The republic of Columbia is, with Mexico and Guatemala, the only state of Spanish America which occupies at once the coasts opposite to Europe and to Asia. From Cape Paria to the western extremity of Veragua is a distance of 400 sea leagues: and from Cape Burica to the mouth of Rio Tumbez the distance is 260. The shore possessed by the republic of Columbia consequently equals in length the line of coasts extending from Cadiz to Dantzic, or from Ceuta to Jaffa. This immense resource for national industry is combined with a degree of cultivation of which the importance has not hitherto been sufficiently acknowledged. The isthmus of Panama forms part of the territory of Columbia, and that neck of land, if traversed by good roads and stocked with camels, may one day serve as a portage for the commerce of the world, even though the plains of Cupica, the bay of Mandinga or the Rio Chagre should not afford the possibility of a canal for the passage of vessels proceeding from Europe to China,* or from the United States to the north-west coast of America. (* The old vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres extended also along a small portion of the South Sea coast.) When considering the influence which the configuration of countries (that is, the elevation and the form of coasts) exercises in every district on the progress of civilization and the destiny of nations, I have pointed out the disadvantages of those vast masses of triangular continents, which, like Africa and the greater part of South America, are destitute of gulfs and inland seas. It cannot be doubted that the existence of the Mediterranean has been closely connected with the first dawn of human cultivation among the nations of the west, and that the articulated form of the land, the frequency of its contractions and the concatenation of peninsulas favoured the civilization of Greece, Italy, and perhaps of all Europe westward of the meridian of the Propontis. In the New World the uninterruptedness of the coasts and the monotony of their straight lines are most remarkable in Chili and Peru. The shore of Columbia is more varied, and its spacious gulfs, such as that of Paria, Cariaco, Maracaybo, and Darien, were, at the time of the first discovery better peopled than the rest and facilitated the interchange of productions. That shore possesses an incalculable advantage in being washed by the Caribbean Sea, a kind of inland sea with several outlets, and the only one pertaining to the New Continent. This basin, whose various shores form portions of the United States, of the republic of Columbia, of Mexico and several maritime powers of Europe, gives birth to a peculiar and exclusively American system of trade. The south-east of Asia with its neighbouring archipelago and, above all, the state of the Mediterranean in the time of the Phoenician and Greek colonies, prove that the nearness of opposite coasts, not having the same productions and not inhabited by nations of different races, exercises a happy