A taste for town life soon became characteristic of the Spanish-Americans, and wherever able they crowded into the towns in preference to staying on their ranches. Wealth, intelligence, and political activity, therefore, came to be concentrated in a few _foci_. The system of granting immense tracts of land and dividing up the Indians as slaves among the proprietors would apparently have a tendency to produce a landed aristocracy. But the money profits in colonial days were small, and the great landowner lived in the same style as his poorer neighbour. Titles of nobility did not exist, and the constitution of society was decidedly democratic. From the very earliest times no love was lost between the Creoles and the newly arrived Spaniards. The governor was almost invariably a Spaniard, while the Cabildo and its officers were usually Creoles. CHAPTER III THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The greatest name in the history of Buenos Aires during the early years of the seventeenth century is that of Hernandarias Saavedra. Of distinguished ancestry and pure Spanish blood, he was born at Asuncion in 1561. A thorough Creole, his education was confined to the instruction he received at the convent of the Franciscan Fathers in his native town. At fifteen he left school and joined an expedition against the Indians of the Andes. He showed remarkable capacity in fighting on the plains, and his shrewdness and firmness in dealing with the aborigines were even more valuable than his courage. Juan de Garay, the far-sighted Basque who founded Buenos Aires, was the patron, model, and hero of young Hernandarias, who followed him in his great expedition over the southern pampa. When Garay, the great Indian fighter and coloniser, perished, his mantle fell on the young man's shoulders. In 1588 Hernandarias distinguished himself in the defence of Corrientes against the Indians of Chaco and was the leader in the difficult campaigns undertaken in retaliation. By the time he had reached thirty he was the leading Creole in all the vast region from the Upper Paraguay down to Buenos Aires, and when the Spanish Lieutenant-General of Asuncion was deposed an open Cabildo called him to the vacancy.