A sea-wall of solid masonry, a rampart upon whose flat top we may walk at will, presents itself to the winds and spray that blow in from the Gulf of Darien upon the ancient city of Cartagena, and the booming of the waves there, in times of storm, might be the echo of the guns of Drake, for this rampart was raised along the shore in those days when he and other famous sea rovers ranged the Spanish Main, over which Cartagena still looks out. Cartagena was a rich city in those days, the outlet for the gold and silver and other seductive matters of New Granada, under the viceroys, and the buccaneers knew it well, this tempting bait of a treasure storehouse and haven of the Plate ships. This, then, was the reason for the massive sea-wall, one of the strongest and oldest of the Spanish fortifications of the New World, which Spain had monopolized and which the sea rovers disputed. There is a certain Mediterranean aspect about Cartagena, which was named by its founder, the Spaniard, Pedro de Heredia, in 1533, after the Spanish city of Carthage, founded by the Phœnicians of the famous Carthage of Africa. The steamer on which we have journeyed has crossed the American Mediterranean, as the Caribbean has been not altogether fancifully termed, for there is a certain analogy with the original, and passing the islands and entering the broad channel brings into view the ancient and picturesque town, with the finest harbour on the northern coast of the continent, a smooth, land-locked bay, with groups of feathery palms upon its shores. Backed by the verdure-clad hills--whereon the better-class residents have their homes, thereby escaping the malarias of the littoral--the walls and towers of the town arise, and, entering, we are impressed by a certain old-world dignity and massiveness of the place, a one-time home of the viceroy and of the Inquisition. There are many memories of the past here of interest to the English traveller. Among these stands out the attempt of Admiral Vernon, in 1741, who with a large naval force and an army--under General Wentworth--arrived expecting an outpost of the place, which Drake had so easily held to ransom, to fall readily before him. The attempt was a failure, otherwise the British Empire might have been established upon this coast. Colombia, like Mexico, has been a land of what might be termed vanished hopes and arrested development. But the old land of New Granada, as Colombia was earlier termed, has not the weight of wasted opportunity and outraged fortune which now envelops the land of New Spain, which in our generation promised so much and fell from grace. Colombia, by a slower path, may yet reach a greater height than Mexico as an exponent of Spanish American culture.