The province of Venezuela by this time was completely conquered, but New Andalusia, or Cumaná, which again had a Governor of its own, still continued to be the scene of strife; and Vides, as Governor, did not improve matters by his encouragement of the slave trade. At length, in 1652, the suggestion of one Francisco Rodriguez Liete to the bishops of Puerto Rico, made four years previously, was adopted, and, all military operations against the Indians were forbidden, with a view to carrying out organised attempts to civilise them through the missions, and in 1656 a station was again founded at Barcelona by Franciscan monks. As an indication of the success of these new methods it may be observed that within 150 years (before 1799) the Franciscans founded 38 towns with 25,000 Indian inhabitants, while the previous equal period of aggression and oppression had effected no settlement of a lasting nature. In 1686 missions were established round Cumaná and south of the Delta by the Capuchins, while the Jesuits undertook to civilise the Orinoco. The latter were obliged on account of ill-health to abandon their first stations within a very short time, but returned again in 1725 to meet with increased success. The inhuman cruelty which their creed allowed some of them to practise towards the pagan Indians undid much of the good they may have at first accomplished, and in the nineteenth century their missions became deserted, with one or two exceptions, while the last of the missionaries after the revolution seem to have been as licentious and lazy as their predecessors had been cruel and energetic. The founding of the University of Carácas by Philip V. in 1721 seemed to promise development of the colony on sound lines, but three years later a monopoly of trade was granted to the Compañía Guipuzcoana, a step which probably did more than any other single act to bring about disaffection towards Spain. The province was separated from New Granada in 1731, when the whole of what is now Venezuela (with the exception of the Maracaibo region, incorporated in 1777) was included in a new _Capitania-General_ of that name. The first Captain-General was Colonel Don Sebastian Garcia de la Torre.