The agencies of control in the colonial undertaking, whether military, ecclesiastical or civil, were directed from Spain. These agencies, in their final organization, were gathered into three important groups, or viceroyalties: Peru, New Granada, and Río de la Plata. The viceroy in each of these semi-independent states was assisted by a small body called an audiencia, which performed the functions both of a ministry and of a supreme court. In the several subdivisions of the territory local officers, known as corregidores, carried on a practically arbitrary administration, under which the Indians were oppressed and impoverished; and in the larger town a cabildo, or municipal council, exercised a certain degree of control, when not impeded by a superior authority. Over the government and the inhabitants, in the course of time, the Inquisition extended its paralysing force; and in the presence of spies and malicious reporters men put off their intellectual independence, and either remained silent or conformed their utterances to the prescriptions of the Holy Office. This restraint naturally limited the range of ideas that found expression either orally or in writing. Authors had continually to face the possibility of seeing their manuscripts refused the privilege of publication. The subjects not liable to this embarrassment were the history of the colonies discreetly treated, the geography and natural history of the Indies, and the doctrines and history of the Church. Writings on these subjects, therefore, constitute the bulk of the colonial literature of South America. [Sidenote: Writings in verse] Nature as displayed in the unspoiled wilderness of the New World attracted more attention than it had received in Spain, and writers of the history of the Indies gave much space to descriptions of their unfamiliar environment. Great writers of Italy had made verse a preferred form of literature in the sixteenth century, and there is no doubt that, in addition to their example, the exaltation of spirit maintained by the unaccustomed adventures of early colonial life contributed powerfully to the extensive adoption of this form of utterance. It was undoubtedly the new and inspiring scenes and events attending the campaigns against the Araucanians that moved Ercilla to give a poetic record of his experience, in _La Araucana_. When Barco Centenera under similar influences undertook to write an account of the Spanish occupation of the south eastern part of the continent, the result was an “historical poem” called _La Argentina_; and Peralta Barnuevo’s extended history of the early development of Spanish society in Peru assumed the metrical form in _Lima fundada_. The form of Castellanos’ chronicle was practically determined by the success of Ercilla’s verses. And after these came a troop of chroniclers, whose verses were the product of imitation rather than the result of original inspiration. [Sidenote: The question of printing]