In the belief that it still existed, therefore, Quesada and his company of nearly eight hundred men had left Santa Marta sometime in 1536, and, harassed by bands of savages, forced their way, with almost inconceivable difficulty, through the wild forests and undergrowth, along the foothills bordering the Magdalena and up the steep side of the Cordillera to the delightful series of plateaux which were then, as they are yet, the populous heart of the country and the principal seat of her wealth and culture. In the continual fights with the Indians and from starvation and fatigue, three-fourths of the company had died, but here the survivors found themselves at last in a beautiful, fertile region, where the climate is perfect and all the products of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly, and where the inhabitants, the Chibchas, had reached a state of civilization not much inferior to that of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Caras of Ecuador. Quesada, after having subdued them, had founded Bogotá near the site of the Chibcha capital, on the 7th of August, 1538. Later the same year, to his dismay, Benalcázar, who had come down the Magdalena from Pasto, in the opposite direction, reached this same plateau, and, a few days later, to the confusion of both, another expedition, under the command of Nicolaus Federmann, which had started from Coro in Venezuela, crossed the mountains south of Maracaibo, continued in that direction along the _llanos_ (plains) at the eastern base of the Cordillera and ascended at that point, also put in an appearance. Thus these three adventurers, believing they had almost reached the goal for which many were yet to search, found themselves simultaneously in the very neighborhood of the former domain of the gilded chiefs, but each confronted with the prospect of losing all that he had toiled so hard for unless he could overcome his rivals.