escaped. The next day Bolivar returned to the palace and his spies soon hunted down the criminals. Santander, suspected of knowledge of the plot, went into banishment, and for the moment civil war was averted. [Illustration: SCENE IN THE ANDES, EN ROUTE TO BOGOTA.] But the incident did not revive Bolivar's waning popularity. News came in 1829 that Paez had again assumed the dictatorship of Venezuela. This was fatal to Bolivar's hopes. With New Granada in a ferment behind him he could not expect to conquer Paez and the formidable llaneros. He made a half-hearted attempt to raise an army, but recoiled before the insuperable difficulties. Again he resigned the presidency, protesting that he was ready to sacrifice all personal ambition to secure the integrity of the Colombian union and the establishment of a strong and ordered government. Again he was re-elected, but meanwhile civil war was raging in Ecuador, where his own troops disavowed his authority. Rebellion also broke out in Pasto, and Peru intervened in Ecuador and sent a fleet to capture Guayaquil and an army to invade Cuenca. Bolivar exhausted his last resources in despatching troops to meet the Peruvian onslaught, but the principal result of the war was to put General Flores in a position to make himself independent dictator of Ecuador. Despairing of longer maintaining himself, but loath to give up his ever-cherished idea of union, the Liberator entered into negotiations with European diplomats to appoint a prince of a reigning family as king of Colombia. But the idea was impracticable. There was no place for a monarch, either native born or foreign, on the Granadan highlands, and Venezuela had already virtually separated. Although a rebellion in Antioquia headed by his old companion in arms, General Cordoba, failed in the fall of 1829, at the end of the year word came that Venezuela had formally declared her independence and had pronounced a sentence of perpetual banishment against the Liberator. This was the last straw, and Bolivar made no further resistance to his fate, but summoned a congress and retired to his country house penniless, sick, and heartbroken. All his vast estates had been sacrificed to the cause of independence; the hardships of his innumerable marches over the cold mountain roads had broken his health; and his mode of life during the intervals of peace had not tended to restore it. Although only forty-seven he was a dying man. Still he clung to his hopes of vindication and re-election, but seeing that even the bulk of his own friends opposed, he at last sent in a formal resignation. He lived only a few months after congress had elected Mosquera president.