The conquests of Quesada and Benalcazar had established centres of Spanish influence, but they had not gone far towards organizing the control of the country.  Consequently, the establishment of a central authority at Bogota, independent of all but the Spanish Crown, was a decidedly advantageous move.  As was the case elsewhere in the Continent, one of the chief evils requiring stringent treatment was that of smuggling.  It was said, for instance, that in the early days half the great gold output of the colony was smuggled abroad by way of the Rivers Atrato and Hacha.  The first Viceroy of New Granada caused forts to be erected on these and other streams, with a view to stopping the illegal traffic, and this measure mitigated the evil which nothing—­in view of the half-settled state of the country—­could quite subdue.

So little under control was the greater part of New Granada, that the good results of establishing a separate Viceroyalty only became apparent slowly.  The conquest of the Chibchas, effected as it was with all the refinements of cruelty familiar to the conquistadores, had added fierce resentment to the natural racial antipathy already existing in the savage tribes of the country, and communication between provinces and towns was difficult in all cases, while in many it was altogether impracticable.  There remained numerous bands of roving savages, fierce and predatory, to render travel unsafe; and though the efforts of the missionaries and others brought gentler ways to some in course of time, the whole of the colonial era was characterized by the presence of utterly fierce and vindictive bodies of aboriginals, while sufficient reprisals were indulged in by the Spaniards to keep alive the flame of hostility.

[Illustration:  AN ISLAND PASSAGE OF THE RIVER AMAZON.

From the “Narrative of a Journey from Lima to Para, 1836."]

There is something in the transportation of the European to tropical climates and the control of an inferior race which, in certain circumstances, appears to loose and to intensify all the most cruel instincts and desires of which humanity is capable.  In reckoning up the racial contests in New Granada, reader and historian alike must give the aboriginal his due.  He was by no means the gentle savage such as he is frequently depicted.  Indeed, many of his native customs were completely brutal.  Nevertheless, it is necessary to debit against the invader numerous excesses and deeds of cruelty directed against the inferior or subject race.  And since popular feeling, which ranges on the side of the oppressed to-day, was undoubtedly on the side of the oppressor during the earlier centuries, there can be little doubt that the ferocity of the Indians of New Granada, and their hesitating acceptance of the missionary’s doctrine, were not without excuse.