o, sugar-cane,
cotton, indigo, vanilla, cassava or "yucca," sweet and white potatoes,
wheat, maize, rye, barley, and vegetables of both tropical and
temperate climates. It is claimed in Colombia that a species of wild
potato found on the _paramos_ is the parent of the cultivated potato.

_Population._--The number of the population of Colombia is very largely
a matter of speculation. A census was taken in 1871, when the population
was 2,951,323. What the vegetative increase has been since then (for
there has been no immigration) is purely conjectural, as there are no
available returns of births and deaths upon which an estimate can be
based. Civil war has caused a large loss of life, and the withdrawal
from their homes of a considerable part of the male population, some of
them for military service and a greater number going into concealment to
escape it, and it is certain that the rate of increase has been small.
Some statistical authorities have adopted 1-1/2% as the rate, but this is
too high for such a period. All things considered, an annual increase of
1% for the thirty-five years between 1871 and 1906 would seem to be more
nearly correct, which would give a population in the latter
year--exclusive of the population of Panama--of a little over 3,800,000.
The _Statesman's Year Book_ for 1907 estimates it at 4,279,674 in 1905,
including about 150,000 wild Indians, while Supan's _Die Bevolkerung der
Erde_ (1904) places it at 3,917,000 in 1899. Of the total only 10% is
classed as white and 15% as Indian, 40% as _mestizos_ (white and Indian
mixture), and 35% negroes and their mixtures with the other two races.
The large proportion of mestizos, if these percentages are correct, is
significant because it implies a persistence of type that may largely
determine the character of Colombia's future population, unless the more
slowly increasing white element can be reinforced by immigration.

The white contingent in the population of Colombia is chiefly composed
of the descendants of the Spanish colonists who settled there during the
three centuries following its discovery and conquest. Mining enterprises
and climate drew them into the highlands of the interior, and there they
have remained down to the present day, their only settlements on the
hot, unhealthy coast being the few ports necessary for commercial and
political intercourse with the mother country. The isolation of these
distant inland settlements has served