196 SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES REGIONS. 



towns of Santander, Pamplona, an old ecclesiastical foundation dating from 

 the year 1549, possesses some industrial specialties, such as brewing and match- 

 making. 



Beyond this place the route follows the windings of the Pamplonita from 

 terrace to terrace through one of the most romantic valleys of the Andes, and 

 passes below the village of Chinacota, where the ferocious Alfinger met his fate, 

 San José de Cucuta, or simply Cucutn, on the left bank of the Pamplonita, lies 

 already in the hot zone at an altitude of not more than 960 feet above the sea. 

 The coffee plantations, to which Cucuta owes its prosperity, lie higher up on the 

 slopes of the mountains ; but the cacao, one of the best in the world, is grown 

 in the immediate vicinity. In 1875 Cucuta was visited by an earthquake, with a 

 combined vertical and vortical movement, which left not a single house standing. 

 All walls over 2 feet high were levelled with the ground, and at least 2,000 

 persons were crushed beneath the ruins. The two neighbouring towns of Rosario 

 and San Antonio were also overthrown, and the seismic waves, radiating from 

 this centre, were felt with decreasing violence as far as Pamplona, Merida, and 

 Ocana. According to Sievers the shocks were propagated only under sedimentary 

 rocks, the crystalline formations of the Cordillera remaining almost undisturbed. 



But Cucuta soon recovered its prosperity, and at present this district is rela- 

 tively the most industrious in Colombia. It contains over 80,000 inhabitants, 

 and yields as much as 50,000 tons of coffee, valued at about £250,000. This 

 rapid recovery was due to the railway which terminates at Puerto- Villamizar (San 

 Btienarentiira or San Bac no), on the Rio Zulia, although the foreign trade is 

 carried on through the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo. Hence the Colombian 

 engineers have often proposed the construction of roads or railways across the 

 Eastern Cordillera, to connect the Cucuta district and its rich plantations with the 

 banks of the Magdalena, and thus divert the traffic from Venezuela to Colombian 

 territory. 



On the other hand, all the Venezuelan towns of the western Sierra de Merida 

 gravitate towards Cucuta, as do also the three Colombian towns of Pueblo, Rosario, 

 and San Antonio. Rosario, lying to the south-east, near the Bio Tachira, 

 formerly held the first rank, and here was held, in 1821, the general Congress 

 where was framed the constitution of the three united republics of Venezuela, 

 New Grenada, and Ecuador. 



Ocaha, standing at an altitude of 3,820 feet, near the sources of the Bio 

 Catatumbo, is an old. place, founded in 1572 in the territory of the Carates 

 Indians. Formerly a state capital, and often proposed as the metropolis of the 

 Colombian Confederacy, it enjoys special advantages in the fertility of the sur- 

 rounding plains lying w^lhin the temperate zone, midway between the hot 

 coastlands and the cold regions of the plateau, with easy communications in one 

 direction towards Lake Maracaibo and Venezuela through the Bio Catatumbo, 

 in another to the Magdalena basin, over a much- frequented pass 6,000 feet high. 

 In this basin the riverine ports of Ocaiia are Puerto Nacional and La Gloria, 

 both on the rig-ht bank of the Masfdalena. 



