There are handsome plazas, with gardens and statuary, but few imposing public buildings, although a certain simplicity is pleasing here. The streets generally are narrow, and the houses low, as a precaution against earthquake shocks. The _Capitiolio_, the building of the Legislature, is spacious and handsome. Upon a marble tablet, upon its façade, in letters of gold, is an inscription to the memory of the British Legion, the English and Irish who lent their aid to Colombia and Venezuela, under Bolivar, to secure independence from Spain a century or more ago. The story of the British soldiers in this liberation is an interesting one. "With insubordination and murmurings among his own generals, decreased troops and depleted treasure, and without the encouragement of decisive victories to make good these deficiencies, the outlook for Bolivar and for the cause in which he was fighting might well have disheartened him at this time. In March, however, Colonel Daniel O'Leary had arrived with the troops raised by Colonel Wilson in London, consisting largely of veterans of the Napoleonic wars. These tried soldiers, afterwards known as the British Legion, were destined to play an all-important part in the liberation of Venezuela, and Bolivar soon recognized their value, spending the time till December in distributing these new forces to the best advantage. "Elections were arranged in the autumn, and on February 15, 1819, Congress was installed in Angostura. Bolivar took the British Constitution as his model, with the substitute of an elected president for an hereditary king, and was himself proclaimed provisional holder of the office. The hereditary form of the Senate was, however, soon given up."[1] Before the Conquest Bogota was the home of the Chibchas people--Tunja was their northern capital--the cultured folk of Colombia, who, although inferior to the Incas of Peru, had their well-built towns and a flourishing agriculture and local trade, their temples of no mean structure, with an advanced religion which venerated and adored the powers of Providence as represented by Nature; who worked gold and silver and ornaments of jewels beautifully and skilfully, such things as Quesada's Spaniards coveted--a culture which knew how to direct the Indian population, but which, alas! fell before the invaders as all other early American cultures fell. To-day, as then, the high mountains look down upon the Sabana, and the rills of clear water descend therefrom. Still the beautiful Mesa de Herveo, the extinct volcano, displays like a great tablecloth from a giant table its gleaming mantle of perpetual snow, over 3,000 feet of white drapery. Still the emerald mines of Muzo yield their emeralds, and still the patient Indian cultivates the many foods and fruits which Nature has so bountifully lavished upon his fatherland.