COLOMBIA.

This country, embracing the northwestern portion of South America, and extending south beyond the equator, contains an area of 504,773 square miles, besides the undetermined area as to extent recently awarded to it and taken from Venezuela, and a population of nearly 4,000,000, or more than two-thirds that of the United States before the purchase of Louisiana, as to both extent and people. Including a part of the Andes, it is distinguished as mountainous, but has extensive table-lands in the interior, and a considerable extent of alluvial area along the Magdalena River and the coast. Generally, in topographical features, soil, climate, and productions, it is similar to its neighbors Venezuela and Ecuador.

Colombia is divided into nine departments, answering to States, with areas estimated, waiving the extent awarded, and population, respectively, as follows:

Colombia publishes no information of value concerning its industrial or commercial activities, as it is not sought for by the people, and what is obtained must be found in the records of countries doing business with her or by personal observation. Bogota, the capital, lies inlaud about 250 miles, on a table-land about 8,500 feet above the sea, and can never feel strongly the pulse of the world except through an international railway connection. The country produces for export coffee, cacao, cinchona, dyewoods, sugar, hides and skins, fruits, rubber gum, ivory nuts, etc., and, like Venezuela, is rich in mineral resources, valuable woods for house furniture and finishing, and medicinal plants, some of which are of an importance not yet sufficiently appreciated (as that not long since discovered to be a specific for cholera infantum), and all of which are certain to be of continuous commercial interest. The climate is so salubrious generally in the interior and so hot and unhealthy, except for those acclimated, along the coast and lower river courses, as to have escaped, apparently, thermometric record,

GOVERNMENT AND REVENUE.

The government of the Republic of Colombia, as the country is legally designated, is divided into the three branches, executive, legislative, and judicial. The President is elected by restricted suffrage for six years and exercises his authority lawfully through eight ministers, who are, however, directly responsible to the Congress. A vice-president is elected for the same term and at the same time as the President, but Congress elects every two years a substitute for the President to fill the office in case of vacancy.

The Congress consists of a senate and a house of representatives. Each department chooses three senators, who must be natives, with incomes of $1,200 each, and 30 years of age. Representatives are elected by universal suffrage, one for each 50,000 inhabitants, and the only qualification is that they must be 25 years of age. The judicial system is that of the usual graded courts, from local to supreme.

The present constitution was adopted in 1886, by a national council, and by it the governors of the departments are appointed by the President, though each department still regulates its own finances.

The national revenue is mostly derived from customs duties. The official estimate for 1890-'91 was as follows, in United States values: Revenue, $14,127,826; expenditures, $17,723,063. For 1891-'92 it was: Revenue, $14,713,815; expenditures, $17,287,028. The foreign debt is stated by Bulletin No. 2 of the Bureau of American Republics at $14,571,318, mostly due to the British, and the total debt, including the interest, at $20,999,373.

MENTAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

There are two universities and several colleges and technical schools in the Republic, besides fourteen normal schools, and nearly two thousand primary ones, with about 200,000 pupils, instructed gratuitously. The national religion is Roman Catholic, and there are many church schools. Other forms of worship are permitted. The press does not present an extended establishment nor influence, as a whole.

MEANS OF COMMUNICATION.

The roads of Colombia are mostly mule tracks and donkey paths, but for some years soldiers have been employed in improving the principal routes. Three lines of railway are operated, of 148 miles length, and five others are nearly completed. But the Magdalena River is the great highway of the country, however, and with six of its tributaries is likely to remain so indefinitely. It is in places wider than the Mississippi, with a strong current, and is navigable for 600 miles from Barranquilla by steamers of sufficient capacity to accommodate trade. It flows northward, as the Mississippi does southward, and the mouths of the two great rivers are only 1,020 geographical miles apart on north 19152-No. 2--8

and south lines. One will carry cheaply to a great seaport the developed productions of a rich tropical country demanded by this; the other will carry cheaply also to a greater seaport the agricultural products of the great valley of the Mississippi, with its twenty States, an increasing amount of which are necessary for tropical markets Other rivers, as the Zulia, communicate with Lake Maracaibo, and carry a large amount of Colombian coffee and some cacao to its important market. The principal connections for foreign trade are through the Magdalena River and Lake Maracaibo, not considering the transit trade across the isthmus. For international intercourse there are seven lines of steamers, besides sailing vessels and an occasional tramp. Of these 59 are British, aggregating 114,686 tons, one line at least being paid $109,943 per year by the British Government; 17 French, of 57,300 tons, supposed to be subsidized; 13 German, of 18,532 tons, and 10 Spanish, of 15,653 tons; in all 99 steamships, of 206,171 tons, not one of which carries our flag, or is interested in subserving our interests, and few of which touch at our ports.

THE PANAMA CANAL.

The attempt to construct an interoceanic canal across the isthmus, 46 miles long, after an expenditure of $154,509,082, and an unsuccessful attempt to raise a new loan, and then to form a new company, was suspended on the 15th of March, 1889. The old company went into liquidation, and the project of a canal at that point is not likely to be revived in the near future.

PRINCIPAL PRODUCTIONS.

Coffee is the principal article of plantation production. According to a report made in 1887 by Consul General Walker, then of Bogota, to the Department of State, Colombian coffee is produced almost solely in the departments of Cundinamarca and Santander, which have a population of 1,124,600; but Boyacá, lying between them and having over 700,000 inhabitants, has recently become an acknowledged producer. Cundinamarca was estimated to have 3,000 acres (nearly 5 square miles) of plantations, producing 5,000,000 pounds, and Santander over 11 square miles, producing 12,000,000 pounds. Of the whole amount 10 per cent was supposed to be used in the country, leaving 15,300,000 pounds for export. This estimate of production is evidently too low, as the United States imported from Colombia 10,893,354 pounds during the year ending June 30, 1888, and England over 5,275,000 during that calendar year, which together exceed it, while a small amount also was sent to other countries; and during the year ending June 30, 1889, the imports of coffee from Colombia into the United States alone amounted to over 16,000,000 pounds. The three departments mentioned as most suitable to produce coffee have an area of 160,000 square miles; and of this if one fiftieth part, a low proportion, is suited to coffee production,

the possibilities of this area, even at the low rate given by Mr. Walker, promise a future supply of nearly six times the amount at present annually consumed in the United States, which is 578,397,454 pounds for 1889. In fact, coffee growing in Colombia, Venezuela, and other States and islands whose ports are 1,500 miles and less from ports of this country, has practically no limit except that caused by want of labor. This is proportionally true of Colombia; and for obvious causes coffeeproducing countries will not become competitive nor usually self-sustaining in such food products as they now regularly draw from other climes.

Until recent years cinchona was the second in importance of Colombian productions, but exports have greatly decreased. The value of shipments to the United States, England, and France in 1879 was $5,740,000, of which $2,082,000 worth came to this country, against $11,826 worth in 1889. Hides and skins now hold second place, the export value in 1888 being $1,364,000; shipped to the United States, year ending June 30, 1889, $927,866. Other products of plantations, for export, are cocoanuts, cacao, bananas, sugar, and tobacco, and occasionally cotton and corn. India-rubber, vegetable ivory, dye and other woods, and gold and silver are also exported, but it is difficult to find in what amounts. The principal products for home use are, besides some of those named, rice, yucca, yams, sweet potatoes, Egyptian corn, many of the garden vegetables known to us, and the various tropical fruits; and besides domestic animals and fowls there is an abundance of game and excellent fish, with green turtle ad libitum. The latest census of farm and range stock gives the following numbers:

In addition to these there were 58,280 horses, mules, and asses returned without separate enumeration.

Of the rice produced, in the region of Cartagena, our consul reports that the berry is so small that machinery has not been secured with which to successfully clean it. Some wheat is grown on the high lands, but it is not popular because its flour can not be made into light bread. As to cereal cultivation generally, the habits of the people, their farming implements, and the climate are against it. The plow used in Colombia and most of the tropics is the primitive, single-handle, wopd plow of Algeria and Moorish Spain, oftenest without an iron-shod point, drawn by oxen yoked across the forehead firmly with a piece of timber and a rope or piece of rawhide; and although this instrument may disturb the soil, it helps as little as its owner towards reliable,

steady husbandry, such as is known alone to less enervating climes. Iron and steel plows have been introduced on some plantations, but have been invariably broken by the laborers at night, and abandoned. Just so was the first tramway torn up in Puerto Cabello.

FOREIGN COMMERCE.

The facts that Colon and Panama are free ports, through which a large transit trade is carried on across the Isthmus of Panama, and connected by place with it is a considerable export trade of the country; that there is no record kept of the destination of exports from the ports of Cucuta and Ipeles, and that the Government publishes no statements of trade, international or transit, make it impossible that any but an approximate statement should be made of the foreign commerce of Colombia. The principal part of such commerce appears to be with the United States, France, and Great Britain, with Germany as fourth, which latter gives the weight but not the value of articles in her commerce. The following table is arranged from values given in an article in "Commerce of the World," issued by the Department of State, for 1880, and from statistics of the Treasury Department for the year ending June 30, 1890, and is probably as accurate a statement as can be made of the foreign trade of Colombia with the countries named for that year. The direct imports are articles produced in the countries named; the indirect are products of other countries entered into their commerce; and the direct exports are of articles intended for consumption in the named countries. The classification, while showing the full value of the imports and exports respectively, exhibit also the true value of the productions of the several countries entering into those imports and the true extent of the demand of each upon the exports.

The Department of State estimates that the value of the trade of Colombia with other countries than those mentioned would bring the imports for the year up to nineteen millions and the exports to twenty. Unfortunately, neither this nor any other statement of the trade of Colombia, nor of any other country of South America, can be verified satisfactorily, especially in detail.

An attempt to show the foreign trade of Colombia for 1888 was made by United States Minister Abbott, derived from his inspection of the