POMBO, Manuel de (pom'-bo), Colombian patriot, born in Popayan in 1769; died there in 1829. He studied in the College of Rosario, in Bogota, and was graduated there in law in 1790. In the next year he went to Spain to practise, and in 1799 he returned to Colombia as judge of the tribunal of commerce of Carthagena. In 1807 he was appointed superintendent of the mint of Bogota, and when the revolution began in 1810 he was elected by the people on 20 June a member of the municipal corporation. He was an ardent patriot, defended his ideas in the press, and published in 1812 his "Carta a Jos5 Maria Blanco, satisfaciendo a los principios sobre que iInpugna la independencia absoluta de Venezuela," which became famous. After the arrival of General Pablo Morillo (q. v.) in 1815. Pombo was imprisoned, and, on account of his revolutionary writings, condemned to death by the military tribunal. The influence of his wife, who belonged to a powerful family of Spain, saved his life, and he was sent as a prisoner to the peninsula. The constitutional revolution in 1820 liberated him, and in 1822 he returned to Colombia and was appointed inspector of the mint in Popayan, in which employ he died. Pombo was an excellent linguist and geographer. He wrote "Gramgtica Latina" (Bogota, 1826) : "Compendio de Geografia" (1827) ; and an exhaustive "Historia de los paises, que formaron el antiguo vireynato de Nueva Granada," the manuscript of which disappeared shortly after his death, and has not yet been recovered.