to the fortified hills and bluffs beyond, are still open, though of course long disused, some of them wide enough to accommodate three pedestrians walking abreast.

The entrances to the great bay, as also its shores on both sides, are guarded by massive stone forts, long since practically disused, but still well preserved. Beneath one of these frowning structures, and some eight or ten feet below the surface of the water, is the old Bastile of the Inquisition, rendered classic by Charles Kingsley in his "Westward Ho;" a grim relic of the past, no longer utilized in the conversion of heretics, but sometimes occupied as a resting-place by unsuccessful "revolutionists" under the régime of modern king Demos. Ah! the tyranny of Absolutism and the cruelty of Intolerance! But perhaps, after all, there are fewer forms of tyranny more cruel and relentless than that of an irresponsible mob miscalled a Democracy!

At the close of the long struggle for Independence, in 1822, Carthagena seemed hopelessly dead; and it so remained, as I have said, for half a century. Yet Colombians have always been proud of its history. For here, it is claimed, originated the first organized resistance to Spanish misrule; the first serious step towards final separation from the mother country. Some Colombian annalist has therefore called it "the cradle of Liberty on the South American continent," and perhaps not unjustly. Yet a prior claim is sometimes made by Venezuelans for their own beautiful Caracas, where the great Libertador1 was born and grew to manhood, and where there was something like organized resistance to Spanish authority several weeks earlier than that at Carthagena.

1 El Libertador is the title usually applied to Símon Bolívar throughout South America.

In Carthagena, as in Charleston during our own Revolution, there were many wealthy Tories who either openly or secretly espoused the royalist cause; and who never became quite reconciled to the new order of things which made their negro slaves their equals before the law, and subsequently their equals at the ballot-box. So, many of them, now broken in fortune and hopeless for the future, sought homes in the mother country, or in other Spanish provinces in the West Indies. A few, in order to get rid of the free negro, sought homes in the remote interior—at Pamplona, Tunja, Medelin, and Bogotá. Few or none of them ever returned to their haunts of happier and more prosperous days. In short, Carthagena was practically deserted; the Dique soon became filled up with sediment and overgrown with brush and bramble; and when trade revived, Barranquilla, a new town just above the delta of the Magdalena, became the principal seaport. In the course of time the little railroad was built which connects Barranquilla with the harbor of Savanilla, some 12 miles below the delta; and thus, to use a railway provincialism, old Carthagena was completely "sidetracked."

This was the condition of affairs as late as 1873, when the old city began to show some signs of awaking from her long slumber, and to cast about for the means of regaining at least a portion of her lost trade. The first thing to be done was to re-establish communication with the interior; and this was practicable only by the reopening of the old Dique. It was accordingly reopened in 1881, and an English company put some light-draught steamers in it as feeders to their ocean vessels. Since then, the prospects of Carthagena have been steadily brightening. Yet in the absence of some railway connection with the interior, or with the Magda

lena at some point more remote from Barranquilla, as for instance at the mouth of the river Cauca, the old city will continue to labor under great disadvantages, and can hardly hope to compete successfully with her more enterprising and aggressive rival.

The harbor of Savanilla is a mere roadstead, some dozen miles below (i. e. west) of the Magdalena delta; and, though anything but picturesque and attractive in appearance, it is considered reasonably safe for seagoing vessels of medium draught. Up to within the last few years, heavy ocean steamers had to anchor 10 or 12 miles out from the railway terminus, and passengers and cargo were conveyed ashore in clumsy barges. If the vessel came to anchor by eight o'clock in the morning, it was generally twelve or one before passengers could reach the railway station; and sometimes very late in the afternoon before they would arrive at Barranquilla. This is all changed now. The railway has been extended some 10 miles farther down the coast, and an iron pier 4,000 feet long, connects the station with deep water; so that passengers now embark and disembark with greater facility and

comfort.

The railway passes through a very barren and uninteresting part of the country a mere wilderness of swamp and jungle. Not many centuries ago, the whole region was covered by the waters of the Caribbean. In fact, the entire plain or "little Savannah,"1 including the present site of Barranquilla itself, appears to have been the joint product of sea and river; and in many places is yet too new and crude to produce any vegetation other than dwarf cacti and brambles. Toward the eastern and southern sides, it is a mere bed of white sand, and, for the most part, barren of all vegetation.

1 Savanilla is the Spanish equivalent of "Little Savannah."

I have never been quite able to get rid of my first somewhat unfavorable impressions of this locality, although I have visited it scores of times since its marvellous transformation into something like a decent place of residence. The Colombian minister at Washington (Don Carlos Martín) had been considerate enough to warn me what to expect, and not to hastily judge his country by what was to be seen of it at Savanilla and Barranquilla. I was inclined at first to think he was merely indulging in that polite depreciation of his own country so common among educated Colombians. But I found he had spoken only the sober truth; for I had never even imagined any place quite like it. But Mr. Pellett, the bright and genial American consul who met me at the Barranquilla station then a mere thatched shed in a sand-bed assured me that strangers "soon got used to it," and then "did n't mind it!"

I have somewhere intimated that Barranquilla is a new place; and so it is as a commercial mart, and indeed in everything that pertains to modern progress. But a little Indian village of mud huts with thatch-roofs stood near there more than two and a half centuries ago; and the same style of primitive architecture still prevails on the outskirts of the present city. It is only within the past 27 years that the city has become a place fit to live in. It is situated at the eastern terminus of the Bolívar railway, some 14 miles from Savanilla and about the same distance above the main mouths of the Magdalena river. The city is some distance west of the main channel of the river, but in easy communication with it by means of a somewhat narrow but deep caño, navigable at all seasons by steamers of medium tonnage. The locality is considered one of the healthiest on the Caribbean coast, although the temperature is

seldom below 85 degrees Fahrenheit during any hour in the year, and is often up into the nineties.

Twenty-five years ago, the population hardly exceeded 8,000 souls; and perhaps less than a quarter of these could lay any just claim to pure Caucasian origin. The masses for the most part were made up of the mixed descendants of Indians, negroes and whites. You could see every shade of color, from the jetty, woolly-headed African to the sallow mestizo and pink-eyed Albino. Sometimes you would be able to discover some remote traces of the Moor and the Burgundian; occasionally you would see the classic features of the Castilian beneath a woolly crown; sometimes the flat nose and facial angles of the African would peer out beneath the straight auburn hair of the Spaniard; and not unfrequently there would be such an intricate blending of the three races in a single individual as to baffle all attempts at ethnologic classification.

The language of the common people, though nominally Spanish, was a curious jargon, often quite unintelligible even to their own countrymen from the national capital. Children of all ages and both sexes gambolled about the central plaza or in the public streets in a state of unconscious nudity, and even middle-aged men of the lower class rarely wore anything more than a straw hat, alpargates,1 and a rauana.2

The streets, though never muddy and seldom dusty, were well nigh impassable. Pedestrians would sink ankle deep into the white, parching sand at every step; and the narrow sidewalks, though more comfortable, would not accommodate two people walking abreast. The houses, except in the immediate business section, were generally thatch-roofed huts; and even the most pre

1 A species of straw sandal.

2 A cotton blanket with a hole cut in the centre.