they sought, they looked on it with indifference. Nevertheless, the few Europeans there sown applied themselves with such energy to the culture of tobacco that they were enabled to supply, yearly, some cargoes of this plant to the foreign vessels which came to purchase it. But this traffic was forbidden by the mother-country; whilst some enterprising corsairs twice pillaged this establishment, which could not defend itself. These disasters caused it to be forgotten.

Lying behind these extensive coasts to the westward in the interior, is the region to which the Spaniards gave the name of the kingdom of New Granada, the name being applied in consequence of a resemblance which was detected between the plain around Santa Fè de Bogotá and the royal Vega which adjoins the historical Moorish capital. New Granada was a most extensive region, comprising as it did the entire country from sea to sea in the north, lying between 60° and 78° longitude, and from 6° to 15° of latitude.

1526.

Bogotá was attacked, from the south, by Benalcazar, the governor of Quito; whilst Ximenes de Quesada, who had disembarked at Santa Marta, marched against it from the north. They did not fail to meet resistance, which, however, was no match for Spanish discipline, arms, and valour; and the above-named leaders had the renown of adding another grand possession to the South-American dominions of their sovereigns. In the course of time the more distant provinces, of which Bogotá was the centre, became subject to its government. There were, however, a number of the inhabitants of this vast and varied mountainous region who either retained, throughout, their barbarous independence or who regained it from time to time.

1535.

Ximenes de Quesada came to America about the year 1535, in the suite of the Governor of Santa Marta, by whom he was selected to lead an expedition against the Chibchas, who dwelt on the plain of Bogotá and around the head waters of the Magdalena. Setting out in April 1536 with eight hundred men, he succeeded in pushing his way through the forest and across innumerable streams. He contrived to subsist for eight months, during which he traversed four hundred and fifty miles, enduring meanwhile the very utmost exertions and privations that human nature could support. It was not given to this leader to meet with an adversary sufficiently powerful or wealthy to confer upon him by his capture the splendour which has attached itself to the names of the conquerors of Montazuma and of Atahualpa; but it may be doubted whether, in so far as may be judged by reading the accounts of their several exploits, one or the other of those adventurers had more difficulties to surmount than had Ximenes de Quesada.

When he and his men had at length reached Barranca, they were arrested by a downpour of rain, which literally covered the country; but, in face of such discouraging circumstances, Ximenes persisted in proceeding. Sending on a party of twelve men, under Captain San Martin, he remained with the rest of his detachment, sleeping at night in the tops of trees, and subsisting on a small allowance of maize and horse-flesh daily.

On the return of San Martin with a favourable report of a cultivated country beyond, Ximenes boldly determined to pass over the mountains of Opon, in which attempt he lost twenty-one men in gaining a height of five thousand five hundred feet above the sea. He had recourse to ropes for pulling his horses up. On the summit a land of abundance awaited him; and as, like other Spanish conquerors of the New World, he held the convenient creed that the heathen had been given to him for his inheritance, he felt no scruple at all from the fact that the region which he and his followers meant to appropriate afforded the means of subsistence to a numerous population, which it would be necessary to dispossess.

When he had surmounted the natural difficulties in his path, his remaining force consisted of but one hundred and sixty-six men, with sixty horses. On March 2nd, 1537, he resumed his advance; and, as usually happened, the mere sight of his horsemen terrified the Indians into submission. At Tunja, according to the Spanish historians, he was treacherously attacked whilst resting in the palace of one of his chiefs. That he may have been so is of course possible; but the fact would commend itself the more readily to our belief had it been narrated by a Chibcha writer. In any case, the chief was taken, and, after much slaughter, Ximenes found himself the absolute possessor of immense riches, one golden lantern alone being valued at six thousand ducats.

From Tunja Ximenes marched upon the sacred city of Iraca, where two Spanish soldiers accidentally set fire to the great Temple of the Sun. The result was that, after a conflagration which lasted for several days, both the city and the temple were utterly destroyed.

But the inhabitants of this new region of the votaries of the Sun were not yet fully subdued; and, on his return towards Tunja, Ximenes had to encounter the force of twelve thousand desperate natives. His arms and his horses were again successful; and, after his victory at Borja, he received the submission of several caciques, and was enabled to divide among his soldiers no less a booty than forty thousand pounds in gold and eighteen hundred emeralds.

Ximenes de Quesada was neither more nor less particular than was Cortez or Pizarro in the means which he employed in order to gain his end. His object at present was to obtain information as to the retreat of a chief, whose property it was his intention to appropriate. With this view he seized upon two youths, whom he ordered to be tortured. One of them died under the operation; but by the other, who was either stronger or less courageous, Ximenes was conducted to the retreat of the chief, who was killed in the skirmish which ensued. His people fought desperately for their independence, but were overcome by the invaders, by the aid of an alliance with a pretender to the succession.

This traitor to his country’s and his race’s cause soon met the fate which he deserved. Imitating the Roman policy of sparing the weak and battling the powerful, the Spaniards in America were ever on the watch to take advantage of local jealousies; to which cause they owed their conquest of Mexico and many of their successes in the southern continent from Peru to Araucania. On this occasion the aspirant to the Chibcha crown swore allegiance to the King of Spain, the proof required of his sincerity being that he should deliver up the treasures of his predecessors. In the usual vaunting style of a barbarian king, he undertook to fill, within six weeks, a whole room with gold and emeralds. That he should have failed to do so was probably inevitable; but that his failure was owing to bad faith to the Spaniards was obviously an absurd imputation. He had, however, aroused their lust for plunder, and his fault was not to be forgiven. He was accordingly put to death with those refinements of cruelty of which the Spaniards were such masters.

On the 9th of August, 1538, was founded the city of Bogotá. Ximenes was soon here joined by Frederman, a subject of the Emperor Charles V., with one hundred and sixty soldiers, with whom he had been engaged in conquering Venezuela; and likewise by Benalcazar, the conqueror of Quito. This latter warrior had crossed the continent in triumph at the head of a hundred and fifty Spaniards, together with a multitude of native followers.

In such a wholly-unprecedented state of affairs, it is not to be wondered at that these Spanish captains, elevated severally from a humble condition to the rank of independent generals and governors, should have departed from all subordination, and should have taken for their principle that might makes right. Accordingly, it was the first idea of Benalcazar to combine with Frederman in order to expel Ximenes from his conquests. But, as he might perhaps have foreseen, the same idea had already occurred to the other, and the adventurers from Venezuela were, in consideration of the payment of ten thousand dollars to Frederman, enrolled amongst the forces of Quesada.

Benalcazar, in turn, entered into an arrangement with the two others to appoint a governor of all their territories during their absence from America, for the purpose of laying their claims before Charles V. In this representation they were not all equally successful. Benalcazar was declared independent of Pizarro, and was made governor of Popayan; Ximenes de Quesada was fined to the amount of one thousand ducats; was banished for one year, and was suspended for five years from office; whilst Frederman was judged to be an interloper, and obtained nothing. Shortly afterwards, however, the Emperor remitted the punishment against Ximenes, and appointed him marshal of the kingdom of New Granada. On his return to Bogotá in 1551, he, to his credit, exhibited an energy in protecting the people of the country against their invaders, equal to that which he had displayed in effecting their conquest.

Ten years later he commanded a force, organized to repel an attack from the ruler of Venezuela; shortly after which he was appointed Adelantado of the kingdom of New Granada. He devoted three years, and an enormous amount of toil and money, to an absurd expedition in quest of the fabled El Dorado. To the search of this myth were devoted three hundred Spaniards, two thousand Indians, and twelve hundred horses; of which martial array only twenty-four men and thirty-two quadrupeds returned, mutely to tell the tale of the supreme folly of their leader.

Of the life of a man who had shown himself possessed of such great qualities, in whatsoever way they had been applied, as had Ximenes de Quesada, all prominent details are interesting. It may therefore be noted that, after having founded in 1572 the city of Santa Agueda, this conqueror and knight-errant died of leprosy, leaving behind him debts to the amount of sixty thousand ducats, which circumstance would seem to have rendered it somewhat unnecessary for him to insert in his will his desire that no expensive monument should be erected over his grave. His body was transferred to Bogotá.

The importance of New Granada in the eyes of the Spaniards lay in its being the source whence the best emeralds were procured. Many of these had found their way into Peru; but the rude conquerors, who were under the impression that emeralds were as hard as diamonds, having submitted them to the test of the hammer, came to the conclusion that they were valueless. In this manner many were destroyed; and the loss became the greater owing to the fact that it was impossible to discover the mine whence the Incas had procured them. The discovery of New Granada luckily supplied this important want. The provinces of Popayan and Choco had the further merit of supplying gold; which was found on the surface of the earth, and which could therefore easily be gathered by the simple means of washing.

1718.

The court of Madrid was dissatisfied that a region which had been lauded as possessing great natural advantages should furnish it with such few commodities, and those in so small quantities. It drew therefrom the conclusion that the country under the superintendence of the Viceroy of Peru was too vast for all parts of it to receive due attention, and that the development of the northern region would be better assured under a separate government. Accordingly, in the year 1718, the Viceroyalty of Peru was divided into two portions, the northern region, from the frontiers of Mexico as far as to the Orinoco, and on the Southern Sea from Veragua to Tumbez, forming the Viceroyalty of New Granada, of which the capital was Bogotá. To this region, likewise, was assigned the inland province of Quito. The Viceroyalty of New Granada, in fact, comprised what now forms the Republic of Venezuela, the United States of Columbia, and the Republic of Ecuador.

Although this was undoubtedly a step in the right direction, its good results were not at once apparent. It might have been foreseen that it would take some time as well to form capable administrators as to call order out of confusion, and to instil the habits of industry into people long used to idleness and free-living. Nevertheless, the change of things was not without effect, and the good results became by degrees apparent in Spain. Here, as elsewhere in those imperfectly-controlled regions, smuggling was the rule; and it is said that half of the gold amassed by the colony was fraudulently sent abroad, chiefly by way of the rivers Atrato and Hache. With a view to stopping this traffic, forts were erected on these streams; which, however, were ineffectual in securing the end in view.

Communication between one province and another, even between one town or village and another, was difficult or impracticable. Every traveller was more or less exposed to be robbed or to be killed by the independent Indians; but these enemies, formerly fierce and implacable, yielded by degrees to the efforts of the missionaries, and to the acts of good-will on the part of the strangers, which replaced the barbarities of a more savage age. Notwithstanding the bounties of nature in this region, many of its provinces drew their subsistence from Europe or from North America. The cost of transport from place to place forbade the culture of grain in the interior beyond the amount requisite for each individual locality.

1774.

The town of Santa Fè de Bogotá is situated at the foot of a height at the entrance to a vast plain. In 1774 it possessed three thousand two hundred and fifty families, or about sixteen thousand inhabitants. It was the residence of an Archbishop, holding a jurisdiction of immense extent, and who, as Metropolitan, was inspector of the dioceses of Quito, Panamá, Caracas, Santa Marta, and Carthagena. It was by way of the last-named place, although it was distant three hundred miles, and by the river Magdalena, that Santa Fè de Bogotá communicated with Europe; whilst the same route led to Quito.

The province of Quito was likewise of immense extent, but was for the most part covered with forests, or composed of marshes or deserts, inhabited here and there by wandering savages. Spaniards can only be properly said to have occupied and governed a valley of some eighty leagues in length and fifteen in breadth, formed by two branches of the Cordilleras.