“Cartagena de Indias,” as the old kings of Spain loved to call their “very royal and loyal city,” ranks third in point of age in the new world, and still retains more of its early characteristics than any of the others. Its antiquity is everywhere in evidence. Like the battlements and castles at its entrance, the city seems to have been built of the yellow-white coral laid in concrete, which seems to be indestructible. If one could fly over it in an airship, and look down upon its closely massed, red-tiled houses, and, beyond, upon the deep green of the country-side, with the exquisite blue effects of the Caribbean and the tropic sky, the city would seem gemlike in its romantic beauty. The narrow streets of rough stone are overhung at frequent intervals with the protruding windows and balconies familiar to visitors in Lima and others of the older Spanish cities, yet there is an individuality about the houses here that is far more fascinating, and facing the parks are many fine examples of the old churches and convents which constitute the distinctive architecture of the colonial régime. Surrounding these buildings are luxuriant gardens, presenting a riot of color, in which the peculiarly refreshing green of the hot countries predominates. Among the many substantial dwellings occupied by the wealthy is one that was the seat of the terrible Inquisition which sat here from 1610 until 1821. San Felipe de Barajas, an old castle and fort lying on a low hill overlooking the city, is full of interesting underground passages, as are many of the fortifications, and although utterly abandoned and falling into decay, is still a forceful and grim reminder of the mediæval period of storm and stress. On the top of another hill, called “La Popa,” lying back of the town, still stands the ancient convent of Santa Candelaria, serving as a landmark to mariners passing that way, its white or light yellow buildings being visible for many miles out at sea. Here the visitor is shown where a buccaneer amused himself on the occasion of one of the raids by hurling the nuns over the edge of the perpendicular cliff on which the convent stands. Cartagena in the old days surpassed Mexico, Lima, Panamá, and Havana in importance, and stood forth as the commercial giant of Spain in America; it represented, as did no other American city, the pomp and magnificence of her sixteenth and seventeenth century imperialism. Now all this is past; even as the natural gateway for Colombia’s productiveness, she has lost her position, the North American-built railroad connecting the port with the Magdalena River, at Calamar, having proved powerless to restore even a small measure of her prestige against the rising commercial importance of Puerto Colombia and Barranquilla. The latter port has now become the _entrepôt_ of commerce with the interior by the great waterway of the Magdalena.