These exploits were followed by a period of strife among the Spaniards, and Pizarro was murdered, after founding Lima, the capital of Peru. But in 1536 the regions lying between Peru and Panama, which to-day we know as Ecuador and Colombia, were explored and conquered, the first by Sebastian de Benalcazar, the second by Jimenez de Quesada. Here were dwelling other advanced people or tribes. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, had been the home of the Shiris, a cultured people who were overthrown by the Incas before the Spanish advent. The city was joined to Cuzco, eleven hundred miles to the south, by the famous Inca roads, one along the Cordillera, the other along the coast. Some early Spanish historian delighted to speak of these roads as equal to those of the Romans, but this was an exaggeration. Colombia was the culture-area of the Chibchas. The Spaniards had heard of a further great empire, a rich El Dorado, in this region, and encouraged by the ease with which Pizarro had conquered Peru, they made their way up the Magdalena River from the Caribbean Sea. A pleasing land and much gold was encountered, after severe hardships, the people being of some considerable degree of civilization, although not of the status of the Aztec or the Inca. The richest plums, in fact, had fallen. Quesada named this region New Granada, with its capital at Bogota. There still remained the conquest of the huge territory south of Peru, known as Chile, and this, attempted by Almagro in 1537, was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, who, however, was checked by the redoubtable Araucanian Indians. These form one of the chief admixtures of the Chileans to-day, a hardy and enterprising nation, in contrast with the Peruvians of a more sentimental temperament, with a basis of the Quichua Indians of the Incas. Terrible excesses were committed upon the Indians on these expeditions. A terrible end was visited upon the Spanish leader by the Indians. "You have come for gold," said the savage chief who captured him. "You shall have your fill." And he caused _molten_ burning gold to be poured into his mouth. Then he was cut to pieces with sharpened oyster shells. From the Southern Andes, the Spaniards, in the following years, descended to the great plains which now form the republics of the River Plate, Argentine, Uruguay and Paraguay. The exploration of Brazil had been begun in 1510, and the region was traversed by Orellana in his descent of the Amazon from Quito, and it was gradually settled by the Portuguese. The lands lying between Panama and Mexico, which to-day form the Central American States, Guatemala, Costa Rica and others, were conquered after the fall of Mexico. Here were evidences of a splendid past, in the beautiful temples of sculptured stone found in their forests and deserts, ruins even then abandoned. These remains astounded Europe, when they were first revealed.