In this corner of the continent the Andes come to an end in a great splurge of deep-cut ridges presenting an aspect very different from the formations to the south. Here three clearly defined ranges diverge from the Ecuadorian frontier and spread northward like the ribs of a fan; the Western and Central Cordilleras merge before reaching the Caribbean Sea, and slope off into foothills and plains near the coast, and the Eastern Cordillera continues in an almost unbroken line until, as the Sierra de Parija, it plunges into the sea at the end of the bleak, forbidding peninsula (Goajira) west of the Gulf of Maracaibo. Rising from the Pacific, on the west, is an almost entirely distinct range, separated from the Andean terminals by the great basin of the Atrato River, and running along the Isthmus of Panamá into Central America. Just north of the Ecuadorian frontier lies the so-called “_Massif_,” from which branch off the three Cordilleras just mentioned and in which the four important Colombian river systems have their source; the Patia flowing westward to the Pacific; the Caquetá, eastward, through the Amazon, into the Atlantic, and the Cauca and Magdalena, the great highways of the country, flowing northward to the Caribbean on either side of the Central Cordillera, and joining their floods about one hundred and fifty miles from the sea in the hot, marshy plains of the Magdalena basin. The Eastern Cordillera slopes off into the Orinoco and Amazon plains—over a territory constituting two-thirds of the republic’s area—and thus gives to Colombia the same astonishing range of productiveness that distinguishes her southern neighbors along the Andean chain. Gold is scattered literally all over the Andean ridges and is picked up along the streams that flow into the lower levels. Silver, iron and lead are almost as universally present; the platinum deposits are surpassed only in Russia; the emerald mines of Muzo, seventy-five miles from Bogotá, have been famous ever since the brilliant stones were torn from the turban crowns of the Indian kings by the Conquistadores, and are the principal source of the world’s supply; the salt mines and pearl fisheries add largely to the republic’s revenue. The Review Number of the _Pan American Bulletin_ (August, 1911) says of the emerald industry: