The only schools were priests' seminaries in which little except theology was taught and the level of intellectual culture among the Creoles sank very low. Taxes were heavy, public employments and titles of nobility were openly sold by the government, commerce amounted to little, because little gold and silver was mined and other articles would not bear the heavy transportation charges and the exactions and restrictions of the Spanish colonial system. The magnificent stone highways which the Cara and Inca monarchs had built were allowed to fall into ruins, but their remains are to be seen even to this day on the table-land near Cuenca, still solid in spite of the storms and earthquakes of four centuries. Population on the plateau slowly decreased. Quito had been a great city while it was the Cara capital--the residence of Huaina Capac and Atahuallpa--and in 1735 Ulloa estimated that it contained over seventy thousand people, but at the end of the eighteenth century it had fallen to less than forty thousand. However, the introduction of the plantain undoubtedly brought about an increase of population in the coast provinces, and Guayaquil flourished with the cultivation of cacao and sugar-cane. No great figure of a soldier, reformer, or administrator stands out among all the hundreds of officials who were sent over from Spain to rule the country. Even records of the growth of jealousies between Spaniards and Creoles, such as we encounter in other countries of South America are wanting. The Creoles appear never to have been able to interrupt the monotonous course of Spanish administration. In 1564 the old kingdom of Quito, with the addition of some outlying Colombian and Peruvian provinces, was erected into a presidency, and a royal audiencia, or court of appeals, with important administrative functions, was established. The viceroy of Lima continued to exercise nominal jurisdiction over all Spanish South America until the year 1719, when the viceroyalty of New Granada was first created. The Quito presidency was attached to the new jurisdiction, and this emphasised the separation from Peru. Twelve hundred miles of crooked, wretched road intervened between Quito and Lima, while the distance to Bogota was less than half as great. However, the natural outlet for the plateau from Cuenca north to Popayan was the road to Guayaquil, and the Quito presidency was therefore co-extensive with a natural commercial subdivision of the continent.