to a greater or lesser
extent; in others the situation continues practically unaltered to the
present day.

In the north, as has been said, the era of chaos was not long in
asserting itself. New Granada had been divided into three Republics,
those of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador; while the new State of
Bolivia had been set up between the frontiers of Paraguay and Peru.
General Sucre, one of the chief military heroes of the war of liberation
in the north, was, appropriately enough, made the first President of
this new Republic of Bolivia. At the start unease and fretfulness marked
the relations of each of the new States with the others. It seemed
almost as if the Continent had become so imbued with warlike ideas that
it had forgotten how to lay down the sword.

There was, moreover, lamentably small inducement to a life of peaceful
labour. The industrial situation of the north was as gloomy as elsewhere
in the Continent. The labouring classes found that their condition,
instead of becoming bettered by the revolution, had suffered to no small
degree. It was not surprising, indeed, that at the time these
unfortunate folk could discern no benefit, but only added curses from
this state of liberation of which they had heard so much, and of which
they were now in the so-called enjoyment. Very great numbers of the men
had been killed in the course of the war, and their wives and children
were left behind in a condition of misery and starvation.

Curiously enough, too, although the goods which now entered these
countries from abroad had, owing to the intelligent methods of the new
Governments, become so reduced in price that in ordinary circumstances
they should have been within the range of all, the peasant could no
longer afford to pay even for these cheap luxuries. The rich Spaniards,
the employers of labour, were now no longer on the spot to give out work
and to pay wages. In the industrial confusion the peasant only on the
rarest occasions found anyone capable of occupying his labour. He was
thus reduced to attempt the formation of a self-contained establishment
of his own, a matter which, in the majority of cases, was sufficiently
difficult. Nevertheless, the peasant contrived to support himself on the
maize and vegetables which he grew in the neighbourhood of his hut and
by the pigs which he reared. He knew well enough, nevertheless, that,
although he might expect to maintain a precarious existence by this
means, he