If

the vanishing point, is the new President to find the money required to satisfy the exorbitant demands of the soldiers, and at the same time meet engagements recently entered into with the foreign creditors? Don Vicente solves this question, he will have shown some of the qualities of a Colbert or a Hamilton which, at present, he is not generally supposed to possess.

Early in 1912, when I close this chapter, General Gomez is still in power. He rules the country, as did his predecessor, by means of the Andean troops and the fear of a return of Castro which is felt by Venezuelans as well as by foreigners. Peace prevails and the plantations are protected. Large and illegal commissions are raised by the freebooters in power upon every industry, and it cannot truthfully be said that there are any signs of a permanent improvement in political conditions.

CHAPTER X

COLOMBIA AND THE SPANISH MAIN

By the old "Spanish Main" is generally understood the entire Caribbean coast from the Cape of Yucatan to the mouth of the Orinoco, but for the present we are only concerned with that portion which, stretching between the Isthmus of Panama and Guajira Cape, constitutes the northern shore of the Republic of Colombia. This little-known country is bounded on the northwest by the Caribbean and the recently created republic of Panama, south and southeast by Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Venezuela, and west by the Pacific Ocean. In a word, it stretches from the equator northward to a little beyond the twelfth parallel and from the seventieth to the eighty-second meridian, comprising a country larger than France and Italy combined, and though it is closer to Florida than Missouri is to New York, it is certainly less known to the average North American than is the interior of the Black Continent.

Colombia's isolation is all the more remarkable because of her naturally strong position in the matter of commerce and international relations. She is the only South American country that occupies a continental position approximating that of the United States. She has nearly five hundred miles of coast on the Pacific and about the same on the Atlantic, and of course the early completion of the Panama Canal will immensely emphasise these advantages. In 1849 Colombia was

mining ten times as much gold as the United States. To-day her mineral output is insignificant in comparison with ours and is only about half of what this country, our closest South American neighbour, produced a hundred years ago. Of course the explanation of this anomaly in development is that the Colombians, when they work, work with mules and oxen, while we have bridled steam and harnessed electricity. The vast mineral resources of this wonderful country therefore remain nearly intact. There is a great lack of reliable statistics, but it seems quite certain that, if coal should give out in England and the United States, there is enough in Colombia to supply the world for centuries. We will not have to invent a new fuel, as some great chemists predict, but we may have to invent a new government for Colombia.*

The topographical features of the country are varied and interesting. There are ranges of high mountains, broad, deep, and almost paradisical valleys, rolling steppes, lofty plains, cold wind-swept paramos, and snow-capped sierras. As Baron Humboldt said, the traveller only needs a thermometer and a mule to find any desired climate within the compass of a few miles. When he has tired of perpetual spring on the tableland, he can in a few hours' ride find winter on the mountains above or steaming summer in the valleys of the hot country below.

The capital of this highly favoured country is, unfortunately for tourists, situated far inland. It requires a great deal more time to reach Bogotá from the seacoast than it does to cross Siberia or to journey from

*The trade relations and the fiscal system of Colombia are described in Appendix E, Note I, page 436.

Washington to Alaska. The most frequented approach to the capital is by the valley of the Magdalena, because the approach from the Pacific port of Buena Ventura, though also accessible, entails more mule-back riding, and to this the untrained traveller is generally

averse.

The navigable channel of the great river Magdalena is constantly changing and has many surprises in store for the impatient traveller in the flat-bottomed bungoes. The vagaries of this fickle stream are well illustrated by this incident of Magdalena navigation. Forty years ago the old Spanish city of Mompox was a river port, but it is now nearly twenty-five miles distant from the water. Some two hundred miles up from the coast the river valley branches off into that of the Cauca, one of the most picturesque and beautiful regions on the continent-in fact, in the world. Portions of this valley and nearly the whole upper end of it have an elevation of some 3,000 feet above the sea and a most delightful climate. The temperature is rarely above 75 or below 65 degrees the year round. The soil is well adapted to the cultivation of both sugar and cotton, and the foothills on either side are suitable to the cultivation of the cereals of the north temperate zone. In the old colonial days this little valley was possibly the most desirable place of residence in what was then New Granada. Here in the seventeenth century came and settled religious and political refugees from every European country. Among these were many Spanish and Portuguese Jews-men of culture and of wealth who bought lands and converted this little arcadian valley into a terrestrial paradise. Unhappily all this ended with the independence war and the emancipation of the

slaves. The valleys are dotted with magnificent haciendas, which are either in ruins or abandoned to the negroes, and to-day I understand these places are anything but a desirable residence for white families.

In a dip of the great Andean range, and nearly two miles above the sea level, lies the great Savannah of Bogotá. Here rises the capital city, and while difficult to reach it is certainly most centrally situated. It is within a few leagues of the Magdalena and almost as near to the upper reaches of the Meta, one of the navigable tributaries of the Orinoco. When the railroads are built and the rivers put to their proper uses a great commercial future will dawn for Bogotá. Today, apart from its chronic civic commotions, the capital way up in the clouds is best known, in Latin-America at least, for its literary attainments and the scholars which it has produced. With Quito, the capital of Ecuador, Bogotá disputes the somewhat hackneyed title of the Athens of South America. The Bogotanos are great builders of lofty rhyme, but averse to roadmaking. It is a fact that with one or two exceptions the best roads in the country are the mule tracks and the goat trails which the Conquistadores left behind them.

After decades of discussion, dating from the days of Bolivar the Liberator and involving the diplomatic career of William Henry Harrison, afterward President of the United States, and of Caleb Cushing, whose activity as Uncle Sam's agent was truly worldwide, the site of the Isthmian canal has passed irrevocably out of the hands of the people of Bogotá.

It would seem that a great historic moment, a political opportunity unparalleled, a last chance to get into