climate is delightful, and grain grows.  Every climate is found in Colombia, from the tropical heats of the plains to the Arctic cold of the mountains.  Natural productions are as various:  the exports include valuable timbers and dye-woods, cinchona bark, coffee, cacao, cotton, and silver ore.  Most of the trade is with Britain and the United States.  Manufactures are inconsiderable.  The mineral wealth is very great, but little wrought.  The Panama Railway, from Colon to Panama, connects the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, and is a most important highway of commerce.  The people are descendants of Spaniards and Indians; education is meagre, but compulsory; the State Church is Roman Catholic.  The capital is Bogota.  Panama and Cartagena the chief ports.

COLOMBO (126), the capital of Ceylon, and the chief port on the W. coast; it is surrounded on three sides by the sea, and on the other by a lake and moat; is supplied with water and gas; has many fine buildings; has a very mixed population, and has belonged to Britain since 1796; communicates with Kandy by railway.

COLON, a town at the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Railway.  See ASPINWALL.

COLONNA, an illustrious Italian family, to which belonged popes, cardinals, and generals.

COLONNA, VICTORIA, a poetess, married to a member of the above family, who consoled herself for his early death by cultivating her poetic gift; one of her most devoted friends was Michael Angelo (1490-1547).

COLONNE, EDOUARD, musical conductor, born at Bordeaux, conductor of what are known as “Colonne Concerts”; b. 1838.

COLONUS, a demos of Attica, a mile NW. of Athens, the birthplace of Sophocles.

COLOPHON, an Ionian city in Asia Minor, N. of Ephesus, is supposed to give name to the device at the end of books, the cavalry of the place being famous for giving the finishing stroke to a battle.

COLORA`DO (412), an inland State of the American Union, traversed by the Rocky Mountains, and watered by the upper reaches of the S. Platte and Arkansas Rivers, is twice as large as England.  The mountains are the highest in the States (13,000 to 14,000 ft.), are traversed by lofty passes through which the railways run, have rich spacious valleys or parks among them, and have great deposits of gold, silver, lead, and iron.  There are also extensive coal-beds; hence the leading industries are mining and iron working.  The eastern portion is a level, treeless plain, adapted for grazing.  Agriculture, carried on with irrigation, suffers from insect plagues like the Colorado potato beetle.  The climate is dry and clear, and attracts invalids.  Acquired partly from France in 1804, and the rest from Mexico in 1848; the territory was organised in 1861, and admitted to the Union in 1876.  The capital is Denver (107).  There is a small Spanish-speaking population in the S.

COLOSSAE, a city in the S. of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, and the site of one of the earliest Christian churches.