Excerpt from The Conquest of New Granada: Being the Life of Gonzalo Jimenez De Quesada The names both of Pizarro and Cortes are household words. The conquests of Peru and Mexico are known to everyone. The Aztec and the Inca empires are generally assumed to have been the only two states in the Indies the conquerors found, that were well organized, and had evolved, or were evolving, a civilized society. The story of their conquest reads like a fairy-tale, and Pizarro and Cortes are taken as the archetypes of the conquerors. The history of the conquest of New Granada - that is, Colombia - has passed almost unnoticed as far as English letters are concerned. Quesada's name is fallen into oblivion, even in Spain itself. Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada was as great as were Pizarro or Cortes, confronted equal perils and endured far greater hardships, conquering an empire just as interesting as was Peru or Mexico, far more remote and inaccessible. Pizarro and Cortes knew more or less where they were going to; Quesada fell upon his conquest by accident, just as a chance stroke with a pick sometimes reveals a rich lode in a mine. There has been but one real conquest worthy of the name - that of the New World. The human race in all its annals holds no record like it. Uncharted seas, unnavigated gulfs; new constellations, the unfathomable black pit of the Magellan clouds; the Cross hung in the sky; the very needle varying from the pole; islands innumerable and an unknown world rising from out the sea; all unsuspected races living in a flora never seen by Europeans, made it an achievement unique in all the history of mankind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."