d west by the sea, and on the south by the Portuguese colony of
Brazil and the great Spanish territory of Peru. Venezuela, Colombia, and
Ecuador, and the sharply defined limits these names represent, are, of
course, modern creations, comparatively speaking. For centuries the
landward boundaries of Spanish New Granada remained shadowy, indefinite
limits. There was a Viceroyalty of New Granada, so named from the
resemblance between the plains around Bogota and the _Vega_ of the
Moorish capital, and there was a Captain-Generalship of Venezuela. New
Granada was estimated as comprising all the country between 60 deg. and 78 deg.
west longitude, and between 6 deg. to 15 deg. north latitude. In this was
included Venezuela, under which name was comprised an extent of
territory far less important than is at present the case.

As has been related, Ximines de Quesada, together with Benalcazar, the
Governor of Quito, conquered the district of Bogota, and founded that
city in 1538. After this followed the banishment of Quesada by the
Spanish authorities, his return and his wise rule of the country--over
which he was appointed Marshal--from 1551 onwards. Later, after his
appointment as Adelantado, he devoted three years of toil and an
enormous amount of wealth to the quest of El Dorado. Three hundred
Spaniards, 2,000 Indians, and 1,200 horses set out on this quest; 24 men
and 32 horses only returned. The costly myth of El Dorado, from the
earliest days of its conception, was insatiable in the matter of human
lives.

Quesada died, like one or two other great figures of medieval times, of
leprosy, after having founded the city of Santa Aguda in 1572. He left
behind him a will in which he requested that no extravagant monument
should be erected over his grave--a rather superfluous request as it
turned out, since he also left debts to the value of 60,000 ducats! The
city of Bogota holds his remains, which were conveyed to that city after
his death.

The value of New Granada in the eyes of Spain lay in its being the chief
emerald-producing centre of the world. The _conquistadores_ of Peru had
met with emeralds, and had gathered the impression that the real emerald
was as hard as a diamond, a belief which led them to submit all the
green gems they found to the test of hammering--with disastrous results
to the stones. The loss occasioned by this procedure was intensified by
the fact that for a long while it was found impossible to discove