merely for the gold and precious metals.  Thus, with the knowledge that their occupation would be shortlived, they forced the Indians to ever more strenuous labours than those to which they were accustomed even at the hands of the Spaniards.  In the end the country became depopulated.  The Welzers shrugged their shoulders, and admitted that their utility was at an end in that district.  With this the Spaniards took possession of the country once again.

Gonzalo Jimines de Quesada now became prominent as a conquistador in the territory to the north of Peru, known then as New Granada.  Quesada himself, although he lacked nothing of the courage and determination (frequently of a merciless order) of the average conquistador, was undoubtedly endowed with certain attributes which were possessed by very few of these hardy pioneers.  For one thing he was scholarly; he had been given an elaborate education, and knew well how to put it to the best purposes.  Quesada led an expedition up the Magdalena River.  He had for companion Benalcazar.  They approached the country from the south, occupied Popagan and Pasto, and founded Guayaquil.  They also penetrated the Valley of Curacua and Bogota, and thus traversed the whole Province.  This brought them into contact with the Chibcha Indians.  In the end these unfortunate beings were completely subdued, their civilization destroyed, and they themselves divided as slaves among the Spaniards.

Quesada, accompanied by a band of mercenary Indians, started on his journey in order to seek for gold.  He was, in the first place, received in a friendly way by the natives; but in the end these, dreading the greed which the invaders took no trouble to conceal, attacked them.  The warfare between the Spaniards and the natives commenced, with the conquest of the natives as the result, as given above.  It has already been explained that many of the characteristics of the Incas and of the Chibchas were curiously alike.  In history this extended even to the fate of the respective Royal Families.  Pizarro slew Atahualpa; Quesada was even more thorough.  For not only did he destroy the Prince of the Chibchas, but the whole of the Royal Family as well.

These acts do not appear to have lain very heavily on the conscience of Quesada, if fruitful years be any test.  The tough old conquistador lived to the age of eighty, expiring in the year 1579.  In 1597 it is said that his body was taken to Bogota Cathedral.

CHAPTER IV

THE DISCOVERY AND EARLY HISTORY OF BRAZIL

It still remains a point of dispute between the Spanish and Portuguese nations as to who was the discoverer of Brazil.  There is, moreover, Amerigo Vespucci.  Amerigo Vespucci may be said to have been more successful in his accounts of his voyages than in the feats which he actually accomplished.  To have succeeded on such slender foundation in causing an entire Continent to be christened by his name was in itself no mean performance, and this was probably his greatest claim to distinction.