Each settlement grew sufficient for
its own needs, and no more. Other factors in the slight use made of the
rich soil were the natural indolence and the improvident habits of the
people--habits not yet quite eradicated, since at the present day
Venezuela, although it possesses some of the richest and best
maize-growing lands in the world, still imports maize from the United
States. From the creation of the Viceroyalty onward, attempts were made
by the Spanish authorities to make the people industrious and thrifty,
but these met with scant success.
The power and character of the aboriginal tribes may be estimated from
the fact that, up to the end of the colonial period, Spanish authority
in the immense territory of Quito was only exercised over a valley,
formed by two spurs of the Andes, which reached some eighty leagues in
length, with an average breadth of fifteen leagues. At the beginning of
the eighteenth century a number of towns were established by Catholic
missionaries on the Atlantic coast and on the rivers emptying into the
Gulf of San Miguel; but the Indians destroyed them all, and remained so
little dominated by the white race that a treaty of peace, concluded
between Spaniards and native chiefs in 1790, contained a clause by which
the Spaniards consented to abandon all their forts in Darien.
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