y, that it was deemed
necessary to separate it from New Granada, and form an entirely new
administration.

[Illustration: POTOSI, IN BOLIVIA.

The famous centre of the silver-mining region which supplied the Spanish
Empire with bullion for three centuries.

_From a seventeenth-century engraving._]

Yet the climate, or some obscure effect of the mingling and
cross-breeding of conquerors and conquered, seems to have paralyzed
human effort in these colonies of the northern coast. The land was
something of an earthly paradise, and men were tempted to doze in it
rather than to develop its resources. The cacao of Venezuela takes first
place in the markets of the world, and has done so since its initial
cultivation there; but not one-tenth of the area available for the
growth of the bean has ever been utilized.

Caracas itself, earthquake shaken from time to time, was never--even in
the most favourable periods of colonial rule--a flourishing city, but
rather a centre of trade for scattered settlements. The town could claim
little literary or educational movement to mark it as the capital of a
potentially rich country. It was concerned, moreover, with scarcely a
trace of the social and erudite development that characterized Bogota
almost from the time of its foundation by Quesada. In so far as it had
to be, Caracas existed, but there its ambition ended.

Except for some isolated centres, this was true of the whole of New
Granada and Venezuela. Under Spanish rule the Viceroyalty and its
dependent Captain-Generalship formed a great area into which Spaniards
had come to hunt for mineral wealth, and while that wealth was
obtainable there was a vast amount of activity. The aborigines, save for
the Chibcha race, numbered among them some of the lowest types on the
Continent, and where gold or emeralds or other valuable minerals were to
be obtained these unfortunates were pressed into service, or rather into
slavery.

When the minerals were exhausted, enterprise ceased. Sufficient
cultivation for material needs--an easy matter in this productive
land--was carried on, and in certain districts a definite amount of
cacao growing was practised. For the rest, little was achieved, while
farther south development was proceeding along the lines which have
brought into being the great republics of to-day.

Then Venezuela gave to South America Simon Bolivar, and the storm of
revolution which swept the Continent shook these northern dep