Colombia, like Peru or Mexico, or Ecuador or other of the sisterhood of nations in our survey, is a land of great contrasts, whether of Nature or man. The unhealthy lowlands of the coast give place to the delightful valleys of higher elevations, which in their turn merge into the bitter cold of the melancholy _paramos_, or upland passes, and tablelands of the Andes. Or the cultivated lands pass to savage forests, where roam tribes of natives who perhaps have never looked upon the face of the white man. Every product of Nature in these climates is at hand or possible, and the precious minerals caused New Granada to be placed high on the roll of gold-producing colonies of the Indies. The coffee of the lowlands, the bananas, shipped so largely from the pretty port of Santa Marta, the cotton, the sugar and the cocoa, grown so far mainly for home consumption; the coconuts, the ivory-nuts--_tagua_, or coróza, for foreign use in button-making largely--the rice, the tobacco, the quinine, of which shipments have been considerable; the timber, such as cedar and mahogany; the cattle and hides, the gold, silver, platinum, copper, coal, emeralds, cinnabar, lead, the iron and petroleum--such are the chief products of this favoured land. Many of the mines and railways are under British control, but in general trade German interests have been strong, and the German has identified himself, after his custom, with the domestic life of the Republic. A rich flora, including the beautiful orchids, is found here, as in the neighbouring State of Venezuela. Two-fifths of Colombia is mountainous territory, the plateaux and spurs of the Andes, between which latter run the Magdalena and Cauca Rivers. The roads are mule-trails, such as bring again and again before us as we experience their discomforts the fact that Colombia, in common with all the Andine Republics, is still in the Middle Ages as far as means of rural transport are concerned. Yet the landscape is often of the most delightful, and the traveller, in the intervals of expending his breath in cursing the trails, will raise his eyes in admiration of the work of Nature here.