The chief obstacle to the thorough organization of the Inquisition was the immense extent of the territory subjected to a single tribunal. Until the kingdom of New Granada was cut off, in 1610, by the establishment of a tribunal at Cartagena, this comprised the West India Islands and the whole of South America, save the undefined limits of Portuguese Brazil.[600] The three centres of Lima, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Ayres were far apart in distance and still farther in the character of the intervening territory, much of as yet scarce explored, the Indians but partially subdued and the Spanish settlements few and far between. Chile, indeed, could be reached by sea, in a voyage usually of two or three weeks, but the difficulties of communication with the interior provinces and those of the River Plate were embarrassing. When the tribunal consulted the Suprema about them it could only reply that cases arising in Paraguay and la Plata must be dealt with as best they could; the accused at a distance should be ordered to present themselves to the tribunal and not be arrested unless there were manifest heresy or evidence justifying sequestration[601]--a suggestion dictated rather by thrift than mercy. The device which was effective in Spain, of commissioners in all centres of population and familiars scattered everywhere, was only a partial remedy for the difficulty. The power of the commissioner, as we have seen, was jealously limited; he could execute orders, take testimony and report, but he was forbidden to arrest unless there was imminent danger that a culprit might fly; in no case could he conduct a trial; his functions were purely executive and in no sense judicial. A vast proportion of the cases tried by the Inquisition were for offences comparatively trivial--blasphemy, careless or irreverent remarks, or the more or less harmful superstitions classed as sorcery--and the transmission of denunciations for such matters, over hundreds of leagues of forest and mountain, and awaiting a reply with instructions, was manifestly too cumbrous a process to be practical; the half-breed crone, the vagrant soldier or the wandering pedlar, who were the usual culprits in such cases, would be dead or vanished before an order of arrest could be received.