The Cauca flows about a league from Popayan with a broad and quick current, subject to dreadful inundations, in June, July and August, when the torrents descend from Guanacas, and the neighbouring mountains; and in the immediate vicinity of this city are the great volcanoes of Puracé and Sotara. The streets of Popayan are broad, straight and level, the town being built in a rectangular shape; the houses have mostly only one story, or a ground-floor; and though made of unburnt brick, are very handsome. The number of Indians is not considerable, most of the people being of the mulatto cast, owing to the great number of negroes who have always been employed here and in the neighbouring mines; the inhabitants have been computed at above 25,000. The governor of the intendancy resides in this town as does the bishop of Popayan, who is suffragan of the archbishop of Bogota. The cathedral was endowed in 1547, and there are several convents and churches, with two nunneries. It is also the seat of the royal mint, the annual coinage of which is estimated at a million of dollars. A tribunal of finance is also erected in this city, to receive the capitation tax on the Indians, the kingʼs fifth on metals, the duties on goods, and other branches of the royal revenue. The remaining towns of note, are _Carthago_, in the northern part, which is a small place on the road to _Ibague_, also a place of little note, except for being the beginning of the passage of Quindiu, and is eighteen leagues south of Honda, and five or six leagues west of the Magdalena. _Cali_, in 3° 15ʹ north latitude, 73° 16ʹ west longitude, the chief place of the district of the same name, was originally founded by Benalcazar, but afterwards removed, on account of the unhealthiness of its climate, to a short distance from its former site. _Timana_, the chief town of that district, eighty miles east of Popayan, in 2° 12ʹ north latitude, 74° 46ʹ west longitude. _Neyva_ or _Neyba_, in 3° 10ʹ north latitude, 74° 16ʹ west longitude, 120 miles N. E. of Popayan. _La Plata_, or _Sebastian del Oro_, in 2° 50ʹ north latitude, 75° west longitude, 60 miles E. of Popayan. _Mercaderes_, in 1° 45ʹ north latitude, three leagues north of the Rio Mayo, and on the confines of the bishoprics of Quito and Popayan, celebrated as having been the place where Huana Capac carried his conquests towards the north. _St. Juan de Pasto_, chief town of the district of the same name, in which are the sources of the Caqueta, falsely supposed to be those of the Rio Negro or Orinoco; this town is eighty miles S.S.W. of Popayan, in 1° 15ʹ north latitude, 76° 46ʹ west longitude, and contains 7000 inhabitants.