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 discover the mine from which the Incas had procured their emeralds.  It was not until the discovery of New Granada that the source was revealed from which the stones had been obtained.  The wealth of the land did not end here.  From Popayan and Choco, provinces of the north-west, “placer” gold was obtainable in fairly large quantities by the simple expedient of washing.  Thus, on the whole, New Granada promised the Spaniards ample supplies of the minerals which they coveted, and which they sought without intermission.

By reason of these things the Spanish Government, ever fearful of undue colonial strength, came to the conclusion that the Viceroyalty of Peru was quite powerful enough and wealthy enough without these newer possessions.  In the year 1718 the limits of the Viceroyalty of New Granada were defined, rendering the tract of land which now forms the republics of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, quite independent of the Peruvian Viceroyalty; for, notwithstanding the fact that the Peruvian authority had every claim to the retention of the inland province of Quito, that also was assigned to the newer government.