Lima at this time, the beginning of the eighteenth century, had about seventy thousand inhabitants, Europeans, mestizos, Indians, and negro slaves. Gold and silver flowed into the city from the mines, and the buildings that were constructed after the earthquake of 1687 were superior to those which had been destroyed; they gave Lima an appearance of prosperity; they suggested a degree of luxury that had not been evident earlier. The creoles, always fond of display, sought to avoid the simplicity and rudeness of the smaller towns. They made their wealth conspicuous by their possession of paintings from Italy and Spain, by their extravagant dress, and by their abundant ornaments of gold, pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones; and it is said that the nobles of Lima exceeded in luxury the aristocracy of Spain. The Peruvian capital was enlivened not only by the presence of the fifteen hundred students of the University of San Marcos, but also by a large number of convents or monasteries, in which the conflicts attending the elections of their officers often ran so high that large sections of the population became involved, and the secular authorities were called upon forcefully to interfere. Bogotá, Caracas, Quito, Santiago, Asunción, and Buenos Aires were capitals, like Lima, but on a smaller scale. Common fundamental characteristics prevailed in all, except as these were modified by the different material interests and opportunities of the several cities. In the very small towns and in the country the Indians and the mestizos predominated, suggesting barbarism rather than civilization. [Sidenote: Colonial society] The colonial society of Spanish South America had no notion of social or political equality like that entertained by the British colonists in North America, and consequently recognized marked class distinctions as a phase of the normal social order. The authorities in Spain, charged with the government of the colonies, maintained the traditional view of social inequality, and encouraged its practical development by creating a titled nobility and conferring upon encomenderos a status of superiority over their dependents not greatly unlike the relation of superior and inferior that prevailed during the period of European feudalism. Under this social order the subdued Indians became an element, naturally a subordinate element, in the composite society of the colonies, instead of drifting into irreconcilable hostility to Europeans, as happened in British North America. [Sidenote: Groups and classes]