rn part
of the viceroyalty with Venezuela into a single republic. The latter
plan he laid down before a Congress which assembled at Angostura in
February, 1819, and which promptly chose him President of the republic
and vested him with the powers of dictator. In June, at the head of 2100
men, he started on his perilous journey over the Andes.

Up through the passes and across bleak plateaus the little army
struggled till it reached the banks of the rivulet of Boyaca, in the
very heart of New Granada. Here, on the 7th of August, Bolivar inflicted
on the royalist forces a tremendous defeat that gave the deathblow to
the domination of Spain in northern South America. On his triumphal
return to Angostura, the Congress signalized the victory by declaring
the whole of the viceroyalty an independent state under the name of
the "Republic of Colombia" and chose the Liberator as its provisional
President. Two years later, a fundamental law it had adopted was
ratified with certain changes by another Congress assembled at Rosario
de Cucuta, and Bolivar was made permanent President.

Southward of Colombia lay the viceroyalty of Peru, the oldest, richest,
and most conservative of the larger Spanish dominions on the continent.
Intact, except for the loss of Chile, it had found territorial
compensation by stretching its power over the provinces of Quito and
Charcas, the one wrenched off from the former New Granada, the other
torn away from what had been La Plata. Predominantly royalist
in sentiment, it was like a huge wedge thrust in between the two
independent areas. By thus cutting off the patriots of the north from
their comrades in the south, it threatened both with destruction of
their liberty.

Again fortune intervened from abroad, this time directly from Spain
itself. Ferdinand VII, who had gathered an army of twenty thousand men
at Cadiz, was ready to deliver a crushing blow at the colonies when in
January, 1890, a mutiny among the troops and revolution throughout the
country entirely frustrated the plan. But although that reactionary
monarch was compelled to accept the Constitution of 1819, the Spanish
liberals were unwilling to concede to their fellows in America anything
more substantial than representation in the Cortes. Independence they
would not tolerate. On the other hand, the example of the mother country
in arms against its King in the name of liberty could not fail to give
heart to the cause of liberation in the p