COLOCYNTH, or Bitter Cucumber (Citrullus the colonial period. The emeralds occur in bands of Colocynthis), is a native of the warmer portions of Asia, fluor-spar, but more commonly in "nests," found in but now is quite commonly found in Northern Africa beds of quartz resting on deposits of pyrites. Many and Southern Europe. The plant is a representative of these gems are found imprisoned in crystals of of the gourd family. Its chief claim to notice is, that quartz. In 1787 the Spanish government ceased to it forms a drug of some commercial importance. In work these mines. Shortly after the establishment of proper doses it is a vigorous cathartic, or if given in the republic they were leased to a native of Bogotá excessive doses it becomes an emetic and irritant. named Paris, who took a fortune from them. Later a The portion of the fruit used is the bitter pulp, which, French company obtained possession of them at an when deprived of the yellow, useless rind, appears as a annual rental of $16,000. What gain, if any, accrued white or yellowish-white ball from two to four inches to the company has never been known, for every stone in diameter, which is light, spongy, and easily separ- found was disposed of in Europe. By a law of May able into three parts. Only the pulp without the seeds 31, 1876, the monopoly of the mines came to an end. is used, though some allege that the seeds, free from Indications of emeralds have been noted near Cali, the pulp, may be used as a food. The constituents in Cauca, and at the mountain of Patiburú, in Antioof colocynth are resin, pectin, gum, colocynthin, and quia. The working of the mines of rock-salt is 11 per cent. ash. Colocynthin (C56 H8 O23) is a yellow monopolized by the federal Government; the prevasubstance, soluble in water and in alcohol, and exceed-lence of goitre in the region where this salt is used is ingly bitter. supposed to be owing to the want of iodine in the salt. COLOMBIA, THE UNITED STATES OF, a South The State of Cauca imports salt from Payta, in Peru American federal republic. For several the States of the Caribbean seaboard are supplied from the West Indies. Coal is found at Bogotá, in the coast-region back of Santa Marta, in Antioquia, and near Coli, in the Cauca valley, where an immense deposit exists; but no coal is mined. In Cundinamarca and Boyacá, on the lofty plains, and along the eastern slope of the Sumapaz range, down to the very level of the plains, occur deposits of rock-salt. At Zipaquirá, on the savanna of Bogotá, is the famous mountain of salt, to-day supplying all the interior of the republic, just as for centuries before the conquest it had supplied the Minsca empire. In Antioquia are found springs producing salt in quantities sufficient to supply that State. See Vol. VI. P. 137 Am. years preceding the election of Aquileo ed. (p. 152 Para to the presidency in 1876, the repubEdin. ed.). lic, under successive Liberal administrations, had been at peace externally and internally, except for a few local seditions; but that event gave the signal for revolution. This was brought about needlessly by Recaredo de Villa, governor of Antioquia, a man of inferior ability, who declared war against the federal government. The Conservatives rose in Antioquia, Cauca, and Tolima. Their action was not concerted, and the campaign was brief. The revolutionists were defeated at the battle of Los Cháncos, near Buga, in Cauca, July 14, 1876; Antioquia was crushed, and the Liberal party is now more than ever dominant. Gen. Julian Trujillo, who had commanded the principal federal army during the revolution, was elected president for the term 1878-80. He was succeeded by Dr. Rafael Nuñez, 1880-82, and in April, 1882, Dr. Francisco Xavier Zaldúa became president as the choice of the radical wing of the Liberal party. Dr. Zaldúa died Dec. 21, 1882, and was succeeded by the second vice-president, José E. Otólora. The greater part of the gold of Colombia is obtained from alluvial deposits, but a few quartz-mines are worked, chiefly in Antioquia, the principal mining State, where considerable capital is employed by English and French as well as native companies. In 1875 gold to the value of nearly $2,500,000 was exported from Antioquia, and the mint established at Medellin coined $500,000. The State government of Antioquia emerged from the contest of 1876 completely prostrated, and its principal industry received a blow from which it has not yet recovered. The silver-mines of Frias and Santa Ana, in the State of Tolima, as well as the mine of Marmato in the Cauca, and that of Titiribi in Antioquia-all in the mountains of the central cordillera, and all but the last belonging to English companies were formerly very productive; of late years, however, the production has fallen off. The mint at Medellin, and that at Popayan, the capital of Cauca, coin gold money almost exclusively; most of the silver is coined at the mint of Bogotá. Platinum is mined only in small quantities, although, owing to the increased demand for that metal, greater attention is now given to this branch of mining. Iron-smeltingworks have been established at Pacho in the savanna of Bogotá, and at Amagá in Antioquia; the product is not very great nor the iron of very good quality. A little copper-ore is mined in the State of Santander. No other metals are mined. Reports of the emeralds of Muzo first incited the Spaniards to the conquest of Bogotá. These are still the only pure emeralds known to commerce. There are several mines situated in the district of Muzo, in Boyacá, within an area of ten square miles, and at Somondoco, near Tunja, are mines of less importance which have not been worked since The chief industry of Colombia is agriculture, but old methods still prevail. Wheat and potatoes are cultivated in the elevated regions, maize in all parts of the republic. Rice, yams, the yuca, the arracacha, and plantains are produced in the hot country. Cotton is perennial, and extensively cultivated in Santander and in the southern part of Cauca, hammocks and coarse stuffs being manufactured; its cultivation for export was increased in Bolivar and Magdalena, at the time of the civil war in the United States. Cacao is cultivated to a height of 3000 feet above the sea; sugar-cane up to 5000; coffee to 7000-the yield of each being abundant. Great quantities of coffee are shipped down the Meta, from Santander to ports in the Gulf of Maracaibo, and at Buenaventura; the cacao and sugar supply the home market. An excellent quality of tobacco is produced largely about Ambalema, in the upper Magdalena Valley, and in the districts of Cármen, Jiron, and Morales, in the lower valley, as well as near Palmira, in Cauca; it is exported from Barranquilla and Buenaventura. The production of indigo was stopped by the introduction of aniline dyes. In the eastern and central cordilleras different varie ties of cinchona occur, as far north as lat. 5° N., the trees of the eastern slope giving the better quality of bark. This, packed in seroons of raw hide, finds its way to Sabanilla and Buenaventura. The bark from the district of Pitayó, of late years, has been shipped down the Putumayó. Vanilla, ivory nuts, sarsaparilla, and ipecacuanha abound in the hot country. The bamboo is abundant below an altitude of 4000 feet. Strawberries are found everywhere in the higher plateaus. Vast herds of cattle graze on the llanos, in the Cauca, and on the isthmus. In the district of Pasto, in Southern Cauca, and in the great valley of Tensa, in Boyacá, there are numerous flocks of sheep; of the wool coarse goods are manufactured. The fibre of the indigenous aloe is made into cordage, coarse sacking, and alpagartes, or sandals. These stuffs are all manufactured by hand. Hats similar to those known to commerce as "Panama hats are made of the leaf of the iraca palm at Suasa in Cundinamarca, and in Antioquia, but in quantities too limited for export. | exceed 1500; in time of war the federal Government The few flour-mills of the interior have primitive may call into service one per cent. of the population horizontal water-wheels; lumber is sawed by hand. of each State. Dyeing and tanning are carried on to a very limited extent. The relation between imports and exports in recent years will appear from the following table: 1882. 12,355,555 15,836,943 The constitution authorizes the federal Government and those of the States to act together in all things pertaining to public instruction. Secondary instruction was organized by a law of May 30, 1868; by a law of July 2, 1870, the chief executive was authorized to organize primary public instruction. Normal schools were organized in all the States, and foreign teachers brought to the country, principally from Germany. A portion of the national revenue is devoted to the purposes of public instruction, and the number of schools is increasing. A national university The transit trade across the Isthmus of Panamá is esti- has been established at Bogotá, a mining school at the mated at nearly $100,000,000 per annum. capital of Antioquia, a nautical school at Cartagena, and a commercial college at Barranquilla. In 1883 Revenue. The national income is very small, there there were 437 students at the university. There are being no direct taxation. The annual receipts increase no exact official data concerning the primary schools slowly. For the biennial period of 1880-81 they of Panama and Santander; in 1883, 75,191 pupils amounted to $6,519,094, derived from the following attended the 20 normal and 1431 other schools of the sources: customs, $4,292,835; salt monopoly, $950, 285; nine States. Antioquia has a State university, and Panamá Railway, $260,000; Sabanilla Railway, other States have established colleges and schools. $162,088; stamped paper, $51,709; postal service, Almost all of the not extensive literature possessed $45,196; merchandise carried on the Magdalena, by Colombia existed before the War for Independence. $74,832; imported salt, $34,206; telegraph, $43,842; The Spanish conqueror of Bogotá, Gonzalo Ximenes national property, $2940; sale of ecclesiastical prop- de Quesada, wrote an account of the conquest; as late erty, $18,263; mint, $28,147; passengers on naviga- as 1854 this work existed, still in MS., in the National ble rivers, $5119; various, $649,632. The tariff divides Library at Bogotá, but it has disappeared, together articles into classes paying duty per kilogramme; with many other valuable MSS. The celebrated thus, relatively, duties are heavy on inferior goods. Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias were also written Smuggling obtains to a considerable extent, although in Colombia, their author, Juan de Castellanos, an the evil is less than it has been. The recent reorgani-ex-soldier, being parish priest of Tunja. Many other zation of the custom-houses, and the establishment of a Spaniards and a few natives of the viceroyalty-these port of entry at Caquetá on the Putumayó, will prob-chiefly clergymen-wrote books or published them in ably tend to lessen smuggling. The postal service is Colombia. Toward the close of the last century the not good, and the rate of internal postage is high; celebrated José Celestino Mútis, himself a Spaniard, nor can this be otherwise until a better system of gave a noteworthy though fleeting impulse to literacommunication exists. In July, 1881. Colombia en-ture at Bogotá. Owing to his example and efforts, tered the postal union, and its foreign mail service has and those of Manuel del S. Rodriguez, who came to greatly improved in efficiency. Some of the States Bogotá with the best-beloved of all the viceroys, José have postal departments for the conveyance of official de Ezpeleta, a small band of youths grew up to give communications. There is telegraphic communication lustre to the last days of Spanish rule. In 1781 the between Bogotá and the capitals of the several States, first newspaper appeared at Bogotá. Among these and there are subordinate lines in several of these men the names of Zea, Cáldas, Nariño, the three States. In 1881 a line was extended to the Vene- Gutierrez, Acevedo, Valenzuela, Pombo, and Padilla zuelan frontier, and another line is being constructed are conspicuous. Many of these perished during the toward the frontier of Ecuador. A submarine cable revolution, from which struggle the country emerged now connects Buenaventura with Panamá, and the with its literary faculties paralyzed. Since that epoch Colombian system of telegraph lines with those of the there have been very few Colombian authors of note. world. There were 400,000 telegraphic messages sent Restrepo, Mosquera, Acosta, Perez, Groot, Plaza, and in 1881. The telegraph lines belong to the federal Vergara y Vergara are perhaps the only men who Government, except those of Antioquia, which are the have produced works destined to be remembered. property of that State. The telephone has been intro-There is a good deal of ephemeral journalism in Coduced in Bogotá. The Panamá Railway is now the lombia. The Spanish language lends itself to the property of the Panamá Interoceanic Canal Company, The line from Barranquilla to Sabanilla was purchased by the Government in 1876 for $600,000. On the railway to connect Buenaventura with the Cauca Valley work progresses very slowly; many other lines are projected, and on some of these a small amount of preliminary work has been done. Until January, 1873, the foreign debt amounted to $32,927,858. By an agreement of that date made with the foreign creditors this amount was reduced to $10,000,000, paying an annual interest of 4 per cent. In 1878 the Government entered into an agreement to apply annually £25,000 for the purpose of extinguishing this debt. In 1873 also an agreement was made with its creditors for the reduction of the internal indebtedness. Aug. 31, 1882, the foreign debt amounted to $9,570,500, and the internal indebtedness to $13,383,791. The foreign debt, chiefly held by British creditors, is secured by mortgage on the customs, but the interest is much in arrears. Colombia has no navy. Congress each year determines the number of men of which the army shall consist. In time of peace this number does not making of verse, and the short-lived periodicals are full of poetry. In writing short articles descriptive of life in various parts of the country a few of the present generation of Colombians excel. There is, however, no national literature worthy of the name what does exist is a poor copy of the French style of writing. The boundaries of Colombia separating it from Costa Rica and from Venezuela have never been well defined, and the subject is fruitful of dispute. Several imaginary lines have been drawn on the maps as marking the boundary of Colombia on the side of Brazil. These circumstances make it impossible to state with precision the area of Colombia. Perhaps to a greater extent than any other country on the globe Colombia gives evidence of long-continued and extreme volcanic action. Since the Spanish conquest several periods of severe earthquake-shocks have been recorded. The last great shock was on May 16, 1875, when San José de Cúcuta, a flourishing city in the coffee-producing region of Santander, was completely destroyed, and considerable damage was done in the neighboring States. The occurrence of lighter shocks on the same day of the following year posed between the colonists and the crown. That is, naturally alarmed the superstitious people. On Sept. he appointed the governor and other colonial officers, 8, 1882, an earthquake threw down the most substan- and, theoretically at least, possessed the veto power. tial buildings of Panamá and Colon, and very seriously In reality the assemblies of these colonies, by their damaged the superstructures of the Panamá railway control of the colonial treasuries, were able to oppose about one-third of the road-bed was rendered unser- successfully not merely the governor, but even the viceable, the rails being bent, or in places driven into proprietary; especially was this true of Pennsylvania the ground. and Delaware, which, although under one executive, Concerning the commercial interests and facilities of had each its own assembly. For in these colonies the the country some facts should be added. On the council did not sit as an upper house of the legislature, Caribbean Sea the trade of the ancient port of San but merely acted as an advisory board to the governor, Marta, forty miles E. of the mouth of the Magdalena and the assembly, therefore, possessed much more River (the Magdalena is the great commercial highway freedom of action than in the royal provinces, and not of the country), has been absorbed by Sabanilla, situ- only held the purse-strings, but sat on their own adated on a bay of the same name, near the western journment. And again, in these two colonies the mouth of the Magdalena. This latter is the port of governor and council did not act as the highest judicial Barranquilla, a thriving town of 25,000 inhabitants, on tribunal in the colony, for an appeal lay directly from the left bank of the river near the sea. A railway of a supreme court of four judges to the king in council. seventeen miles connects the two places, and although Alone of all the chartered colonies, Connecticut and in 1876 the custom-house was removed to Barranquilla, Rhode Island had retained their charters, under which Sabanilla remains the port of entry. The commo- the government was so completely in the hands of the dious Bay of Cartagena has also lost its commercial im- people that, with the exception of a short bill of rights portance, and the dique, a waterway by which com- added in 1776, the charter granted by Charles II. in munication was had with the Magdalena, has fallen 1662 remained the fundamental law of Connecticut into disuse. Of the several good harbors on the isth-colony and State until 1818, while Rhode Island was mian coast (eastern), the so-called lagoon of Chiriqui, governed under the charter of 1663 until 1842. near the Costarican frontier, is one of growing impor- Massachusetts had been settled by a trading corporatance. (G. B. G.) tion very similar in apparent design to the Virginia COLONIES, THE AMERICAN.-In 1705, of the thir- Company; but by the removal of the charter and govteen English North American colonies, seven- -Virginia, ernment of the Company of Massachusetts Bay to this North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, New side of the Atlantic; by the subsequent admission of Jersey, New Hampshire, and Georgia-were governed all "church members" to the freedom of the corporaas royal provinces, and one description will suffice for tion; by the establishment of a representative system all, if it be borne in mind that there were many minor and of a judiciary; and by many other usurpations, local differences not here mentioned. These local the charter of a mercantile corporation had been conpeculiarities were due to the fact that, with the excep-verted into the constitution of a republican commontion of New York and New Jersey, which were ac- wealth, which Massachusetts really was until 1684, quired by conquest, they had all been settled under the charter or proprietary form, although, in the course of time, in one way or another they had come into the king's hands. As the organic laws of the colonies were very unlike, so were their systems of local government. The various systems may, however, be reduced to two, namely, local government by towns, or by parishes and counties; the one represented in its perfected form by the New England town system, while the other reached its greatest development in Virginia. when the charter was declared forfeited and the "company" dissolved. For a few years the colony was governed for the crown, but after the overthrow of the Stuarts, Massachusetts, to which Plymouth colony In these provinces a governor, appointed by the and the province of Maine were joined, received crown, represented the king, held the chief executive what is known as the "Province charter," under which power, summoned, prorogued, and dissolved the as- the province was governed until the Revolution. It sembly, acted as chancellor, and sometimes even as differed from the old form in that a governor appointed chief-justice. Besides these prerogatives in the colo-by the crown, assisted by a council chosen by the nies, where the English church was established, the assembly and approved by himself, appointed all the governor was the nominal head of the church, and as judges. But as the governor, the councillors, and the such had the power of "induction." In the discharge judges were all dependent upon the assembly for their of these duties he was advised by a council of from salaries, the people ruled the province, although not so eight to twelve members, appointed either by himself, openly, perhaps, as before 1684. or by the king on his nomination, and designed to act as a check upon him. But, as the governor possessed the right of appointment to the lucrative offices, these councillors were generally his creatures. The council sat with the governor as the highest judicial tribunal within the colony, and also formed the upper house of the legislature. The lower house, usually known as the assembly, consisted of a number of representa- The Virginia of an early time seems to have been a tives-deputies" or "burgesses"--who were elected collection of little villages occupied by some planter or by the freemen, possessed of a certain property quali- overseer and his "servants," who labored for him and fication, of the counties, parishes, or towns, respec- for the "company," but after the discovery that the tively, as the case might be. These assemblies in the cultivation of tobacco was very profitable, these vilearly days wielded little power, but in the course of lages, "cities," and "hundreds," as the old records time they had acquired complete control of the colonial term them, were abandoned. The population disfinances, and were thus able to oppose the royal officers persed over a wide area, and the county took the place with every chance of success, especially as in many of the "city" or "hundred" as the unit of represenprovinces this control extended not merely to the rais-tation, of the administration of justice, and of the ing and appropriating money, but even to the disburse- military system; while the county court, consisting of ment of the funds themselves. A bill, after it had eight or more of the principal men of the county, in passed the assembly, the council, and had not been addition to rendering justice, had considerable authority vetoed by the governor, became a law in the province, in civil matters, as licensing taverns, building and rebut it might, at any time, be disallowed or repealed by pairing roads, etc., and received the presentments of the home authorities. the church-wardens, as the "ordinary" did at "visitation" in England. All other local or municipal authority was exercised by the vestries of the different parishes into which the country had been divided at an early day. At first the business of these parishes The main difference between the form of government of these royal provinces and that of the proprietary colonies of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware was that in the latter the proprietary was inter was transacted by the parishioners in vestry meeting; | tutions are but the reproduction, survival or developthen the vestry was declared to consist of a certain ment of the institutions of England of the time of number of men elected by the freeholders of the parish; their settlement. The same cannot be said of the but in 1662 the power to fill vacancies in their own institutions of the other colonies in which non-English bodies was given to the vestries, which thus became settlers from the north and south of Ireland, from Holclose corporations, or select vestries. It was their duty to elect church-wardens, to provide churches, glebes, and "parson houses," to present the minister to the governor for induction, and to provide his salary. In addition, they had charge of the processioning the bounds once in four years (the only system of land registration then existing in the colony), assessing the parish levy, and, with the church-wardens, the care of the poor. Of course there were many other minor duties, and it may be truthfully said that the vestry governed the parish as fully as the selectmen did the town. The founders of Massachusetts emigrated in wellorganized groups of persons desirous of living under the spiritual ministrations of some particular person. These groups settled at different places about Boston harbor, and each group managed its own local concerns as it saw fit, all important business being transacted in a meeting of the whole body. After a while a committee of select persons was appointed (five men, ten men, townsmen, or selectmen) to conduct the minor affairs of the town, as it was called, and the meetings of the town became less frequent, but they were always held at least once a year for the ratifying of the action of the selected men, for the selecting of new men for the ensuing year, and for the discussion and decision of such business as it seemed desirable that the consent of the town should be had before entering upon. These town-meetings were held in the meeting-house, as the place of divine worship was called, and all those admitted to the Christian fellowship of the town formed the church, and were called church-members. After a time, none but these church-members were admitted to the freedom of the corporation; that is, to vote for governor and other officers, and for deputies to the general court, as the legislature was named; and, for a brief period, none but church-members had a right to speak and vote in town-meeting. This latter disability was removed in 1647 in favor of those who had taken the oath of fidelity," and later still, in 1664, was nominally abandoned with regard to all elections. In its place a property qualification was adopted in the "Province charter." The company guarded very carefully against dispersion of settlements, by adopting the town system as a basis of future colonization, and refusing to grant land to those who could not satisfy the authorities of their ability and intention of founding a town and gathering a church. The general court also decreed that no house should be built in any town above half a mile from the meeting-house. These towns then governed themselves in their townmeetings, and through their agents or selectmen, and were beside the unit of the ecclesiastical system, of the judicial system, of the military system, and of the system of representation. In fine, they were in all respects quasi dependent democracies; and though the central authority should be annihilated, government would go on nearly as well as before. This is better shown by the fact that two collections of such towns confederated and obtained charters after settlement, and took their places in the colonial system as Connecticut and Rhode Island, although in the latter the connection between church and state was slighter than in Massachusetts. There was an aristocracy in Massachusetts in 1765 as well as in Virginia, but owing to the smaller proportion of lower class whites in the former, and also to the fact that it was an aristocracy of wealth rather than of land, it had much less power in the State and became extinct during the Revolution. The founders of Massachusetts and Virginia were of purely English birth and education, and their insti land, Sweden, France, and South Germany formed an COLONIZATION SOCIETY.-The process of 66 It exclusive" object was to promote and execute a plan for colonizing, with their consent, the free people of color residing in our country in Africa, or such other place as Congress may direct. Its first President was Bushrod Washington, and for some twenty years most of the distinguished men of the country were connected with the Society as officers, members, or agents. Its meetings were common ground for such ill-assorted associates as Gerrit Smith, the Tappans, Birney, Benjamin Lundy, Frelinghuysen, Clay, Bishop Hopkins, Rives, and Fitzhugh. And for at least fourteen years it was the only organization whose influence had even the faintest tendency to check the expansion of slavery. To appreciate the condition of the sentiment of the country from 1816 until 1830 it is necessary to see how faint was the Society's tendency in opposition. The exclusive object of the Society was to colonize free negroes; and this, not for the sake of the blacks, but for the sake of the whites. "Of all the descriptions of our population," said Clay, in a public address, "and of either portion of the African race, the free persons of color are the most corrupt, depraved, and abandoned." Το get rid of this class was the exclusive object of the Society. It is true that many of its members had a vague idea that voluntary emancipation might be promoted by the existence of an agency prepared to colonize the freedmen. But a little reflection ought to have shown that the more brilliant the success of the Society might become, the more effectually would this latter object be balked. If the Society could by any means emancipate and colonize so many as one-fourth of the slaves of the country, the only result would be to raise the value and price of the remainder, check emancipation, and drive slavebreeding to a still higher point of intensive industry. As an effort to remove negro slavery the work of the Society was a foredoomed failure. As a re See Vol. VI. COLORADO But, in any respect, the Society had no brilliant suctess: its work was exasperatingly futile. It bought the territory near Cape Mesurado, now Liberia, in 1821, and made this its colonizing point. Its work there COLORADO, one of the United States of America, was placed in charge of Rev. Jehudi Ashmun, who takes its name from the Rio Colorado of remained in Liberia from 1822 to 1828. The society the West, some of the main head-streams collected large amounts of money by voluntary subof which have their sources within its scription, which, with $130,000 voted by Congress, borders. Its area, according to the U. S. amounted to nearly half a million in 1834. census of 1880, is 103,645 square miles. sult of this expenditure the Society had transported It is situated between the parallels of 37° and 41° N lat. to Liberia, 1816-1834, inclusive, 2122 free negroes and between the meridians of 102° and 109° W. long. and 809 freedmen. Between 1820 and 1830 the free- Its width from N. to S. is about 280 miles, and its negro population increased from 233,524 to 319,599, length from E. to W. 370 miles. In area it is and the slave population from 1,538,038 to 2,009,043. the third among the States, being exceeded by The influence of the Society in simply dealing with Texas and California only. Somewhat less than onethe increase may very easily be imagined. When we half this region came to the United States by the add that the annual increase of slaves, 1850-60, ayer- Louisiana purchase in 1804; those parts which lie aged 75,000, or nearly twenty-five per cent., it is a south of the Arkansas River and west of the main staggering question whether the work of the Society chain of the Rocky Mountains were acquired in 1848 could, in any number of centuries, have caught up from Mexico, under the treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo. with the mere annual increase of slaves, and begun an The Spanish title to this region took date from 1570, attack upon the vastly increased main body. when Vasquez Coronado traversed it with his military force. It afterwards became a part of New Mexico, and early acquired a small Spanish-American population, principally seated in the valley of the Rio Grande. แ It ex Surface-Colorado is by nature divided into several distinct and well-marked sections: In fact, the only result of the Society's work was that it persuaded the whole country to mark time" for fourteen years on the slavery question. It intended to do nothing, and it not only did nothing most efficiently, but brought in multitudes of its natural antagonists to assist it in the work. Its effect on the free-negro class in the South was far worse. (1.) The Great Plains, which occupy over one-third cited hopes and expectations in their white neighbors, of its eastern half, being the western border of the which could only be disappointed by the work accom- open and comparatively treeless country which slopes plished. The emigration of the free negroes was to westward, with little break or variety of surface, from have been altogether voluntary; in reality, moral and the Mississippi River to the foot-hills of the main physical pressure was applied to the free negroes in Cordillera. Along these foot-hills the plain has a every direction to coerce them into emigration. There general altitude of nearly 5000 feet. (2.) The Footwere about 320,000 free negroes in the United States hill Country crosses the State from north to south, in 1830, and those of them who lived in the Southern and has a breadth varying from 25 to 50 miles. This States were pressed on all sides toward an opening a belt has some richly metalliferous districts, but is hundred times too small for their passage. Many of especially adapted to grazing, being well watered, them escaped to other States; others were re-enslaved, tolerably well timbered, and in general very fertile. voluntarily or by process of law; and the percentage Its surface is diversified, and in some parts rocky and of increase of free colored, which had been 36.87 per broken. (3.) The Rocky Mountains occupy a large cent., 1820-30, fell successively to 20.87 per cent., 1830-area, ranging from north to south across the State in a 40, 12.46 per cent., 1840-50, and 10.97 per cent., 1850- succession of approximately parallel chains, them60. That this decrease was not due to the Colonization Society's work is apparent from the average number of colonists, 400 per annum, sent to Liberia by the Society, 1850-60. From 1820 until 1856 the Society sent to Liberia 9502 emigrants, an average of 264 per annum: the free negroes numbered 3676. selves looped together by an intricate plexus of cross ridges, as well as outlying spurs and isolated groups. Indeed all the region lying west of the principal mountain-ridges is in general mountainous. Among the principal peaks as yet named and measured are the following: Blanca Peak, the highest in the State, The slow work of the "gradual abolition" societies and one of the highest in the whole country, 14,464 faded out about 1810. From 1816 until 1830 the feet; Mt. Harvard, 14,408; Long's Peak, 14,271; country was marking time on the slavery question Pike's Peak, 14,147; Holy Cross, 14, 176; Mt. Eolus, under the leadership of the Colonization Society. In in the S. W., 14,054; Mt. Wilson, 14,280; Uncom1830 the sudden demand of William Lloyd Garrison pahgre Peak, 14,238; Mt. Bowles, 14,106; Mt. La for "immediate" abolition threw the whole parade Plata, 14,126; Mt. Elbert, 14,150; Mt. Massive, into confusion, and began a new period in the discus- 14,368; Castle Peak, 14,106; Mt. Ouray, 14,043; sion which is considered elsewhere. (See ABOLITION- Mt. Yale, 14,151; Mt. Lincoln, 14,123. Among the ISTS.) The first point of attack by the "immediate separate ranges there are in the N. W. the Sierra abolitionists was naturally the Colonization Society; Escalante, the Elkhead Range, and the Boan Mts. and the Society's prospects of growth, if it ever had farther S.; in the N. E. the great Snowy Range, any, ceased and determined with the first attack. here the main ridge, and continuous to the N. W. with the Medicine Bow Mts.; in the S. W. quarter See The African Repository, the Society's organ; the the Elk Mts., the San Miguel, the Uncompahgre and Reports of the Society (its address is Secretary of the Ameri- the La Plata Ranges and the great Sierra San Juan; can Colonization Society, Washington, D. C.); William and in the S. E. the Raton, the Sangre de Cristo, the Jay's Inquiry into the Character of the Colonization Society Wet, and other ranges. There are said to be probably (in his Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery); A. Alexander's History of West African Colonization (1849); Stockwell's over a hundred peaks exceeding 13,000 ft. in height, History of the Republic of Liberia (1868); U. S. Census and many which are over 14,000 ft., some of the Reports. (A. J.) latter being unmeasured and many unnamed. Of the |
