Quesada had lost three-fourths of his men in reaching the promised land, but once there he encountered fewer difficulties than any of the other great Spanish conquerors. The numerous nation of the Chibchas inhabited the southern plateaux, who acknowledged allegiance to the zipa of Meuqueta. But their so-called empire possessed no military force or cohesion, although they had carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection. They manufactured cotton cloths, mined gold and emeralds, worked artistic ornaments, had a circulating medium and a calendar, lived in houses, built splendid temples, and had tools hard enough to carve stones into elaborate sculptures. Their government was absolute; crimes were severely and relentlessly punished; the caste of priests wielded great power. Altogether they appear to have reached a stage of material civilisation not much inferior to the aztecs of Mexico, the caras of Ecuador, or the incas of Peru, but in efficiency of governmental and military organisation they fell far below those great peoples. Spanish chroniclers have amused themselves with recording traditions of great wars in which the Chibchas had assembled armies of hundreds of thousands not long before the conquest, but the fact remains that less than two hundred Spaniards overcame them and reduced them to unquestioning obedience within a few months and without serious loss. Indeed, Quesada's successors had more difficulty with the smaller nations who inhabited the northern plateaux of Tunja, Socorro, and Tundama, and the most serious resistance was made by the semi-savage tribes of the upper Magdalena, who fought nearly as desperately as the Indians of Antioquia and the Caribbean coast.