on many of the small industries and occupations, and to meet the labour
requirements of the inhabited plateau districts. Those of the urban
middle classes are shopkeepers and artizans, and those of the lower
class are domestics and day labourers. The whites of Spanish descent
object to manual labour, and this places all such occupations in the
hands of the coloured races. In the country the _mestizos_ are small
agriculturists, herders, labourers and fishermen; but there are many
educated and successful merchants and professional men among them. There
are no social barriers in their intercourse with the whites, nor race
barriers against those who have political aspirations. The negroes of
pure blood are to be found principally on the coastal plains and in the
great lowland river valleys, where they live in great part on the
bounties of nature. A small percentage of them are engaged in trade and
other occupations; a few are small agriculturists.

Bogota was reputed to be a centre of learning in colonial times, but
there was no great breadth and depth to it, and it produced nothing of
real value. By nature the Spanish-American loves art and literature, and
the poetic faculty is developed in him to a degree rarely found among
the Teutonic races. Writing and reciting poetry are universal, and fill
as important a place in social life as instrumental music. In Colombia,
as elsewhere, much attention has been given to belles-lettres among the
whites of Spanish descent, but as yet the republic has practically
nothing of a permanent character to show for it. The natural sciences
attracted attention very early through the labours of Jose Celestino
Mutis, who was followed by a number of writers of local repute, such as
Zea, Cabal, Caldas, Pombo, Cespedes, Camacho and Lozano. We are indebted
to Humboldt for our earliest geographical descriptions of the northern
part of the continent, but to the Italian, Augustin Codazzi, who became
a Colombian after the War of Independence, Colombia is indebted for the
first systematic exploration of her territory. Geographical description
has had a peculiar fascination for Colombian writers, and there have
been a number of books issued since the appearance of Codazzi's
_Resumen_ and _Atlas_. Historical writing has also received much
attention, beginning with the early work of Jose Manuel Restrepo (1827),
and a considerable number of histories, compendiums and memoirs have
been published, but none o