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Since then, and especially after the conquest of Rioja by Alfonso VI. of Castile, the city's significance died out completely, and to-day it is but a shadow of what it previously had been, or better still, it is an ignored village among ruins. Still further west, and likewise situated in a vale to the south of the Ebro, Santo Domingo de la Calzada ranks as the third city.
The Roman military road from Tarragon to Astorga passed through the Rioja, and Calahorra, a Celtiberian stronghold slightly to the south, was conquered by the invaders after as sturdy a resistance as that of Numantia itself.
His influence over half a dozen of the despotic governors in the interior was still immense; the Pampa was his own, after all his defeats; and it was shrewdly suspected that his indifference to power in La Rioja, and his mysterious visit to the maritime capital, were indications of a design to seize upon the government of Buenos Ayres itself.
No one but the hero of La Rioja, he insinuated, had sufficient influence to bring about a settlement of these disputes; no one but he had power to prevent a war; would he not, therefore, hasten to Tucuman, and obviate so dire a calamity? Quiroga hesitated, refused, consented, wavered, and again declined the task.
Persecuted no longer, nay, even caressed by the government, he returned to his native plains, to stalk with added haughtiness and new titles to esteem among his brother Gauchos of La Rioja.
Ours be the task to condense into a few pages the story of his life and death. The Argentine province of La Rioja embraces vast tracts of sandy desert. Destitute of rivers, bare of trees, it is only by means of artificial and scanty irrigation that the peasant can cultivate a narrow strip of land.
La Rioja and San Juan were the only two provinces in which Quiroga's heavy hand was felt continuously; in the others he ruled rather by influence than in person; and the Gauchos, as a matter of course, were enthusiastic for a man who exalted the peasant at the expense of the citizen, whose exactions were actually burdensome only to the wealthy, and who permitted every license to his followers, with the single exception of disobedience to himself.
He chooses the most toilsome, the most unintellectual, but, at the same time, the most remunerative handicraft, that of the tapiador, or builder of mud walls. At San Juan, in the orchard of the Godoys, at Fiambalá, in La Rioja, in the city of Mendoza, they will show you walls which the hands of General Facundo Quiroga, Comandante de Campaña, etc., etc., put together.
The date of its foundation is absolutely unknown, and all that can be said is that, once it had fallen into the hands of the monarchs of Castile , it grew rapidly in importance, out-shining the other three Rioja cities. It is seated on the southern banks of the Ebro in the most fertile part of the whole region, and enjoys a delightful climate.
Burgos at the same time served as fortress-town against the rival kings of Navarra to the north and east; the latter, on the other hand, fortified the Rioja against Castile until at last it fell into the hands of the latter. Then Burgos, no longer a frontier town, grew to be capital of the new-formed kingdom of Castile.
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