Colombia is called a very mountainous country, and the most casual visitor would not dispute the statement. Mountains are in evidence along both shores and on the way to interior cities; but the unseen part, the hinterland, is of a different character. Only two fifths of the country is mountainous, but this part extremely so. In this section, very sensibly, most of the people live, as in the neighboring countries; for as the mountains are near the sea the majority of the early settlers soon found their way up into the more healthful and agreeable highlands. The chief drawback to these is the difficulty of access; and we can not but admire the courage and endurance of those stout-hearted people who settled in remote places among the mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and amid untold hardships there preserved for centuries civilization and a high degree of culture. MOUNTAINS The great mountain chains of Colombia constitute the northern terminal of the great Andean system. In northern Ecuador the Andes has become a single massive chain; but beginning in Colombia with an irregular mass of peaks, the mountains soon divide into three distinct ranges, the East, West, and Central Cordilleras. The =Central Cordillera= may be considered the main range, having the highest peaks: three above 18,000 feet, and a number nearly 16,000. Many of the summits are crowned with eternal snow, and many are volcanoes, as are peaks in the southern group and in the other two chains. The =West Cordillera=, branching from the Central, follows the coast line to 4° N. Lat. where it leaves a space on the west for another coast ridge, the Serranía de Baudó, which has come down from the north as the conclusion of the low Panamá range and terminates the North American system. Between this and the West Cordillera are the valleys of the Atrato and the San Juan Rivers; the former flowing north into the Caribbean Sea, the other south, turning into the Pacific where the low Baudó ends. On the other (east) side of the West Cordillera is the Cauca Valley with the Central Cordillera beyond. These two Cordilleras end in low hills some distance from the Caribbean coast. The =East Cordillera=, with the Magdalena Valley between that and the Central, divides into two branches: one running far north dying out at the extremity of the Goajira Peninsula, the other more to the east, extending into Venezuela. Curiously, along the coast of the Caribbean, northeast of the mouth of the Magdalena, is another seemingly independent range of mountains, detached from the East Cordillera and quite in line with the Central: the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which has snow crowned summits rising 16,000-17,000 feet above the sea. The entire mountainous region of Colombia is subject to earthquakes, which, however, are less severe than those in Ecuador and Venezuela; in some sections there are volcanic disturbances. PLAINS