The decline of Carthagena seems to have commenced with the present century, and to have steadily continued to within the past fifteen years, when the commerce of the country began to revive. In the mean time the ship-canal connecting the port with the great fluvial highway of the interior having fallen into disuse, became filled up and overgrown with tropical jungle; so that the few foreign trading-vessels visiting the coast sought harborage farther up, at a place called Barranquilla, near the mouth of the Magdalena. Barranquilla has become the chief city of commercial importance within the United States of Colombia, and is the residence of many of the principal merchants of the republic. It is a growing city, and from a few houses twenty years ago it now has a population of upwards of twenty-five thousand. Situated as it is, so near the outlet of the Magdalena River, it is destined to increase in size and commerce, and to become to Colombia what New York is to the United States--the great commercial emporium of the republic; Aspinwall and Panama, free ports, being more a highway of nations than a part of this country. To this end Barranquilla has many things in its favor. The custom-house is located there. All the river steamers and sailing-vessels on the Magdalena, conveying from the vast back-lying interior to the coast the multitudinous products of the country, start from and return to this place. But Barranquilla has its drawbacks. As soon as it secured a little commerce a large bar began to form at the mouth of the river, and has grown until it has become a sand-spit which prevents the entrance of steamers. Then a new town, called Sabanilla, was started on the spit, which is connected with Barranquilla by a railway fourteen miles long, owned and operated by a German company. But the harbor of Sabanilla, though now the principal one of the republic, is neither convenient nor safe. It is shallow, full of shifting sand-bars, and exposed to furious wind-storms; while the new port of Barranquilla is quite inaccessible from the delta, by reason of its treacherous sand-bars. So with the opening of the ancient _dique_, or ship-channel, between Carthagena and Calamar, or the construction of a railway between the first-named point and Barranquilla (both of which enterprises are being agitated), Carthagena may regain her ancient prestige and become the chief port of the republic.