general selected, and the missionaries expelled. When the Spanish governor marched to the frontier with five thousand men the Indians offered battle which the Spaniards dared not accept. The former continued firm in their demands, and peace was only re-established by abolishing the obnoxious officials. Meanwhile nothing of moment had disturbed the slow and even current of colonial progress in northern and central Chile. The country was poor, its exports small and its imports smaller. Great fortunes were not accumulated as in other South American countries, though the national life rested on a broader, surer basis. The wheat and cattle, the fruits and poultry introduced by the Spaniards raised the standard of alimentation and the vitality of the people, while the continual admixture of Spanish blood augmented individual initiative and intelligence. The towns at first grew very slowly. Santiago itself had only eight thousand inhabitants at the end of the seventeenth century, while the other so-called cities, Coquimbo, Castro, Valparaiso, Chillan, Concepcion, and Valdivia, were in fact little more than villages. The rural districts were populous, for the soil was fertile, the climate healthful, and the means of a simple subsistence abounded. Imported vices and diseases, and the oppressions suffered at the hands of the first Spanish proprietors, had somewhat thinned out the native population, but these losses were largely made up by a rapid increase of the element which boasted white descent, and in the latter part of the eighteenth century Spanish Chile was more densely populated than the Atlantic seaboard of North America. [Illustration: HOUSE OF CONGRESS, SANTIAGO.]