governors representing the
national executive, are permitted to exercise restricted legislative
functions relating to purely local affairs. Municipal councils are also
to be found in the larger towns. The governor is assisted by a
departmental council consisting of his secretaries and the president of
the Corte de Cuentas, which places the political administration of the
department under the direct control of the president at Bogota.

The strength of the army is determined annually by congress, but every
able-bodied citizen is nominally liable to military service. Its peace
footing in 1898 was 1000 men. After the war of 1899-1903 its strength
was successively reduced to 10,000 and 5000, a part of this force being
employed in the useful occupation of making and repairing public roads.
The navy in 1906 consisted of only three small cruisers on the Caribbean
coast, and two cruisers, two gunboats, one troopship and two steam
launches on the Pacific. There was also one small gunboat on the
Magdalena.

_Education._--Although Bogota was reputed to be an educational centre
in colonial times, so slight an influence did this exert upon the
country that Colombia ended the 19th century with no effective public
school system, very few schools and colleges, and fully 90% of
illiteracy in her population. This is due in great measure to the long
reign of political disorder, but there are other causes as well. As in
Chile, the indifference of the ruling class to the welfare of the
common people is a primary cause of their ignorance and poverty, to
which must be added the apathy, if not opposition, of the Church.
Under such conditions primary schools in the villages and rural
districts were practically unknown, and the parish priest was the only
educated person in the community. Nominally there was a school system
under the supervision of the national and departmental governments,
but its activities were limited to the larger towns, where there were
public and private schools of all grades. There were universities in
Bogota and Medellin, the former having faculties of letters and
philosophy, jurisprudence and political science, medicine and natural
sciences, and mathematics and engineering, with an attendance of 1200
to 1500 students. The war of 1899-1903 so completely disorganized this
institution that only one faculty, medicine and natural sciences, was
open in 1907. There were also a number o