The disorders near Bogota ceased after the arrival of the first president, Neiva. He actively engaged in promoting new colonisation, founding the city of Ocana in the Maracaibo watershed north-west of Pamplona, as well as Leiva and several other towns. He opened a road down from Bogota to Honda at the head of navigation on the Magdalena, and in his time great flatboats were introduced. These were poled against the river's rapid current, and they continued the sole means of river freight transportation for nearly three centuries. The cornerstone of the Bogota cathedral was laid, and schools established which soon counted among the most successful and famous in Spanish America. The country prospered after a fashion. The fertile plateaux from Bogota to the north were admirably adapted to the residence of Europeans, and the rich soil soon produced large crops of wheat and fed great herds of cattle. This region was so attractive that the Spaniards became attached to the country and contentedly established themselves as semi-feudal proprietors of estates cultivated by the docile and industrious Indians. A considerable proportion of the successive generations of office-holders sent out from Spain, applied for land-grants and remained in the country, founding new Creole families. Mixture with the aborigines occurred on a large scale and the process of Caucasianising the population made greater progress than in many other parts of Spanish America. The region was too far from the sea-coast to attract haphazard adventurers or to serve as a Botany Bay for convicts; the Spanish settlers belonged as a rule to good families; and the standard of living, education, and manners was exceptionally high. Bogota became one of the principal centres of Spanish American culture, and Colombian authors are celebrated for their excellence throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In the invigorating climate the Creoles retained their physical vigour and the concentration of population on these densely inhabited plateaux increased their mental alertness. Living, however, as a superior class in the midst of a subject population, they acquired no taste or capacity for commerce or industry. A Creole was by birth a gentleman and exempt from manual labour. The Colombian plateaux made little material progress, and settled down into an eventless, patriarchal existence. [Illustration: FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA.]