On the desolate stretch of Colombia’s Pacific coast there is but one city of importance, Buenaventura. This is the busy exchange that taps the fertile region of the upper Atrato basin, and when the Panamá Canal shall have been opened should spring into greater importance along with the other ports of the West Coast. In the interior Colombia possesses many cities of considerable size, ranging from thirty to sixty thousand inhabitants, which are centers for the mining and agricultural districts—Pamplona in the mountains near the Venezuela frontier, Bucarmanga, a little to the west, Mompóz, near the confluence of the Cauca and Magdalena, once a port on the latter river but now, owing to the erratic wanderings of that stream, twenty miles east of it, Medellín, in the Cauca valley; Popayán and Pasto near the head waters of that river, and La Plata on the other side of the Central Cordillera. The Hon. John Barrett and Hon. William L. Scruggs, both former Ministers of the United States at Bogotá, have written extensively of Colombia’s commercial possibilities and predict great strides for the hermit republic. “Colombia,” writes Mr. Barrett, “is a wonderland of opportunity. Measured by the standards of other countries it can be said without exaggeration that the Republic of Colombia, in proportion to area and population, is the richest of all in the variety and extent of undeveloped resources, fullest in promise for future growth and reward to mankind.” “Colombia,” he continues, “is at our very doors; it is nearer to the principal ports of the United States than any other South American country, and yet we have done little to study her internal wealth or to take part in her foreign commerce.” The country is only nine hundred and fifty miles away from us; from Cartagena to Tampa, Florida, the distance is less than from New York to St. Louis. The foreign trade of Colombia last year amounted to $26,000,000, in which the United States participated to the extent of only $11,000,000. Mr. Scruggs says in closing his interesting work on Colombia: “Such is the country as nature has made it—picturesque, beautiful, and exceedingly rich and varied in undeveloped resources. As yet man has done very little for it, the greater part being still unbroken wilderness.... The commercial possibilities of the country are almost incalculable; and the time is probably not very remote when the fact will be more fully realized by the great commercial powers of the world.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XI VENEZUELA