106 
/ 
When the Adalantado Gon^alo Ximenez de 
Quesada, suriiamed the conqueror, arrived, in 
1537, from the banks of the Magdelena, at 
the lofty savannahs of Bogota, he was struck with 
the contrast, which he remarked between the 
civilization of the nations inhabiting the rnoun- 
tains, and the savage state of the hordes 
scattered along the sultry regions of Tolu, Ma~ 
hates, and S'". Martha. On the elevated plain, 
where, in latitude 4® and 6°, the centigrade ther- 
mometer keeps constantly between 17 and 20 de- 
grees during the day, and between 8 and 10 de- 
grees at night, Quesada found the Muyscas, the 
Guanes, the Muzoes, and the Calimas, settle in 
communities, employed in agriculture, and cloth- 
ed in cotton garments; while the tribes that 
wandered through the neighbouring plains^ 
nearly on a level with the surface of the Ocean, 
appeared brutalized, destitute of clothes, with- 
out industry, and without arts The Spaniards 
were surprised at seeing themselves transported 
into a country, where, on a soil of little fertility, 
the fields every where yielded plentiful harvests 
of maize, chenopodium quinoa, and iurmds^ or 
* IJistoria general de las Conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de 
Grenada, par el Doctor D, Lucas Fernandez Piedrahita, p. 15. 
(The author, who died Bishop of Panama, compiled this his- 
tory from the manuscripts of Quesada, the Conqueror ; Juan 
dc Castellanos, vicar of Tunja j and the franciscan monks, 
Fray Antonio Medrano and Fr. Pedro Agueda). 
