APPENDICES
| — |
| [APPENDIX A] |
| Barometrical Measurements across South America.....Page 338 |
| [APPENDIX B] |
| Vocabularies from the Quichua, Záparo, Yágua, and Cámpas Languages.....340 |
| [APPENDIX C] |
| [Commerce of the Amazon].....344 |
| [Addenda].....349 |
| [INDEX ].....349 |
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON.
[CHAPTER I.]
Guayaquil.— First and Last Impressions.— Climate.— Commerce.— The Malecon.— Glimpse of the Andes.— Scenes on the Guayas.— Bodegas.— Mounted for Quito.— La Mona.— A Tropical Forest.
Late in the evening of the 19th of July, 1867, the steamer "Favorita" dropped anchor in front of the city of Guayaquil. The first view awakened visions of Oriental splendor. Before us was the Malecon, stretching along the river, two miles in length—at once the most beautiful and the most busy street in the emporium of Ecuador. In the centre rose the Government House, with its quaint old tower, bearing aloft the city clock. On either hand were long rows of massive, apparently marble, three-storied buildings, each occupying an entire square, and as elegant as they were massive. Each story was blessed with a balcony, the upper one hung with canvas curtains now rolled up, the other protruding over the sidewalk to form a lengthened arcade like that of the Rue de Rivoli in imperial Paris. In this lower story were the gay shops of Guayaquil, filled with the prints, and silks, and fancy articles of England and France. As this is the promenade street as well as the Broadway of commerce, crowds of Ecuadorians, who never do business in the evening, leisurely paced the magnificent arcade; hatless ladies sparkling with fire-flies[4] instead of diamonds, and far more brilliant than koh-i-noors, swept the pavement with their long trains; martial music floated on the gentle breeze from the barracks or some festive hall, and a thousand gas-lights along the levee and in the city, doubling their number by reflection from the river, betokened wealth and civilization.
We landed in the morning to find our vision a dissolving view in the light of the rising sun. The princely mansions turned out to be hollow squares of wood-work, plastered within and without, and roofed with red tiles. Even the "squares" were only distant approximations; not a right angle could we find in our hotel. All the edifices are built (very properly in this climate) to admit air instead of excluding it, and the architects have wonderfully succeeded; but with the air is wafted many an odor not so pleasing as the spicy breezes from Ceylon's isle. The cathedral is of elegant design. Its photograph is more imposing than Notre Dame, and a Latin inscription tells us that it is the Gate of Heaven. But a near approach reveals a shabby structure, and the pewless interior is made hideous by paintings and images which certainly must be caricatures. A few genuine works of art imported from Italy alone relieve the mind of the visitor. Excepting a few houses on the Malecon, and not excepting the cathedral, the majority of the buildings have a tumble-down appearance, which is not altogether due to the frequent earthquakes which have troubled this city; while the habitations in the outskirts are exceedingly primitive, floored and walled with split cane and thatched with leaves, the first story occupied by domestic animals and the second by their owners. The city is quite regularly laid out, the main streets running parallel to the river. A few streets are rudely paved, many are shockingly filthy, and all of them yield grass to the delight of stray donkeys and goats. A number of mule-carts, half a dozen carriages, one omnibus, and a hand-car on the Malecon, sum up the wheeled vehicles of Guayaquil. The population is twenty-two thousand, the same for thirty years past. Of these, about twenty are from the United States, and perhaps twenty-five can command $100,000. No foreigner has had reason to complain that Guayaquilians lacked the virtues of politeness and hospitality. The ladies dress in excellent taste, and are proverbial for their beauty. Spanish, Indian, and Negro blood mingle in the lower classes. The city supports two small papers, Los Andes and La Patria, but they are usually issued about ten days behind date. The hourly cry of the night-watchman is quite as musical as that of the muezzin in Constantinople. At eleven o'clock, for example, they sing "Ave Maria purissima! los once han dedo, noche clara y serena. Viva la Patria!"
![[Cathedral of Guayaquil.]](#8543082027330898494_025.png.id-7950949861417450618.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
The full name of the city is Santiago de Guayaquil.[5] It is so called, first, because the conquest of the province was finished on the 25th of July (the day of St. James), 1533; and, secondly, after Guayas, a feudatory cacique of Atahuallpa. It was created a city by Charles V., October 6, 1535. It has suffered much in its subsequent history by fires and earthquakes, pirates and pestilence. It is situated on the right bank of the River Guayas, sixty miles from the ocean, and but a few feet above its level. Though the most western city in South America, it is only two degrees west of the longitude of Washington, and it is the same distance below the equator—Orion sailing directly overhead, and the Southern Cross taking the place of the Great Dipper. The mean annual temperature, according to our observations, is 83°. There are two seasons, the wet, or invierno, and the dry, or verano. The verano is called the summer, although astronomically it is winter; it begins in June and terminates in November.[6] The heavy rains come on about Christmas. March is the rainiest month in the year, and July the coldest. It is at the close of the invierno (May) that fevers most abound. The climate of Guayaquil during the dry season is nearly perfect. At daybreak there is a cool easterly breeze; at sunrise a brief lull, and then a gentle variable wind; at 3 P.M. a southwest wind, at first in gusts, then in a sustained current; at sunset the same softened down to a gentle breeze, increasing about 7 P.M., and dying away about 3 A.M. Notwithstanding heaps of filth and green-mantled pools, sufficient to start apestilence if transported to New York, the city is usually healthy, due in great part, no doubt, to countless flocks of buzzards which greedily wait upon decay. These carrion-hawks enjoy the protection of law, a heavy fine being imposed for wantonly killing one.[7] It is during the rainy season that this port earns the reputation of being one of the most pestiferous spots on the globe. The air is then hot and oppressive, reminding the geologist of the steaming atmosphere in the carboniferous period; the surrounding plains are flooded with water, and the roads, even some of the streets of the city, become impassable; intolerable musquitoes, huge cockroaches, disgusting centipedes, venomous scorpions, and still more deadly serpents, keep the human species circumspect, and fevers and dysenteries do the work of death.
The Guayas is the largest river on the Pacific coast; and Guayaquil monopolizes the commerce of Ecuador, for it is the only port. Esmeraldas and Peylon are not to be mentioned. Through its custom-house passes nearly every import and export. The green banks of the Guayas, covered with an exuberant growth, are in strong contrast with the sterile coast of Peru, and the possession of Guayaquil has been a coveted prize since the days of Pizarro. Few spots between the tropics can vie with this lowland in richness and vigor of vegetation. Immense quantities of cacao—second only to that of Caracas—are produced, though but a fraction is gathered, owing to the scarcity of laborers, so many Ecuadorians have been exiled or killed in senseless revolutions. Twenty million pounds are annually exported, chiefly to Spain; and two million pounds of excellent coffee, which often finds its way into New York under the name of "pure Java." There are three or four kinds of indigenous cacao on this coast, all richly deserving the generic title Theobroma, or "food for the gods." The best grows in Esmeraldas, as it contains the largest amount of oil and has the most pleasant flavor. But very little of it is exported, because it rots in about six months. The cacao de arriba, from up the River Guayas, is the best to export, as it keeps two years without damage. Next in order is the cacao de abajo, from down the river, as Machala, Santa Rosa, Balao, and Manabi, below Guayaquil. A still richer nut is the mountain cacao, but it is never cultivated. It is small and white, and almost pure oil. This oil, called cacao-butter, is used by the natives for burns, sores, and many cutaneous diseases. Cacao contributes more to the commerce of the republic than any other production of its soil. The flowers and fruit grow directly out of the trunk and branches. "A more striking example (says Humboldt) of the expansive powers of life could hardly be met with in organic nature." The fruit is yellowish-red, and of oblong shape, and the seeds (from which chocolate is prepared) are enveloped in a mass of white pulp. The tree resembles our lilac in size and shape, and yields three crops a year—in March, June, and September. Spain is the largest consumer of cacao. The Mexican chocolalt is the origin of our word chocolate. Tucker gives the following comparative analysis of unshelled beans from Guayaquil and Caracas:
| Guayaquil. | Caracas. | |
| Theobromine | 0.63 | 0.55 |
| Cacao-red | 4.56 | 6.18 |
| Cacao-butter | 36.38 | 35.08 |
| Gluten | 2.96 | 3.21 |
| Starch | 0.53 | 0.62 |
| Gum | 1.58 | 1.19 |
| Extractive matter | 3.44 | 6.22 |
| Humic acid | 8.57 | 9.28 |
| Cellulose | 30.50 | 28.66 |
| Ash | 3.03 | 2.91 |
| Water | 6.20 | 5.58 |
| —— | —— | |
| 98.38 | 99.48 |
The coffee-tree is about eight feet high, and has dark green leaves, white blossoms, and green, red, and purple berries at the same time. Each tree yields on an average two pounds annually.
The other chief articles of exportation are hides, cotton, "Panama hats," manufactured at Indian villages on the coast, cinchona bark, caucho, tobacco, orchilla weed, sarsaparilla, and tamarinds.[8] The hats are usually made of the "Toquilla" (Carludovica palmata), an arborescent plant about five feet high, resembling the palm. The leaf, which is a yard long, is plaited like a fan, and is borne on a three-cornered stalk. It is cut while young, the stiff parallel veins removed, then slit into shreds by whipping it, and immersed in boiling water, and finally bleached in the sun. The same "straw" is used in the interior. The "Mocora," which grows like a cocoa-nut tree, with a very smooth, hard, thorny bark, is rarely used, as it is difficult to work. The leaves are from eight to twelve feet in length, so that the "straws" will finish a hat without splicing. Such hats require two or three months, and bring sometimes $150; but they will last a lifetime. They can be packed away in a vest pocket, and they can be turned inside out and worn, the inside surface being as smooth and well finished as the outside. "Toquilla" hats are whiter than the "mocora."
The exports from Guayaquil bear no proportion to the capabilities of the country; Ecuador has no excuse for being bankrupt. Most of the imports are of English origin; lard comes from the United States, and flour from Chile.
The Malecon and river present a lively scene all the year round; the rest of the city appears deserted in comparison. The British steamers from Panama and Payta arrive weekly; Yankee steam-boats make regular trips up and down the Guayas and its tributaries; half a dozen sailing vessels, principally French, are usually lying in the stream, which is here six fathoms deep; and hundreds of canoes are gliding to and fro. But the balsas are the most original, and, therefore, the most attractive sight. These are rafts made of light balsa wood, so buoyant as to be used in coasting voyages. They were invented by the old Peruvians, and are the homes of a literally floating population. By these and the smaller craft are brought to the mole of the Malecon, besides articles for exportation, a boundless variety of fruits—pine-apples (whose quality has made Guayaquil famous), oranges, lemons, limes, plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, alligator pears, papayas, mangos, guavas, melons, etc.; many an undescribed species of fish known only to the epicure, and barrels or jars of water from a distant point up the river, out of the reach of the tide and the city sewers. Ice is frequently brought from Chimborazo, and sold for $1 per pound. A flag hoisted at a favorite café announces that snow has arrived from the mountains, and that ice-cream can be had. The market, held every morning by the river side, is an animated scene. The strife of the half-naked fishmongers, the cry of the swarthy fruit-dealers—"Pinas!" "Naranjas!" etc., and the song of the itinerant dulce-peddler—"Tamales!" mingled with the bray of the water-bearing donkeys as they trot through the town, never fail to arrest the attention of every traveler.
But there is another sight more attractive still—one worth a long voyage, for Nature nowhere else repeats the picture. From the balconies of Guayaquil can be seen on a clear day the long, towering range of the Andes. We may forget all the incidents in our subsequent journey, but the impression produced by that glorious view is unfading. The sun had nearly touched the Pacific when the clouds, which for days had wrapped the Cordilleras[9] in misty robes, suddenly rose like a curtain. There stood, in inconceivable grandeur, one of the stupendous products of the last great revolution of the earth's crust, as a geologist would say, but, in the language of history, the lofty home of the Incas, made illustrious by the sword of Pizarro and the pen of Prescott. On the right a sea of hills rose higher and higher, till they culminated in the purple mountains of Assuay. Far to the left, one hundred miles northeasterly, the peerless Chimborazo lifted its untrodden and unapproachable summit above its fellows—an imposing background to lesser mountains and stately forests. The great dome reflected dazzlingly the last blushes of the west, its crown of snow fringed with black lines, which were the steep and sharp edges of precipitous rocks. It was interesting to watch the mellowing tints on the summit as the shadows crept upward: gold, vermilion, violet, purple, were followed by a momentary "glory;" then darkness covered the earth, and a host of stars, "trembling with excess of light," burst suddenly into view over the peaks of the Andes.
Bidding "adios" to our Guayaquilian friends, we took passage in one of Captain Lee's little steamers to Bodegas, seventy miles up the river. The Ecuadorian government, strange to say, does not patronize these steamers, but carries the Quito mail in a canoe. The Guayas is a sluggish stream, its turbid waters starting from the slope of the Andes, and flowing through a low, level tract, covered with varied forms of vegetable life. Forests of the broad-leaved plantain and banana line the banks. The fruit is the most common article of food in equatorial America, and is eaten raw, roasted, baked, boiled, and fried. It grows on a succulent stem formed of sheath-like leaf-stalks rolled over one another, and terminating in enormous light green, glossy blades nearly ten feet long by two feet wide, so delicate that the slightest wind will tear them transversely. Each tree (vulgarly called "the tree of paradise") produces fruit but once, and then dies. A single bunch often weighs 60 or 70 pounds; and Humboldt calculated that 33 pounds of wheat and 99 pounds of potatoes require the same space of ground as will produce 4000 pounds of bananas. They really save more labor than steam, giving the greatest amount of food from a given piece of ground with the least labor. They are always found where the palm is; but their original home is the foot of the Himalayas. The banana (by some botanists considered a different species from the plantain) is about four inches long, and cylindrical, and is eaten raw. The plantain is twice as large and prismatic, and uncooked is unhealthy. There is another variety, platanos de Otaheite, which resembles the banana in size and quality, but is prismatic.
A belt of jungle and impenetrable brushwood intervenes, and then cacao and coffee plantations, vast in extent, arrest the eye. Passing these, the steamer brings you alongside of broad fields covered with the low, prickly pine-apple plant; the air is fragrant with a rich perfume wafted from a neighboring grove of oranges and lemons; the mango spreads its dense, splendid foliage, and bears a golden fruit, which, though praised by many, tastes to us like a mixture of tow and turpentine; the exotic bread-tree waves its fig-like leaves and pendent fruit; while high over all the beautiful cocoa-palm lifts its crown of glory.[10] Animal life does not compare with this luxuriant growth. The steamer-bound traveler may see a few monkeys, a group of gallinazos, and many brilliant, though songless birds; but the chief representative is the lazy, ugly alligator. Large numbers of these monsters may be seen on the mud-bank basking in the hot sun, or asleep with their mouths wide open.
Eight hours after leaving the Malecon we arrived at Bodegas, a little village of two thousand souls, rejoicing in the synonym of Babahoyo. This has been a place of deposit for the interior from the earliest times. In the rainy season the whole site is flooded, and only the upper stories are habitable. Cock-fighting seems to be the chief amusement. We breakfasted with the governor, a portly gentleman who kept a little dry-goods store. His excellency, without waiting for a formal introduction, and with a cordiality and courtesy almost confined to the Latin nations, received us into his own house, and honored us with a seat at his private table, spread with the choicest viands of his kingdom, serving them himself with a grace to which we can not do justice. Much as we find to condemn in tropical society, we can not forget the kindness of these simple-hearted people. Though we may portray, in the coming pages, many faults and failings according to a New York standard, we wish it to be understood that there is another side to the picture; that there are virtues on the Andes to which the North is well-nigh a stranger. "How many times (says an American resident of ten years) I have arrived at a miserable hut in the heart of the mountains, tired and hungry, after traveling all day without any other companion than the arriero, to receive a warm-hearted welcome, the best, perhaps the only chair or hammock offered to me, the fattest chicken in the yard killed on my account, and more than once they have compelled me by force to take the only good bed, because I must be tired, and should have a good night's rest. A man may travel from one end of the Andes to the other, depending altogether on the good people he meets."
At Bodegas travelers take to mules or horses for the mountains, hiring one set for Guaranda and another at that village for Quito; muleteers seldom allow their animals to pass from one altitude to the other. These arrieros, or muleteers, form a very important class in Ecuador. Their little caravans are the only baggage and express trains in the republic; there is not a single regularly established public conveyance in the land. The arrieros and their servants (peons) are Indians or half-breeds. They wear a straw or felt hat, a poncho striped like an Arab's blanket, and cotton breeches ending at the knees. For food they carry a bag of parched corn, another bag of roasted barley-meal (mashka), and a few red peppers. The beasts are thin, decrepit jades, which threaten to give out the first day; yet they must carry you halfway up the Andes. The distance to the capital is nearly two hundred miles. The time required is usually eight or nine days; but officials often travel it in four.
![[Equipped for the Andes.]](#8543082027330898494_035.png.id-3601502487336764521.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
We left Bodegas at noon. It was impossible to start the muleteer a moment earlier, though he had promised to be ready at seven. Patience is a necessary qualification in a South American traveler. In our company were a Jesuit priest, with three attendants, going to Riobamba, and a young Quito merchant, with his mother—the mother of only twenty-five children. This merchant had traveled in the United States, and could not help contrasting the thrift and enterprise of our country with the beggary and laziness of his own, adding, with a show of sincerity, "I am sorry I have Spanish blood in my veins." The suburbs of Bodegas reminded us of the outskirts of Cairo; but the road soon entered a broad savannah instead of a sandy desert. At 3 P.M. we passed through La Mona, a village of twenty-five bamboo huts, all on stilts, for in the rainy season the whole town is under water. Signs of indolence and neglect were every where visible. Idle men, with an uncertain mixture of European, Negro, and Indian blood; sad-looking Quichua women, carrying a naked infant or a red water-jar on the back; black hogs and lean poultry wandering at will into the houses—such is the picture of the motley life in the inland villages. Strange was the contrast between human poverty and natural wealth. We were on the borders of a virgin forest, and the overpowering beauty of the vegetation soon erased all memory of the squalor and lifelessness of La Mona. Our road—a mere path, suddenly entered this seemingly impenetrable forest, where the branches crossed overhead, producing a delightful shade. The curious forms of tropical life were all attractive to one who had recently rambled over the comparatively bleak hills of New England. Delight is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who for the first time wanders in a South American forest. The superb banana, the great charm of equatorial vegetation, tossed out luxuriantly its glossy green leaves, eight feet in length; the slender but graceful bamboo shot heavenward, straight as an arrow; and many species of palm bore aloft their feathery heads, inexpressibly light and elegant. On the branches of the independent trees sat tufts of parasites, many of them orchids, which are here epiphytal; and countless creeping plants, whose long flexible stems entwined snake-like around the trunks, or formed gigantic loops and coils among the limbs. Beneath this world of foliage above, thick beds of mimosæ covered the ground, and a boundless variety of ferns attracted the eye by their beautiful patterns.[11] It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes, but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind. This road to the Andes is a paradise to the contemplative man. "There is something in a tropical forest (says Bates) akin to the ocean in its effects on the mind. Man feels so completely his insignificance, and the vastness of nature." The German traveler Burmeister observes that "the contemplation of a Brazilian forest produced on him a painful impression, on account of the vegetation displaying a spirit of restless selfishness, eager emulation, and craftiness." He thought the softness, earnestness, and repose of European woodland scenery were far more pleasing, and that these formed one of the causes of the superior moral character of European nations. Live and let live is certainly not the maxim taught in these tropical forests, and it is equally clear that selfishness is not wanting among the people. Here, in view of so much competition among organized beings, is the spot to study Darwin's "Origin of Species." We have thought that the vegetation under the equator was a fitter emblem of the human world than the forests of our temperate zone. There is here no set time for decay and death, but we stand amid the living and the dead; flowers and leaves are falling, while fresh ones are budding into life. Then, too, the numerous parasitic plants, making use of their neighbors as instruments for their own advancement, not inaptly represent a certain human class.
[CHAPTER II.]
Our Tambo.— Ascending the Andes.— Camino Real.— Magnificent Views.— Guaranda.— Cinchona.— The Summit.— Chimborazo.— Over the Andes.— Chuquipoyo the Wretched.— Ambato.— A Stupid City.— Cotopaxi.— The Vale of Machachi.— Arrival at Quito.
We reached Savaneta at 5 P.M. This little village of hardly twenty houses becomes the Bodegas, or place of deposit for the mountains six months in the year, for in the invierno the roads are flooded, and canoes take the place of mules from Savaneta to Babahoyo. Even in the dry season the dampness of this wilderness is so great that the traveler's sugar and chocolate are melted into one, and envelopes seal themselves. We put up at a tambo, or wayside inn, a simple two-storied bamboo hovel, thatched with plantain leaves without and plastered with cobwebs within, yet a palace compared with what sheltered us afterward. The only habitable part was the second story, which was reached by a couple of notched bamboo sticks. A hammock, two earthen kettles, two plates, and a few calabashes constituted the household furniture. The dormitory was well ventilated, for two sides were open. Our lodging, however, cost us nothing; travelers only pay for yerba for their beasts. Though this has been the royal road to Quito for three centuries, there is but one posada between Guayaquil and Ambato, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles; travelers must carry their own bedding and provisions.
![[Ascending the Andes.]](#8543082027330898494_040.png.id-7227549893653391282.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Leaving Savaneta at dawn, and breakfasting at a wayside hut owned by an old negro, we struck about noon the Rio Charriguajaco, dashing down the mountains in hot haste for the Guayas. It was refreshing to look upon living waters for the first time since leaving the hills of our native country. Fording this stream we know not how many times, and winding through the dense forest in narrow paths often blockaded by laden donkeys that doggedly disputed the passage, we soon found ourselves slowly creeping up the Andes. We frequently met mountaineers on their way to Bodegas with loads of potatoes, peas, barley, fowls, eggs, etc. They are generally accompanied by their wives or daughters, who ride like the men, but with the knees tucked up higher. On the slippery tracks which traverse this western slope, bulls are often used as beasts of burden, the cloven hoofs enabling them to descend with great security. But mules are better than horses or asses. "That a hybrid (muses Darwin) should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature."
Toward evening the ascent became rapid and the road horrible beyond conception, growing narrower and rougher as we advanced. Indeed, our way had long since ceased to be a road. In the dense forest, where sunshine never comes, rocks, mud, and fallen trees in rapid alternation macadamize the path, save where it turns up the bed of a babbling brook. In the comparatively level tracts, the equable step of the beasts has worn the soil into deep transverse ridges, called camellones, from their resemblance to the humps on a camel's back. In the precipitous parts the road is only a gully worn by the transit of men and beasts for ages, aided by torrents of water in the rainy season. As we ascend, this changes to a rocky staircase, so strait that one must throw up his legs to save them from being crushed, and so steep that horse and rider run the risk of turning a somersault. It is fearful to meet in a narrow defile, or where the road winds around the edge of a precipice, a drove of reckless donkeys and mules descending the mountain, urged on by the cries and lashes of the muleteers behind. Yet this has been the highway of Ecuadorian commerce for three hundred years. In vain we tried to reach the little village of Camino Real on the crest of the ridge; but the night was advancing rapidly, and crawling up such a road by starlight was not a little dangerous. So we put up at a miserable tambo, Pogyos by name. It was a mud hut of the rudest kind, windowless and unfloored; very clean, if it had been left to nature, but man and beast had rendered it intolerably filthy. Our hostess, a Quichua woman, with tattered garments, and hair disheveled and standing up as if electrified, set a kettle on three stones, and, making a fire under it, prepared for us a calabash of chicken and locro. Locro, the national dish in the mountains, is in plain English simply potato soup. Sitting on the ground, we partook of this refreshment by the aid of fingers and wooden spoons, enticing our appetites by the reflection that potato soup would support life. The unkempt Indian by our side, grinning in conscious pride over her successful cookery, did not aid us in this matter. Fire is used in Ecuador solely for culinary purposes, not for warmth. It is made at no particular spot on the mud floor, and there is no particular orifice for the exit of the smoke save the chinks in the wall. There is not a chimney in the whole republic. As the spare room in the establishment belonged to the women, we gentlemen slept on the ground outside, or on beds made of round poles. The night was piercingly cold. The wished-for morning came at last, and long before the sun looked over the mountains we were on our march. It was the same terrible road, running zigzag, or "quingo" fashion, up to Camino Real, where it was suddenly converted into a royal highway.
We were now fairly out of the swamps of the lowlands, and, though under the equator, out of the tropics too. The fresh mountain breeze and the chilly mists announced a change of climate.[12] Fevers and dysenteries, snakes and musquitoes, the plantain and the palm, we had left behind. Camino Real is a huddle of eight or ten dwellings perched on the summit of a sierra a thousand feet higher than the top of Mount Washington. The views from this stand-point compensate for all past troubles. The wild chaos of mountains on every side, broken by profound ravines, the heaps of ruins piled up during the lapse of geologic ages, the intense azure of the sky, and the kingly condor majestically wheeling around the still higher pinnacles, make up a picture rarely to be seen. Westward, the mountains tumble down into hills and spread out into plains, which, in the far distant horizon, dip into the great Pacific. The setting sun turns the ocean into a sheet of liquid fire. Long columns of purple light shoot up to the zenith, and as the last point of the sun sinks beneath the horizon, the stars rush out in full splendor; for at the equator day gives place to night with only an hour and twenty minutes of twilight. The mountains are Alpine, yet grander than the Alps; not so ragged as the granite peaks of Switzerland, but with rounder heads. The prospect down this occidental slope is diversified by deep valleys, lands-lides, and flowering trees. Magnificent are the views eastward,
"Where Andes, giant of the western star,
Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world."
The majestic dome of Chimborazo was entirely uncovered of clouds, and presented a most splendid spectacle. There it stood, its snow-white summit, unsullied by the foot of man, towering up twice as high as Etna. For many years it received the homage of the world as the highest point in America; but now the Aconcagua of Chile claims the palm. Still, what a panorama from the top of Chimborazo, could one reach it, for the eye would command ten thousand square miles!
Our road gently winds down the sierra, giving us at every turn sublime ideas of what nature can do in tossing up the thin crust of our globe. But sublimity is at a discount here—there is too much of it. Suddenly we are looking down into the enchanting valley of Chimbo. This romantic and secluded spot is one of those forgotten corners of the earth which, barricaded against the march of civilization by almost impassable mountains, and inhabited by a thriftless race, has been left far behind in the progress of mankind. Distance lends enchantment to the view. We are reminded of the pastoral vales of New England. Wheat takes the place of the sugar-cane, barley of cacao, potatoes of plantains, and turnips of oranges. Bamboo sheds have given way to neatly whitewashed villages, and the fields are fenced with rows of aloe. But, drawing nearer, we find the habitations are in reality miserable mud hovels, without windows, and tenanted by vermin and ragged poverty. There are herds of cattle and fields of grain; yet we shall not find a quart of milk or a loaf of bread for sale. The descent into the valley is very precipitous, and, after a rain, alarmingly slippery. Mules, drawing their legs together, slide down with startling velocity, and follow the windings with marvelous dexterity.
We arrived at Guaranda at 5 P.M. on the third day after leaving Bodegas. This is a desolate town of two thousand souls, dwelling in low dilapidated huts made of the most common building material in the Andes—adobe, or sun-dried blocks of mud mingled with straw.[13]
The streets are rudely paved, and pitch to the centre, to form an aqueduct, like the streets of old Sychar. The inhabitants are in happy ignorance of the outside world. They pass the day without a thought of work, standing on the Plaza, or in front of some public office, staring vacantly into space, or gossiping. A cockfight will soonest rouse them from their lethargy. They seem to have no purpose in life but to keep warm under their ponchos and to eat when they are hungry. Guaranda is a healthy locality, lying in a deep valley on the west bank of the Chimbo, at an elevation, according to our barometer, of 8840 feet, and having a mean temperature slightly less than that of Quito. It is a place of importance, inasmuch as it is the resting-place before ascending or after descending the still loftier ranges, and much more because it is the capital of the region which yields the invaluable cinchona, or Peruvian bark.[14] This tree is indigenous to the Andes, where it is found on the western slope between the altitudes of two thousand and nine thousand feet, the species richest in alkaloids occupying the higher elevations, where the air is moist. Dr. Weddell enumerates twenty-one species, seven of which are now found in Ecuador, but the only one of value is the the C. succirubra (the calisaya has run out), and this is now nearly extinct, as the trees have been destroyed to obtain the bark. This species is a beautiful tree, having large, broadly oval, deep green, shining leaves, white, fragrant flowers, and red bark, and sometimes, though rarely, attains the height of sixty feet. A tree five feet in circumference will yield fifteen hundred pounds of green bark, or eight hundred of the dry. The roots contain the most alkaloid, though the branches are usually barked for commerce. The true cinchona barks, containing quinine, quinidine, and cinchonine, are distinguished from the false by their splintery-fibrous texture, the latter being pre-eminently corky. The cascarilleros begin to hunt for bark in August. Dr. Taylor, of Riobamba, found one tree which gave $3600 worth of quinine. The general yield is from three to five pounds to a quintal of bark. The tree has been successfully transplanted to the United States, and particularly to India, where there are now over a million of plants. It was introduced into India by Markham in 1861. The bark is said to be stronger than that from Ecuador, yielding twice as much alkaloid, or eleven per cent. The quinine of commerce will doubtless come hereafter from the slopes of the Himalayas instead of the Andes. In 1867 only five thousand pounds of bark were exported from Guayaquil. The Indians use the bark of another tree, the Maravilla, which is said to yield a much stronger alkaloid than cinchona. It grows near Pallatanga.
We left Guaranda at 5 A.M. by the light of Venus and Orion, having exchanged our horses for the sure-footed mule. It was a romantic ride. From a neighboring stand-point Church took one of his celebrated views of "The Heart of the Andes." But the road, as aforetime, was a mere furrow, made and kept by the tread of beasts. For a long distance the track runs over the projecting and jagged edges of steeply-inclined strata of slate, which nobody has had the energy to smooth down. At many places on the road side were human skulls, set in niches in the bank, telling tales of suffering in their ghastly silence; while here and there a narrow passage was blocked up by the skeleton or carcass of a beast that had borne its last burden. At nine o'clock we came out on a narrow, grassy ridge called the Ensillada, or Saddleback, where there were three straw huts, with roofs resting on the ground, and there we breakfasted on locro. During our stay the Indians killed a pig, and before the creature was fairly dead dry grass was heaped upon it and set on fire. This is the ordinary method of removing the bristles.
Still ascending, we lose sight of the valley of the Chimbo, and find ourselves in a wilderness of crags and treeless mountains clothed with the long, dreary-looking paramo grass called paja. But we are face to face with "the monarch of the Andes," and we shall have its company the rest of the day. The snowy dome is flooded with the golden light of heaven; delicate clouds of softest hues float around its breast; while, far below, its feet are wrapped in the baser mists of earth. We attained the summit of the pass at 11 A.M. All travelers strive to reach it early in the morning, for in the afternoon it is swept by violent winds which render it uncomfortable, if not dangerous. This part of the road is called the "Arenal," from the sand and gravel which cover it. It is about a league in length, and crosses the side of Chimborazo at an elevation of more than fourteen thousand feet. Chimborazo stands on the left of the traveler. How tantalizing its summit! It appears so easy of access; and yet many a valiant philosopher, from Humboldt down, has panted for the glory and failed. The depth of the snow and numerous precipices are the chief obstacles; but the excessively rarefied air is another hinderance. Even in crossing the Arenal, a native of the lowlands complains of violent headache, a propensity to vomit, and a difficulty of breathing. The Arenal is often swept by snow-storms; and history has it that some of the Spanish conquerors were here frozen to death. The pale yellow gravel is considered by some geologists as the moraine of a glacier. It is spread out like a broad gravel walk, so that, without exaggeration, one of the best roads in Ecuador has been made by Nature's hand on the crest of the Andes.
It was interesting to trace the different hypsometrical zones by the change of vegetation from Bodegas to this lofty spot. The laws of the decrease of heat are plainly written on the rapid slopes of the Cordilleras. On the hot, steaming lowlands of the coast reign bananas and palms. As these thin out, tree-ferns take their place. Losing these, we found the cinchona bedewed by the cool clouds of Guaranda; and last of all, among the trees, the polylepis. The twisted, gnarled trunk of this tree, as well as its size and silvery foliage, reminded us of the olive, but the bark resembles that of the birch. It reaches the greatest elevation of any tree on the globe. Then followed shrubby fuchsia, calceolaria, eupatoria, and red and purple gentians; around and on the Arenal, a uniform mantle of monocotyledonous plants, with scattered tufts of valeriana, viola, and geranium, all with rigid leaves in the characteristic rosettes of super-alpine vegetation; and on the porphyritic and trachytic sides of Chimborazo, lichens alone. Snow then covers the last effort of vegetable life.[15] The change in the architecture of the houses indicated, likewise, a change of altitude. The open bamboo huts, shingled with banana leaves, were followed by warmer adobe houses, and these, in turn, by the straw hovels of the mountain-top, made entirely of the long, wiry grass of the paramos.
Leaving the Arenal, we rapidly descended by the usual style of road—stone stairs. But down we went, as all the goods for Quito, "the grand capital," have done since the Spanish Conquest. The old road from Beirût to Damascus is royal in comparison. The general aspect of the eastern slope is that of a gray, barren waste, overgrown with paja; but now and then we crossed deep gulleys, whose sides were lined with mosses and sprinkled with calceolarias, lupines, etc. In our descent we had before us the magnificent Valley of Quito, and beyond it the eastern Cordillera. Below us was Riobamba, and far away to the right the deep gorge of the Pastassa. Nevertheless, this is one of the loneliest rides earth can furnish. Not a tree nor human habitation is in sight. Icy rivulets and mule-trains are the only moving objects on this melancholy heath. Even "Drake's Plantation Bitters," painted on the volcanic cliffs of Chimborazo, would be a relief.
At last we reached our rude accommodations for the night. It was a solitary mud tambo, glorying in the euphonious name of Chuquipoyo. The court-yard was a sea of mud and manure, for this is the halting-place for all the caravans between Quito and the coast. Our room was a horrid hole, dark, dirty, damp, and cold, without a window or a fire. There was one old rickety bedstead, but as that belonged to the lady in our party, the rest betook themselves to benches, table, and floor. We filled our stomachs with an unpalatable potato soup containing cheese and eggs, and laid down—to wait for the morning. Grass is the only fuel here; but this is not the chief reason why it is so difficult to make good tea or cook potatoes at this wretched tambo. Water boils at 190°, or before it is fairly hot: it is well the potatoes are small. The muleteers slept with their beasts outside, though the night was fearfully cold, for Chuquipoyo lies on the frigid side of Chimborazo, at an elevation of over twelve thousand feet above the sea. As Johnson said to Boswell, "This is a dolorous place."
Gladly we left this cheerless tambo, though a cold, heavy mist was falling as we rode northward, over the seemingly endless paramo of Sanancajas. Here, as throughout the highlands of Ecuador, ditches are used for fences; so that, should the traveler wander from the path, he finds himself stopped by an impassable gulf. In two hours and a half we reached Mocha, a lifeless pueblo under the shadow of Carguairazo. Slowly descending from our high altitude, we gradually entered a more congenial climate—the zone of wheat and barley, till, finally, signs of an eternal spring were all around us—ripening corn on one side, and blossoming peas on the other.
Late in the afternoon the road led us through a sandy, sterile tract, till suddenly we came in sight of Ambato, beautifully situated in a deep ravine, eight thousand five hundred and fifty feet above the Pacific. The city ranks next to Quito in beauty. It is certainly an oasis, the green foliage of its numerous shade-trees and orchards contrasting with the barren hills around. It is two degrees warmer than Quito, and is famous for its fruit and fine climate. It is the Lynn of Ecuador, the chief articles of manufacture being boots and shoes—cheap, but of poor quality. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1698. The houses are built of sun-dried brick, and whitewashed. The streets, with gutters in the centre, are at right angles, and paved, and adorned with numerous cypress-looking trees, called sauce, a species of willow. The Plaza, which contains a useful if not ornamental fountain, presents a lively scene on Sunday, the great market-day. The inn is a fair specimen of a public house in Spanish America. Around the court-yard, where the beasts are fed, are three or four rooms to let. They are ventilated only when opened for travelers. The floor is of brick, but alive with fleas; the walls are plastered, but veiled with cobwebs. The furniture, of primitive make and covered with dust, consists of a chair or two, a table, and a bed of boards covered with a thin straw mat. There is not a hotel in Ecuador where sheets and towels are furnished. The landlords are seldom seen; the entire management of the concern is left to a slovenly Indian boy, who is both cook and hostler. No amount of bribery will secure a meal in less than two hours. Ten years ago there was not a posada in the country; now there is entertainment for man and beast at Guayaquil, Guaranda, Mocha, Ambato, Tacunga, Machachi, and Quito. Riobamba has a billiard saloon, but no inn.
Leaving Ambato, we breakfasted at Cunchebamba, an Indian village of half a dozen straw huts. Thence the road for a long distance winds through vast deposits of volcanic débris, the only sign of vegetation being hedges of aloe and cactus. Arid hills and dreary plains, covered with plutonic rocks and pumice dust, tell us we are approaching the most terrible volcano on the earth. Crossing the sources of the Pastassa, we entered Latacunga,[16] situated on a beautiful plain at the foot of Cotopaxi, seven hundred feet higher than Ambato. Its average temperature is 59°. The population, chiefly Indians, numbers about fifteen thousand. It is the dullest city in Ecuador, without the show of enterprise or business. Not even grass grows in the streets—the usual sign of life in the Spanish towns. It is also one of the filthiest; and though it has been many times thoroughly shaken by earthquakes, and buried under showers of volcanic dust, it is still the paradise of fleas, which have survived every revolution. Ida Pfeiffer says that, after a night's rest in Latacunga, she awoke with her skin marked all over with red spots, as if from an eruptive disease. We can certify that we have been tattoed without the night's rest. The town has a most stupid and forlorn aspect. Half of it is in ruins. It was four times destroyed between 1698 and 1797. In 1756 the Jesuit church was thrown down, though its walls were five feet thick. The houses are of one story, and built of pumice, widely different from the palaces and temples which are said to have stood here in the palmy days of the Incas. Cotopaxi stands threateningly near, and its rumbling thunder is the source of constant alarm.
From Latacunga to Quito there is a very fine carriage road, the result of one man's administration—Señor G. Garcia Moreno. For many miles it passes over an uncultivated plateau, strewn with volcanic fragments. The farms are confined to the slopes of the Cordilleras, and, as every where else, the tumbling haciendas indicate the increasing poverty of the owner. Superstition and indolence go hand in hand. On a great rock rising out of the sandy plain they show a print of the foot of St. Bartholomew, who alighted here on a visit—surely to the volcanoes, as it was long before the red man had found this valley. Abreast of Cotopaxi the road cuts through high hills of fine pumice inter-stratified with black earth, and rapidly ascends till it reaches Tiupullo, eleven thousand five hundred feet above the sea. This high ridge,[17] stretching across the valley from Cotopaxi to Iliniza, is a part of the great water-shed of the continent—the waters on the southern slope flowing through the Pastassa and Amazon to the Atlantic, those on the north finding their way to the Pacific by the Rio Esmeraldas. At this bleak place we breakfasted on punch and guinea-pig.
As soon as we began to descend, the glittering cone of Cotopaxi, and the gloomy plain it has so often devastated, passed out of view, and before us was a green valley exceedingly rich and well cultivated, girt by a wall of mountains, the towers of which were the peaks of Corazon and Rumiñagui. Loathsome lepers by the wayside alone disturbed the pleasing impression. Three hours more of travel brought us to the straggling village of Machachi, standing in the centre of the beautiful plain, at an altitude of nine thousand nine hundred feet. Nature designed this spot for a home of plenty and comfort, but the habitations of the wretched proprietors are windowless adobe hovels, thatched with dried grass, and notorious for their filth.
We must needs make one more ascent, for the ridge of Tambillo hides the goal of our journey. The moment we reached the summit, views unparalleled in the Andes or any where else met our astonished vision whithersoever we looked. Far away to the south stretched the two Cordilleras, till they were lost in the mist which enshrouded Chimborazo and Tunguragua. Turning to the north, we beheld the city of Quito at our feet, and Pichincha and Antisana standing like gallant sentinels on either side of the proud capital. Beautiful were the towering mountains, and almost as delightful now are the memories of that hour. A broad, well-traveled road, gentlemen on horseback clad in rich ponchos, droves of Indians bowed under their heavy burdens, and long lines of laden donkeys hurrying to and fro, indicate our approach to a great city. Winding with the road through green pastures and fields of ripening grain, and crossing the Machángara by an elegant bridge, we enter the city of the Incas.
[CHAPTER III.]
Early History of Quito.— Its Splendor under the Incas.— Crushed by Spain.— Dying now.— Situation.— Altitude.— Streets.— Buildings.
Quito is better known than Ecuador. Its primeval history, however, is lost in obscurity. In the language of Prescott, "the mists of fable have settled as darkly round its history as round that of any nation, ancient or modern, in the Old World." Founded, nobody knows when, by the kings of the Quitus, it was conquered about the year 1000 by a more civilized race, the Cara nation, who added to it by conquest and alliance. The fame of the region excited the cupidity of the Incas of Peru, and during the reign of Cacha (1475), Huayna-Capac the Great moved his army from Cuzco, and by the celebrated battle of Hatuntaqui, in which Cacha was killed, Quito was added to the realm of the Incas. Huayna-Capac made Quito his residence, and reigned there thirty-eight years—the most brilliant epoch in the annals of the city. At his death his kingdom was divided, one son, Atahuallpa,[18] reigning in Quito, and Huascar at Cuzco. Civil war ensued, in which the latter was defeated, and Atahuallpa was chosen Inca of the whole empire, 1532. During this war Pizarro arrived at Tumbez. Every body knows what followed. Strangled at Caxamarca, the body of Atahuallpa was carried to Quito, the city of his birth, in compliance with his dying wish, and buried there with imposing obsequies. Refounded by Benalcazar in 1534, Quito was created an imperial city by Charles V. seven years later. It formed part of Peru till 1710; then of Santa Fé till 1722; and again of Peru till its independence. The power of Spain in South America was destroyed at the battle of Ayacucho, Dec. 9, 1824. In 1830 Venezuela separated from Colombia, and Ecuador followed the same year. The first Congress was held in Riobamba; but Quito has ever since been the political focus. The first president was General Flores.
Under the diadem of the Incas, Quito assumed a magnificence which it never saw before and has not displayed since. It was the worthy metropolis of a vast empire stretching from the equator to the desert of Atacama, and walled in by the grandest group of mountains in the world. On this lofty site, which amid the Alps would be buried in an avalanche of snow, but within the tropics enjoys an eternal spring, palaces more beautiful than the Alhambra were erected, glittering with the gold and emerald of the Andes. But all this splendor passed away with the sceptre of Atahuallpa. Where the pavilion of the Inca stood is now a gloomy convent, and a wheat-field takes the place of the Temple of the Sun.
The colonial history of this favored spot is as lifeless as the history of Sahara. Not a single event occurred of which even Spain can be proud; not a monument was raised which reflects any credit upon the mother country. Every thing was prescribed by law, and all law emanated from a tribunal five thousand miles distant. There was no relation of private life with which the government did not interfere: what the colonist should plant and what trade he should follow; where he should buy and where he should sell; how much he should import and export; and where and when he should marry, were regulated by the "Council of the Indies" and the Inquisition. In the words of a native writer, "The great majority of the people knew nothing of sciences, events, or men. Their religion consisted of outward observances, and an imperfect knowledge of the papal bulls; their morality, in asceticism and devotion to their king; their philosophy, in the subtleties of Aristotle; their history, in the history of the mother country; their geography, in the maps of Spanish America and of Spain; their press, in what sufficed to print bill-heads and blank forms; their commerce, in an insignificant coasting trade; their ambition and highest aspirations, in titles of nobility; their amusements, in bull-fights. The arrival of a mail was an event of great moment, and with ringing of bells was received the cajon de España which announced the health of the sovereigns. Thus, while Europe was passing through the stormy times of Louis XIV.; while the philosophical writings of the illustrious men of those times found their way into the remotest corners of the globe; while the English colonies of North America conquered their independence; while the Old World was drenched in blood to propagate the ideas which the French Revolution had proclaimed, the Presidency of Quito, walled in by its immense cordilleras and the ocean, and ruled by monkish ignorance and bigotry, knew as little of men and events as we now know of men and events in the moon."[19]
From an iron despotism which existed for three centuries, Quito passed to a state of unbridled licentiousness. Without any political experience whatever, the people attempted to lay the foundation of a new system of government and society. With head and hearts perverted by monkish superstition and Spanish tyranny, yet set on fire by the French Revolution, what did they know of liberty! Endless civil wars have followed independence. "Political ambition," says a late United States minister, "personal jealousies, impracticable theories, official venality, reckless disregard of individual rights and legal obligations, foolish meddling and empirical legislation, and an absolute want of political morality, form the principal features of their republican history."[20] To-day they tread on the dust of an ancient race whose government was in every respect a most complete contrast to their own.
At the foot of volcanic Pichincha, only five hours' travel from its smoking crater, lies "the city above the clouds," "the navel of the world," "magnificent Quito." On the north is the plain of Rumibamba, the battle-field where Gonzalo Pizarro routed the first viceroy of Peru, and the scene, two centuries later, of the nobler achievements of La Condamine, which made it the classic ground of astronomy. On the southern edge of the city rises Panecillo, reminding one of Mount Tabor by its symmetrical form, and over-looking the beautiful and well-watered plain of Turubamba. On the east flows the Rio Machángara, and just beyond it stand the Puengasi hills hiding the Chillo valley, while the weary sun goes early to rest behind the towering peaks of Pichincha. So encircled is this sequestered spot, the traveler, approaching by the Guayaquil road, sees only a part of it, and is disappointed; and even when standing on Panecillo, with the entire city spread out before him, he is not wholly satisfied. Buried between treeless, sombre sierras, and isolated from the rest of the world by impassable roads and gigantic Cordilleras, Quito appears to us of the commercial nineteenth century as useless as the old feudal towns perched on the mountains of Middle Europe. Not a chimney rises above the red-tiled roofs, telling of homely hearths beneath. No busy hum greets the ear; there are bugles instead of spindles, and jingling church bells in place of rattling carriages. The wandering eye does not look for a railroad or a telegraph, for even the highways, such as they are, seem deserted, and, save the music made for soldiers and saints, all is silent. The very mountains, too, with their snow-mantled heads, and their sides scarred by volcanic eruptions and ruptured by earthquake shocks, have a melancholy look. In the words of a great artist, "They look like a world from which not only the human, but the spiritual presences had perished, and the last of the archangels, building the great Andes for their monuments, had laid themselves down to eternal rest, each in his snow-white shroud."
But let us enter. Passing the ruined chapel "Del Señor del buen pasaje," and crossing by a substantial stone bridge the little Machángara hastening to pay tribute to the Pacific, we leave behind us the dirty, dilapidated suburbs of the capital. Soon we cross another bridge—the Bridge of Buzzards—spanning a deep ravine, and gallop through the Plaza de Santo Domingo. Very different are the sights and sounds from the stir and style of Central Park. The scene has a semi-oriental cast—half Indian, half Egyptian, as if this were the confluence of the Marañon and Nile. Groups of men—not crowds, for there is plenty of elbow-room in Ecuador—in gay ponchos stand chatting in front of little shops, or lean against the wall to enjoy the sunshine; beggars in rags or sackcloth stretch forth their leprous hands for charity; monks in white, and canons in black, walk in the shade of immense hats; shoeless soldiers saunter to and fro; Indians from the mountains in every variety of costume cluster around heaps of vegetables for sale; women in red, brown, and blue frocks are peddling oranges and alligator pears, or bearing huge burdens on their heads; children, guiltless of clothing, and obtuse donkeys, wander whithersoever they will; and water-carriers, filling their jars at the fountain, start off on a dog-trot.
![[Quito, from the North.]](#8543082027330898494_059.png.id-2519039134900317245.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
We cross the Plaza diagonally, pass down the Calle de San Fernando, up the Calle del Algodon, and through the busy Calle del Correo, till we reach the Casa Frances, opposite the mansion of the late General Flores. This is our hotel—owned by a Frenchman, but kept by an Indian. We ride under the low archway, bowing with ill grace, like all republicans unaccustomed to royalty, tie our beasts in the court-yard, ascend to our spacious quarters on the second floor, and, ordering coffee, seat ourselves in the beautiful balcony to talk of Quito and Quitonians.
![[Water-carriers.]](#8543082027330898494_060.png.id-1159715198049070068.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Quito, though not the highest city on the globe, is two thousand feet higher than the Hospice of Great St. Bernard on the Alps, which is the only permanent place of abode in Europe above six thousand five hundred feet. When Mr. Hassaurek was appointed United States Minister to Ecuador, he thanked Mr. Lincoln for conferring upon him the highest gift in his power. The mean result of our numerous observations with Green's standard barometer places the Grand Plaza nine thousand five hundred and twenty feet above the sea, or fifty feet lower than the calculation of Humboldt. Water boils at 194°.5. Cuzco and Potosi may surpass it in altitude, but there is not a city in the world which can show at once such a genial climate, such magnificent views, and such a checkered history. It is unique likewise in its latitude, lying only fifteen miles below the equator; no other capital comes within three hundred miles of the equinoctial line.
![[Street in Quito.]](#8543082027330898494_061.png.id-8039248770025235837.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Whatever may have been the plan of Quito in the days of Huayna-Capac, it is evident that the Spanish founders were guided more by the spurs of Pichincha than by astronomy. The streets make an angle of forty-five degrees with the meridian, so that not a single public building faces any one of the four cardinal points of the compass. Two deep ravines come down the mountain, and traverse the city from west to east. They are mostly covered by arches, on which the houses rest; but where they are open, they disclose as fit representatives of the place of torment as the Valley of Hinnom. The outline of the city is as irregular as its surface. It incloses one square mile. Twenty streets, all of them straiter than the apostolic one in Damascus, cross one another very nearly at right angles. None of them are too wide, and the walks are painfully narrow; but, thanks to Garcia Moreno, they are well paved. The inequality of the site, and its elevation above the Machángara, render the drainage perfect.[21] The streets are dimly lighted by tallow candles, every householder being obliged to hang out a lantern at 7 P.M., unless there is moonshine. The candles, however, usually expire about ten o'clock. There are three "squares"—Plaza Mayor, Plaza de San Francisco, and Plaza de Santo Domingo. The first is three hundred feet square, and adorned with trees and flowers; the others are dusty and unpaved, being used as market-places, where Indians and donkeys most do congregate. All the plazas have fountains fed with pure water from Pichincha.
Few buildings can boast of architectural beauty, yet Quito looks palatial to the traveler who has just emerged from the dense forest on the coast, "crossing bridgeless rivers, floundering over bottomless roads, and ascending and descending immense mountains." He is astonished to find such elegant edifices and such a proud aristocracy in this lofty lap of the Andes. The Indian habitations which girdle the city have no more architectural pretensions than an Arab dwelling. They are low mud hovels, the scene within and without of dirt and disorder.
As we approach the Grand Plaza, the centre of the city, the buildings increase in size, style, and finish. The ordinary material is adobe, not only because it is cheap, but also because it best resists earthquake shocks. Fear of a terremoto has likewise led to a massiveness in construction which is slightly ludicrous when we see the poverty which it protects; the walls are often two or three feet thick. The ground floor is occupied by servants, whose rooms—small enough to be called niches—surround the paved court-yard, which is entered from the street by a broad doorway. Within this court is sometimes a fountain or flower-plot. Around it are arches or pillars supporting a gallery, which is the passage-way to the apartments of the second story. All the rooms are floored with large square bricks. With few exceptions, the only windows are folding glass doors leading to balconies overhanging the pavement. The tiled roofs project far over into the street, and from these project still farther uncouth water-spouts, such as used to be seen in Rio Janeiro, but have now been banished to the antiquarian museum. Only three or four private residences rise above two stories. The shops are small affairs—akin to the cupboards of Damascene merchants; half a dozen modern ladies can keep out any more customers. The door serves as entrance, exit, window, and show-case. The finest structures cluster around the plazas. Here are the public buildings, some of them dating back to the times of Philip II. They are modeled after the old Spanish style; there is scarcely a fragment of Gothic architecture. They are built of large brick, or a dark volcanic stone from Pichincha.
[Palacio de Gobierno—Capitol.]
![[Palacio de Gobierno—Capitol.]](#8543082027330898494_064.png.id-8171030701783879401.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
The Government House, which serves at once as "White House" and Capitol, is an imposing edifice fronting the Grand Plaza, and adorned with a fine colonnade. On its right rises the cathedral; on the left stands the unpretending palace of the nuncio. The former would be called beautiful were it kept in repair; it has a splendid marble porch, and a terrace with carved stone balustrade. The view above was taken from this terrace. The finest façade is presented by the old Jesuit church, which has an elaborate front of porphyry. The Church of San Francisco, built by the treasures of Atahuallpa, discovered by an Indian named Catuna, is the richest. It is surmounted by two lofty towers, and the interior is a perfect blaze of gilding. The monastery attached to it is one of the largest in the world, but the greater part of it is in ruins, and one of the wings is used as a barrack. Those unsightly, unadorned convents, which cling to every church save the cathedral, have neutralized nearly all architectural effect.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Population of Quito.— Dress.— Manners.— Character.— Commerce.— Agriculture.— Manufactures.— Arts.— Education.— Amusements.— Quito Ladies.
Quitonians claim for their capital eighty thousand inhabitants; but when we consider that one fourth of the city is covered with ecclesiastical buildings, and that the dwelling-houses are but two stories high, we see that there is not room for more than half that number. From thirty thousand to forty thousand is the estimate of the venerable Dr. Jameson, who has resided here for a generation.[22] Census taking is as difficult as in Constantinople; the people hide themselves to escape taxation. The women far outnumber the men. The white population—a stiff aristocracy of eight thousand souls—is of Spanish descent, but not more than half a dozen can boast of pure blood. The coarse black hair, prominent cheek-bones, and low foreheads, reveal an Indian alliance. This is the governing class; from its ranks come those uneasy politicians who make laws for other people to obey, and hatch revolutions when a rival party is in power. They are blessed with fair mental capacity, quick perception, and uncommon civility; but they lack education and industry, energy and perseverance. Their wealth, which is not great, consists mainly in haciendas, yielding grain, cotton, and cattle. The Aguirre family is one of the noblest and wealthiest in the city; their mansion is on the Grand Plaza, facing the Capitol. The pure Indians of Quito number perhaps 10,000; not all those seen in the city are citizens, as many serranos, or mountaineers, come in to sell produce. They are the serfs that do the drudgery of the republic; they are the tillers of the soil, and beasts of burden. Many sell themselves for money in advance, and then are ever kept in debt. Excepting a few Zambos (the children of Indians and Negroes), and a very few foreigners and Negroes, the remainder, constituting the bulk of the population, are Cholos—the offspring of whites and Indians. They are not strictly half-breeds, for the Indian element stands out most prominent. Though a mixed race, they are far superior to their progenitors in enterprise and intelligence. They are the soldiers, artisans, and tradesmen who keep up the only signs of life in Quito. "I know not the reason," says Darwin, "but men of such origin seldom have a good expression of countenance." This may be true on the pampas, but Quito, where there is every imaginable mixture of Indian and Spaniard, is wonderfully free from ugly features. It may be owing to the more peaceful and civilized history of this mountain city.
As to dress, black is the color of etiquette, but is not so national as in Madrid. The upper class follow la mode de Paris, gentlemen adding the classic cloak of Old Spain. This modern toga fits an Ecuadorian admirably; it favors habits of inactivity, preventing the arms from doing any thing, and covers a multitude of sins, especially pride and poverty. The poncho, so peculiar to the West Coast and to the Gauchos of Buenos Ayres, is a piece of cloth of divers colors, with a slit in the centre, through which the head is passed. It is the only variable article of the wardrobe. It is an excellent riding habit, and is made of heavy woolen for mountain travel, and of silk or cotton for warmer altitudes. No gentleman will be seen walking in the streets of Quito under a poncho. Hence citizens are divided into men with ponchos, and gentlemen with cloaks. The pañuelon is the most essential article of female gear. It answers to the mantilla of the mother country, though it is not worn so gracefully as on the banks of the Tagus. Andean ladies are not troubled with the distressing fluctuations in the style of hats; a bonnet in Quito is as much out of place as a turban in New York. When the daughter of our late minister resident appeared in the cathedral with one, the innovation was the subject of severe remark. The Spanish hair is the glory of the sex. It is thick and black (red, being a rarity, is considered a beauty), and is braided in two long tresses. A silk dress, satin shoes, and fancy jewelry complete the visible attire of the belles of Quito.
The ordinary costume of the Indians and Cholos consists of a coarse cotton shirt and drawers, and silk, cotton, or woolen poncho of native manufacture, the females adding a short petticoat, generally of a light blue or "butter-nut" color, belted around the waist with a figured woolen belt woven by themselves. The head, arms, legs, and feet are often bare, but, by those who can afford it, the head is covered with a straw or white felt broad-brim, and the feet protected by sandals, called alpargates, made of the fibres of the aloe. They are very fond of bracelets and necklaces. Infants are usually swathed from neck to feet with a broad strip of cloth, so that they look like live mummies.
Quitonians put us to shame by their unequaled courtesy, cordiality, and good-nature, and are not far below the grave and decorous Castilian in dignified politeness.[23]
Rudeness, which some Northerners fancy is a proof of equality and independence, we never met with, and duels and street quarrels are almost unknown. We detected none of the touchy sensitiveness of the punctilious Spanish hidalgos. Their compliments and promises are without end; and, made in the magnificent and ceremonious language of Spain,[24] are overwhelming to a stranger. Thus a fair Quitonian sends by her servant the following message to another lady: "Go to the Señorita Fulana de Tal, and tell her that she is my heart and the dear little friend of my soul; tell her that I am dying for not having seen her, and ask her why she does not come to see me; tell her that I have been waiting for her more than a week, and that I send her my best respects and considerations; and ask her how she is, and how her husband is, and how her children are, and whether they are all well in the family; and tell her she is my little love, and ask her whether she will be kind enough to send me that pattern which she promised me the other day."[25] This highly important message the servant delivers like a parrot, not omitting a single compliment, but rather adding thereto.
A newly-arrived foreigner is covered with promises: houses, horses, servants, yea, every thing is at his disposal. But, alas! the traveler soon finds that this ceremony of words does not extend to deeds. He is never expected to call for the services so pompously proffered. So long as he stays in Quito he will not lose sight of the contrast between big promise and beggarly performance. This outward civility, however, is not hypocritical; it is mere mechanical prattle; the speaker does not expect to be taken at his word. The love of superlatives and the want of good faith may be considered as prominent characteristics. "The readiness with which they break a promise or an agreement (wrote Colonel Hall forty years ago) can only be equaled by the sophistical ingenuity with which they defend themselves for having done so." The Quitonians, who are sensible of their shortcomings, have this standing apology: "Our vices we owe to Spain; our virtues to ourselves."[26]
Such is the mutual distrust, partnerships are almost unknown; we do not remember a single commercial firm, save a few made up of brothers, or father and son. With this moral debility is joined the procrastinating spirit of the oriental. Mañana (to-morrow), like the Boukra of the Arabs, is the universal winding up of promises. And very often, if one promises a thing to-morrow, he means the day after that. It is impossible to start a man into prompt compliance; he will not commence a piece of work when you wish nor when he promises. No amount of cajolery, bribery, or threats will induce a Quitonian to do any thing or be any where in season. If there were a railroad in Ecuador, every body would be too late for the first train. There are only one or two watch-tinkers in the great city, and, as may be inferred, very few watches are in running order. As a consequence, the people have very little idea of time. But this is not the sole reason for their dilatoriness; they are indifferent. Nobody seems to want to make money (though all are in sad need of it); nobody is in a hurry; nobody is busy save the tailors, who manifest a commendable diligence. Contempt for labor, a Spanish inheritance, and lack of energy, are traits which stand out in alto relievo.
One can form his own judgment of the spiritless people from the single statement which we have from Dr. Jameson, that during the last forty years not ten Quitonians have visited the grand crater of Pichincha, though it is possible to ride horseback to its very edge. Plenty of gentlemen by profession walk the streets and cathedral terrace, proud as a Roman senator under his toga, yet not ashamed to beg a cup of coffee at the door of a more fortunate fellow-citizen. Society is in a constant struggle between ostentation and want.
Nature has done more for Ecuador than for Ecuadorians. She laid out this beautiful valley for an Elysian field; "de Quito al Cielo" (from Quito to Heaven) is not an empty adage; and it is painful to look upon tottering walls and impassable roads, upon neglected fields and an idle population—poor as poverty in the lap of boundless natural wealth. The only really live man in the republic is the president, Señor G. Garcia Moreno, a man of wide views and great energy, standing in these respects head and shoulders above his fellow-citizens. Quito and Quito Valley owe nearly all their improvements to this one man.
It is easy to say what would be the industry of a people who spend much of their time repeating traditions of treasures buried by the Incas, and stories of gold deposits in the mountains. Of commerce there is scarcely enough to deserve the name. Quito is an ecclesiastical city, and is nearly supported by Guayaquil. Without capital, without energy, without business habits, Quitonians never embark in grand commercial schemes and industrial enterprises. There is not a highway for commerce in any direction, only a natural path (called by the innocent natives a road), which rises to the altitude of fourteen thousand feet, by which the beasts of burden pick their way over the Cordillera. And this is open only six months in the year. Should a box designed for Quito arrive at Guayaquil at the beginning of the rainy season, it must tarry half a year till Nature makes the road passable.
The unstable condition of the country does not encourage great undertakings; all business is periodically paralyzed by revolution. Merchants generally buy their goods in Lima, to which city and Guayaquil the fabrics of England and France are brought by foreigners in foreign ships. The shops of Quito, as we have remarked, are very small, without windows, and with only one wooden door. The door is double, and is fastened by a ponderous padlock. They are open from 7 A.M. till sunset, excepting between nine and ten and between three and four, when the stores are closed for breakfast and dinner; the merchants never trusting their clerks, even when they have any, which is not usually the case. They have no fixed price, but get what they can. The majority know nothing of wholesale, and refuse to sell by the quantity, fearing a cheat. An Indian woman will sell you a real's worth of oranges any number of times, but she would object to parting with a dollar's worth—her arithmetic can not comprehend it.
In the portals or arcades of the Aguirre mansion and the nuncio's palace are the stalls of the haberdashers. Articles are not wrapped in paper; customers must get them home the best way they can. Ladies of the higher class seldom go out shopping, but send for samples. It is considered disgraceful to either sex to be seen carrying any thing through the streets of Quito. The common people buy only for immediate wants—a dose of medicine, or a handful of potatoes at a time. Nearly all liquids, kerosene as well as wine, are sold by the bottle.
There was no bank in Quito in 1867, but an attempt has just been made to establish one. The paper money of Guayaquil is often at nine per cent. discount in the capital. The currency is silver adulterated with one third of copper. The smallest coin, the calé, is worth about two and a half cents. Above that are medios (five cents), reals (ten cents), two, four, and eight reals. Eight reals make a soft dollar ($0 80); ten reals, a hard dollar ($1 00). There is no copper coin—oranges and loaves of bread are sometimes used to make change; and nearly all the gold in circulation are New Granada condors and Peruvian onzas. Many of the silver pieces have large holes cut in the centre, so that they resemble rings. Government set the example (and the people followed) on the plea that it would prevent the exportation of coin. The plan has succeeded, for it does not pass out of the valley.
Nearly the only sign of progress is the late introduction of the grape and silk-worm; and these give so much promise of success that the threadbare nobility have already begun to count their coming fortunes. Husbandry is more pastoral than agricultural. Thousands of cattle are raised on the paramos, but almost wholly for beef. "A dislike to milk (observes Humboldt), or at least the absence of its use before the arrival of Europeans, was, generally speaking, a feature common to all nations of the New Continent, as likewise to the inhabitants of China." Some cheese (mostly unpressed curd) and a little butter are made, but in the patriarchal style. Only one American churn is in operation; the people insist upon first boiling the milk and then stirring with a spoon. Custom is omnipotent here, and its effects hereditary. Milking is done at any hour of the day, or whenever milk is wanted. The operation is a formidable one to these bull-fighting people. Stopping at a hacienda near Peliléo for a drink of milk, we were eye-witness of a comical sight. A mild-looking cow was driven up to the door; the woman, evidently the bravest member of the household, seized the beast by the horns; a boy tied the hind legs with a long rope, and held on to one end of it at a respectful distance; while the father, with outstretched arms, milked into a calabash.
Agricultural machinery is not in use. The first threshing-machine Quito ever saw was made in 1867 by some California miners, but it remained unsold when we last saw it. The spade is not known; the nearest approach to it is a crowbar flattened at one end. Hoes are clumsy and awkward. Yankee plows are bought more as curiosities than for use. Many a crooked stick is seen scratching the land, as in Egypt, which the cattle drag by their horns. Sometimes a number of sharp-nosed hogs are tied together and let into a field, and driven from place to place till the whole is rooted up. Corn is planted by making holes in the ground with a stick, and dropping in the seed. The soil and climate of Ecuador, so infinitely varied, offer a home to almost every useful plant. The productions of either India could be naturalized on the lowlands, while the highlands would welcome the grains and fruits of Europe. But intertropical people do not subdue nature like the civilized men of the North; they only pick up a livelihood.
Spanish Americans, like Castilians on the banks of the Tagus, have a singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or shade tree (a thing of foresight and forethought for others) in a land where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, is considered downright folly in theory and practice. A large portion of the valley, left treeless, is becoming less favorable for cultivation.
Yet, as it is, the traveler is charmed by the emerald verdure of the coast, and by "evergreen Quito"—more beautiful than the hanging gardens of Babylon—suspended far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds. In the San Francisco market we find wheat, barley, maize, beans, peas, potatoes, cabbages, beets, salads, pine-apples, chirimoyas, guavas, oranges, lemons, pears, quinces, peaches, apricots, melons, and strawberries—the last all the year round. Most of these are exotics; the early discoverers found not a cereal grain of the Old World, not an orange or apple, no sugar-cane or strawberries.[27]
There is but little manufacturing industry in the interior of Ecuador, but much more than on the coast. The chief articles manufactured are straw hats, shoes, baskets, carpets, embroidery, tape, thread, ponchos, coarse woolen and cotton cloth, saddles, sandals, soap, sugar, cigars, aguardiente, powder, sweetmeats, carved images, paints, and pottery. Wines, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silks, and fine cloth are imported. There are three cotton mills in the country; one in Chillo (established by Señors Aguirre in 1842), another in Otovalo (built by Señor Parija in 1859), and a third in Cuenca (1861). The machinery of the Chillo factory came from England; that of Otovalo from Patterson, N.J. The latter was utterly destroyed in the late great earthquake, and the proprietor killed. The cotton is inferior to that of New Orleans; it is not "fat," as mechanics say; the seeds yield only two per cent. of oil. But it is whiter than American cotton, though coarse, and can be used only for very ordinary fabrics. The average length is five eighths of an inch. One pod will produce on an average three pennyweights. The mills of Chillo and Otovalo consume 425,000 pounds annually. The first sugar-mill was erected by the Aguirres in 1840 at Nanegal.
![[Indian Dwellings.]](#8543082027330898494_076.png.id-7620330931916050246.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Quito is more than a century behind this age of steam and lightning. To form an adequate idea of the mechanic and fine arts in that "city of the kings," we must transport ourselves to the Saxon period of European civilization. Both the material and the construction of the houses would craze Sir Christopher Wren. With fine quarries close at hand, they must build with mud mixed with stones, or plastered on wattles, like the Druses of Mount Lebanon. Living on the equatorial line and on the meridian so accurately measured by the highest mathematics of France and Spain, Quitonians must needs leave out every right angle or straight line in the walls, and every square beam and rafter. Except on the grand road from Quito to Ambato, commenced by President Moreno, there is not a wheel-barrow to be seen; paving-stones, lime, brick, and dirt, are usually carried on human backs. Saint Crispin never had the fortitude to do penance in the shoes of Quito, and the huge nails which enter into the hoofs of the quadrupedants remind one of the Cyclops. There are not six carts in Quito. If you wish to move, you must coax a dozen Indians, who care little for your money or your threats. Horse-hire, peonage, and most mechanical work must be paid for in advance. Carriages—antique vehicles, of which there are two or three in the city—are drawn by mules. The first was introduced by Señor Aguirre so late as 1859, and he was fined by the police for the privilege of riding in it. Quitonians are not a traveling people, and they are painfully ignorant of their own country. The most enterprising merchant ignores every thing but Quito and the road to Guayaquil.
We can not praise the musical talent of Spanish Americans; their intonation is too nasal, while in their jumpings and chirpings they take after the grasshopper. A resident Englishman, who has traveled in many countries, and sings the songs of nearly every nation, told us he could not remember one of Ecuador. Pianos they have brought over the mountains at great expense; but they are more at home with the guitar. The embroidery and lace, wood carving and portrait painting of Quito, are commendable; but the grandeur of the Andes, like the beauty of the Alps, was never sketched by a native.
Ecuador boasts of one University and eleven colleges; yet the people are not educated. Literature, science, philosophy, law, medicine, are only names. Nearly all young gentlemen are doctors of something; but their education is strangely dwarfed, defective, and distorted; and their knowledge, such as they have, is without power, as it is without practice. The University of Quito has two hundred and eighty-five students, of whom thirty-five are pursuing law, and eighteen medicine. There are eleven professors. They receive no fees from the students, but an annual salary of $300. The library contains eleven thousand volumes, nearly all old Latin, Spanish, and French works. The cabinet is a bushel of stones cast into one corner of a lumber-room, covered with dust, and crying out in vain for a man in the University to name them. The College of Tacunga has forty-five students; a fine chemical and philosophical apparatus, but no one to handle it; and a set of rocks from Europe, but only a handful from Ecuador. The College of Riobamba has four professors, and one hundred and twenty students. In the common schools, the pupils study in concert aloud, Arab fashion. There are four papers in the republic; two in Guayaquil, one in Cuenca, and one in Quito. El Nacional, of the capital, is an official organ, not a newspaper; it contains fourteen duodecimo pages, and is published occasionally by the Minister of the Interior. Like the Gazeta of Madrid, it is one of the greatest satires ever deliberately published by any people on itself. There is likewise but one paper in Cuzco, El Triumfo del Pueblo.
The amusements of Quito are few, and not very amusing. Indo-Castilian blood runs too slowly for merry-making. There are no operas or concerts, no theatres or lectures, no museums or menageries. For dramas they have revolutions; for menageries, bull-baitings. A bull-bait is not a bull-fight. There is no coliseum or amphitheatre; no matador gives the scientific death-wound. Unlike their fraternity in the ring of Seville, where they are doomed to die, the animals are only doomed to be pothered; they are "scotched, not killed." They are teased and tormented by yelling crowds, barking dogs, brass bands, red ponchos, tail-pulling, fire-crackers, wooden lances, and such like. The Plaza de Toros is the Plaza de San Francisco. This sport is reserved for the most notable days in the calendar: Christmas, New Year's, Inauguration-day, and Independence-day—the 10th of August.
Cock-fights come next in popularity, and are bona fide fights. Often the roosters are so heroic that both leave their blood in the arena, and never crow again. Little knives are fastened to the natural spurs, with which the fowls cut each other up frightfully. The interesting scene takes place on Sundays and Thursdays, near the Church of Santa Catalina, and is regulated by a municipal tribunal. The admission fee of five cents, and the tax of two per cent. on bets, yield the city a monthly revenue of $100.
Other pastimes are carnivals and masquerades. Carnival is observed by pelting one another with eggs and sprinkling with water. Whoever invented this prelude to Lent should be canonized. Masquerades occur during the holidays, when all classes, in disguise or fancy dress, get up a little fun at each other's expense. The monotony of social life is more frequently disturbed by fashionable funerals than by these amusements; and, as the principal families are inter-related, the rules of condolence keep the best part of society in mourning, and the best pianos and guitars silent for at least six months in the year.
A word about the ladies of Quito. We concur in the remark of our minister, Mr. Hassaurek, that "their natural dignity, gracefulness, and politeness, their entire self-possession, their elegant but unaffected bearing, and the choiceness of their language, would enable them to make a creditable appearance in any foreign drawing-room." Their natural talents are of a high order; but we must add that the señoras are uneducated, and are incapable of either great vices or great virtues. Their minds, like the soil of their native country, are fertile, but uncultivated; and their hearts, like the climate, are of a mean temperature.Prayer-books and French novels (imported, as wanted, for there is not a book-store in the city) are the alpha and the omega of their literature; Paris is considered the centre of civilization. They are comely, but not beautiful; Venus has given her girdle of fascination to few. Sensible of this, they paint.
Holinski gives his impressions by contrasting the fair Quitonians with the fairer Guayaquilians: "Les yeux vifs et ardent, le pied fine et mignon, les teintes chaudes et dorées" distinguish the latter. In the ladies of the high capital there is nothing of this: "Les yeux ne lancent pas de flammes, le pied est sans gentillesse, l'epiderme ne reflète pas les rayons du soleil." The ladies on the coast take all possible pains to preserve the small size of the foot; a large foot is held in horror. Von Tschudi once overheard some ladies extolling in high terms the beauty of an English lady; all their praise, however, ending with this exclamation, "But what a foot! Good heavens! it is like a great boat!" Gibbon is continually talking of beautiful señoras and señoritas on the Andes; surely the lieutenant is in sport.[28]
The ladies of Quito give few entertainments for lack of ready money. They spend much of their time in needle-work and gossip, sitting like Turkish sultanas on divans or the floor. They do not rise at your entrance or departure. They converse in a very loud, unmusical voice. We never detected bashfulness in the street or parlor. They go to mass every morning, and make visits of etiquette on Sundays. They take more interest in political than in domestic affairs. Dust and cobwebs are unmistakable signs of indifference. Brooms are rarities; such as exist are besoms made of split stick. Since our return, we have sent to a Quitonian gentleman, by request, a package of broom-corn seed, which, we trust, will be the forerunner of a harvest of brooms and cleaner floors in the high city. Not only the lords, but also the ladies, are inveterate smokers. Little mats are used for spittoons.
![[Washerwomen.]](#8543082027330898494_081.png.id-8839160158557218252.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Perhaps Quitonian ladies have too many Indian servants about them to keep tidy; seven or eight is the average number for a family. These are married, and occupy the ground floor, which swarms with nude children. They are cheap, thievish, lazy, and filthy. No class, pure-blood or half-breed, is given to ablution, though there are two public baths in the city. Washerwomen repair to the Machángara, where they beat the dirty linen of Quito over the smooth rocks. We remember but two or three table-cloths which entirely covered the table, and only one which was clean. There are but two daily meals; one does not feel the need of more; they are partaken at nine and three, or an hour earlier than in Guayaquil. When two unwashed, uncombed cooks bend over a charcoal fire, which is fanned by a third unkempt individual, and all three blinded by smoke (for there is no chimney), so that it is not their fault if capillaries and something worse are mingled with the stew, with onions to right of them, onions to left of them, onions in front of them, and achote already in the pot in spite of your repeated anathemas and expostulations—achote, the same red coloring matter which the wild Indians use for painting their bodies and dyeing their cloth—and with several aboriginal wee ones romping about the kitchen, keen must be the appetite that will take hold with alacrity as the dishes are brought on by the most slovenly waiter imagination can body forth.[29] The aim of Ecuadorian cookery is to eradicate all natural flavor; you wouldn't know you were eating chicken except by the bones. Even coffee and chocolate somehow lose their fine Guayaquilian aroma in this high altitude, and the very pies are stuffed with onions. But the beef, minus the garlic, is most excellent, and the dulce unapproachable.
[CHAPTER V.]
Ecuador.— Extent.— Government.— Religion.— A Protestant Cemetery in Quito.— Climate.— Regularity of Tropical Nature.— Diseases on the Highlands.
The republic of Ecuador looks like a wedge driven into the continent between the Marañon and the Putumayo. It has 1200 miles of Pacific coast, and an area of about two hundred thousand square miles, including the Galápagos Islands. Peru, however, claims the oriental half, drawing her northern boundary from Tumbez through Canélos and Archidona; and she is entitled to much of it, for she has established a regular line of steamers on the Marañon, while the Quito government has not developed an acre east of the Andes. Ecuador is hung between and upon two cordilleras, which naturally divide it into three parts: the western slope, the Quitonian valley, and the Napo region. The fluvial system is mainly made up of the Napo, Pastassa, and Santiago, tributaries of the Marañon, and the Mira, Esmeraldas, and Guayaquil, flowing westward into the Pacific. There are no lakes proper, but the natives enumerate fifty-five lagunes, the largest of which, Capucuy, is not over five miles long.
Villavicencio tells the world that his country has a total population of 1,308,042. But Dr. Jameson believes it does not exceed 700,000. The government is based on the Constitution of 1845, amended in 1853. The president is chosen by a plurality of votes, holds his office for four years, and has a salary of $12,000. He can not be re-elected,[30] nor can he exercise his functions more than twenty-five miles from the capital. But the law is often set aside by those in power. During the administration of Garcia Moreno, prominent citizens were shot or banished by his order, without trial by jury. To every plea for mercy the stern president replied, that as he could not save the country according to the Constitution, he should govern it according to his own views of public necessity.
Congress assembles on the 15th of September every other year, and consists of eighteen senators and thirty representatives. The chambers are small, and literally barren of ornament. The members sit in two rows facing each other, have no desks, and give an affirmative vote by a silent bow. Politics has less to do with principles and parties than with personalities. Often it has a financial aspect; and the natural expression on learning of a revolution is, "Somebody is out of money." The party in feathers its nest as fast as possible; there is scarcely a public officer who is not open to bribery. The party out plots a premature resurrection to power by the ladders of corruption, slander, and revolution.[31] Revolution has so rapidly followed revolution that history has ceased to count them; and it may be said of them what Milton wrote of the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, "that they are not more worthy of being recorded than the skirmishes of crows and kites." The Grand Plaza, the heart where all the great arteries of circulation meet and diverge, is where the high tides of Quito affairs ebb and flow.
The Supreme Court consists of five judges. Criminal cases only are tried by jury; and an attorney is not permitted to question a witness. There are no penitentiaries: second-class criminals are made to work for the public, while political offenders are banished to the banks of the Napo, or to Peru. Here, as in no other country, every man's house is his castle. No search-warrants are allowed; a policeman can be shot dead on the threshold. The person and property of a foreigner are safe; and no native in the employ of a foreigner can be taken by the government for military purposes. All, except pure Indians, can vote if over twenty-one, and can read and write. A man's signature is without value if it lacks his flourish—a custom of Spanish origin.
The permanent army consists of two regiments. The soldiers are mostly half-breeds, and are generally followed by their wives. They are poorly paid; and as they are impressed into the service, they carry out the principle by helping themselves wherever they go. In marching, they have a quicker step than Northern soldiers. The chief expenditure of the republic is for the army, about $500,000; the next is for the payment of the national debt, $360,000. The foreign debt is £1,470,374. Ecuadorians claim a revenue of a million and a half, of which one half is from the custom-house, and one fiftieth from the post-office.
One would suppose that the people who breathe this high atmosphere, and enjoy this delightful climate, and are surrounded by all that is truly grand and beautiful, would have some corresponding virtues. But we find that Nature, here as every where, has mingled base and noble elements. The lofty mountains, bearing in their steadfastness the seal of their appointed symbol—"God's righteousness is like the great mountains"—look down upon one of the lowest and most corrupt forms of republican government on earth; [32] their snowy summits preach sermons on purity to Quitonian society, but in vain; and the great thoughts of God written all over the Andes are unable to lift this proud capital out of the mud and mire of mediæval ignorance and superstition. The established religion is the narrowest and most intolerant form of Romanism. Mountains usually have a more elevating, religious influence than monotonous plains. The Olympian mythology of the Greek was far superior to the beastly worship on the banks of the Nile. And yet at the very feet of glorious Chimborazo and Pichincha we see a nation bowing down to little images of the rudest sculpture with a devotion that reminds us of the Middle Ages.
![[Ecclesiastics.]](#8543082027330898494_086.png.id-1536413276322431503.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
The belief is called La Fe, or the only true one. The oath of a Protestant is not regarded in courts of law. One fourth of Quito is covered by convents and churches. The convents alone number fifty-seven, and are very extensive, sometimes spreading over eight or nine acres. The Church revenue amounts to $800,000. There are more than four hundred priests, monks, and nuns in the capital. The native ecclesiastics are notorious for their ignorance and immorality. "It is a very common thing (says Dr. Terry) for a curate to have a whole flock of orphan nephews and nieces, the children of an imaginary brother." There is one ex-president who has the reputation of tying a spur on the leg of a game-cock better even than a curate. The imported Jesuits are the most intelligent and influential clergy. They control the universities and colleges, and education generally. Active and intellectual, though not learned, they have infused new life into the fat indolence of the Spanish system. Men of this world rather than the next, they have adopted a purely mundane policy, abjured the gloomy cowl, raised gorgeous temples, and say, "He that cometh unto us shall in no wise lose heaven." Their chief merit, however, is the discovery of the turkey and quinine.
The Protestant in Quito is annoyed by an everlasting jingling of bells and blowing of bugles night and day. The latter are blown every third hour. The bells are struck by boys, not rung. A bishop, returning from a visit to London, was asked if there were any good bells in England. "Very fine," he replied, "but there is not a man there who knows how to ring them." Foreign machinery is sprinkled with holy water to neutralize the inherent heresy; but a miller, for example, will charge more for his flour after the baptism.
Lotteries are countenanced by both Church and State, and in turn help support them; we saw one "grand scheme" carried out on the cathedral terrace and defended by bayonets.
At half past nine in the morning all Quito is on its knees, as the great bell of the cathedral announces the elevation of the Host. The effect is astonishing. Riders stop their horses; foot-passengers drop down on the pavement; the cook lets go her dishes and the writer his pen; the merchant lays aside his measure and the artisan his tool; the half-uttered oath (carájo!) dies on the lips of the Cholo; the arm of the cruel Zambo, unmercifully beating his donkey, is paralyzed; and the smart repartee of the lively donna is cut short. The solemn stillness lasts for a minute, when the bell tolls again, and all rise to work or play. Holidays are frequent. Processions led by a crucifix or wooden image are attractive sights in this dull city, simply because little else is going on. Occasionally a girl richly dressed to represent the humble mother of God is drawn about in a carriage, and once a year the figures of the Virgin belonging to different churches are borne with much pomp to the Plaza, where they bow to each other like automatons.
"This is a bad country to live in, and a worse one to die in," said Dr. Jameson. But times have changed, even in fossil Quito. Through the efforts of our late minister, Hon. W.T. Coggeshall, the bigoted government has at last consented to inclose a quarter of an acre outside the city for the subterranean burial of heretics. The cemetery is on the edge of the beautiful plain of Iñaquito, and on the right of the road leading to Guápolo. "What a shame," said a Quitonian lady of position, "that there should be a place to throw Protestant dogs!"
On St. Nathaniel's day died Colonel Phineas Staunton, Vice-Chancellor of Ingham University, New York. An artist by profession, and one of very high order, Colonel Staunton joined our expedition to sketch the glories of the Andes, but he fell a victim to the scourge of the lowlands one week after his arrival in Quito. We buried him at noon-day[33] in the new cemetery, "wherein was never man laid," and by the act consecrated the ground. Peace to his ashes; honor to his memory. That 8th of September, 1867, was a new day in the annals of Quito. On that day the imperial city beheld, for the first time in three centuries, the decent burial of a Protestant in a Protestant cemetery. Somewhere, mingled with the ashes of Pichincha, is the dust of Atahuallpa, who was buried in his beloved Quito at his own request after his murder in Caxamarca. But dearer to us is that solitary grave; the earth is yet fresh that covers the remains of one of nature's noblemen.
Turn we now to a more delightful topic than the politics and religion of Quito. The climate is perfect. Fair Italy, with her classic prestige and ready access, will long be the land of promise to travelers expatriated in search of health. But if ever the ancients had reached this Andean valley, they would have located here the Elysian Fields, or the seat of "the blessed, the happy, and long-lived" of Anacreon.[34] No torrid heat enervates the inhabitant of this favored spot; no icy breezes send him shivering to the fire. Nobody is sun-struck; nobody's buds are nipped by the frost. Stoves and chimneys, starvation and epidemics, are unknown. It is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is a combination of all three. The mean annual temperature of Quito is 58°.8, the same as Madrid, or as the month of May in Paris. The average range in twenty-four hours is about 10°. The coldest hour is 6 A.M.; the warmest between 2 and 3 P.M. The extremes in a year are 45° and 70°; those of Moscow are-38° and 89°. It is a prevalent opinion that since the great earthquake of 1797 the temperature has been lower. "It was suddenly reduced (says the Encycl. Metropolitana) from 66° or 68° to 40° or 45°"—a manifest error. The natives say that since the terremote of 1859 the seasons have not commenced so regularly, nor are they so well defined; there are more rainy days in summer than before. It remains to be seen whether the late convulsion has affected the climate.
The mean diurnal variation of the barometer is only .084. So regular is the oscillation, as likewise the variations of the magnetic needle, that the hour may be known within fifteen minutes by the barometer or compass. Such is the clock-like order of Nature under the equator, that even the rains, the most irregular of all meteorological phenomena in temperate zones, tell approximately the hour of the day. The winds, too, have an orderly march—the ebb and flow of an aerial ocean. No wonder watch-tinkers cannot live where all the forces in nature keep time. Nobody talks about the weather; conversation begins with benedictions or compliments.
The greatest variations of the thermometer occur in autumn, and the greatest quantity of rain falls in April.[35] While on the western side of the Andes, south of the equator, the dry season extends from June to January, on the eastern side of the Cordillera the seasons are reversed, the rain lasting from March to November. The climate of the central valley is modified by this opposition of seasons on either side of it, as also by the proximity of snowy peaks. Nine such peaks stand around Quito within a circle of thirty miles. The prevailing winds in summer are from the northeast; in the winter the southwest predominate.
There are only three small drug-stores in the great city of Quito. The serpent is used as the badge of apothecary art. Physicians have no offices, nor do they, as a general rule, call upon their patients. When an invalid is not able to go to the doctor, he is expected to die. Yellow fever, cholera, and consumption are unknown; while intermittent fevers, dysentery, and liver complaints, so prevalent on the coast, are uncommon. The ordinary diseases are catarrhal affections and typhoid fever. Cases of inflammation of the lungs are rare; more coughing may be heard during a Sunday service in a New England meeting-house than in six months in Quito. The diseases to which the monks of St. Bernard are liable are pulmonary, and the greater number become asthmatic. Asthma is also common in Quito, while phthisis increases as we descend to the sea. Individuals are often seen with a handkerchief about the jaws, or bits of plaster on the temples; these are afflicted with headache or toothache, resulting from a gratified passion for sweetmeats, common to all ages and classes. Digestive disorders are somewhat frequent (contrary to the theory in Europe), but they spring from improper food and sedentary habits. The cuisine of the country does not tempt the stomach to repletion, and the climate is decidedly peptic. So the typhoid fever of Quito is due to filth, poor diet, and want of ventilation. Corpulency, especially among the men, is astonishingly rare.
According to Dr. Lombard, mountain districts favor the development of diseases of the heart; and contagious diseases are not arrested by the atmosphere of lofty regions. This is true in Quito. But while nervous diseases are rare in the inhabited highlands of Europe, in Quito they are common. Sleep is said to be more tranquil and refreshing, and the circulation more regular at high altitudes; but our experience does not sustain this. Goître is quite common among the mountains. It is a sign of constitutional weakness, for the children of goîtred parents are usually deaf and dumb, and the succeeding generation idiots. Boussingault thinks it is owing to the lack of atmospheric air in the water; but why is it nearly confined to the women? In the southern provinces about Cuenca, cutaneous affections are quite frequent. In the highlands generally, scrofulous diseases are more common than in the plains. There are three hospitals for lepers; one at Cuenca with two hundred patients, one at Quito with one hundred and twelve patients, and one at Ambato. Near Riobamba is a community of dwarfs.
D'Orbigny made a post-mortem examination of some Indians from the highest regions, and found the lungs of extraordinary dimensions, the cells larger and more in number. Hence the unnatural proportion of the trunk, which is plainly out of harmony with the extremities. The expanded chest of the mountaineers is evidently the result of larger inspirations to secure the requisite amount of oxygen, which is much less in a given space at Quito than on the coast. This is an instance, observes Prichard, of long-continued habit, and the result of external agencies modifying the structure of the body, and with it the state of the most important functions of life. We tried the experiment of burning a candle one hour at Guayaquil, and another part of the same candle for the same period at Quito. Temperature at Guayaquil, 80°; at Quito, 62°. The loss at Guayaquil was 140 grains; at Quito, 114, or 26 grains less at the elevation of 9500 feet. Acoustics will also illustrate the thinness of the air. M. Godin found (1745) that a nine-pounder could not be heard at the distance of 121,537 feet; and that an eight-pounder at Paris, at the distance of 102,664 feet, was louder than a nine-pounder at Quito at the distance of 67,240 feet.
According to Dr. Archibald Smith, the power of muscular exertion in a native of the coast is greatly increased by living at the height of 10,000 feet. But it is also asserted by observing travelers that dogs and bulls lose their combativeness at 12,000 feet, and that hence there can never be a good bull-fight or dog-fight on the Sierras. This is literally true: the dogs seem to partake of the tameness of their masters. Cats do not flourish at all in high altitudes; and probably the lion, transplanted from the low jungle to the table-lands, would lose much of his ferocity. Still, cock-fights seem to prosper; and the battle of Pichincha was fought on an elevation of nearly 11,000 feet. Bolivar and the Spaniards, also, fought like tigers on the high plain of Junin.[36]
The sickness felt by some travelers at great elevations—violent headache and disposition to vomit—is called veta; and the difficulty of breathing from the rarity of the air is termed puna. Gerard complained of severe headache and depression of spirits at the height of 15,000 feet on the Himalayas; Dr. Barry, in ascending Mont Blanc (15,700 feet), speaks of great thirst, great dryness and constriction of skin, loss of appetite, difficult breathing, tendency to syncope, and utter indifference. Baron Müller, in his ascent of Orizava (17,800 feet), found great difficulty in breathing, and experienced the sensation of a red-hot iron searing his lungs, and agonizing pains in the chest, followed by fainting-fits and torrents of blood from his mouth; Humboldt, in scaling Chimborazo, suffered from nausea akin to sea-sickness, and a flow of blood from the nose and lips; while Herndon, on the slope of Puy-puy (15,700 feet), said he thought his heart would break from his breast with its violent agitation. Though ascending the Andes to the height of 16,000 feet, and running up the last few rods, we experienced nothing of this except a temporary difficulty in respiration. We were exhilarated rather than depressed. The experience of Darwin on the Portillo ridge (14,000 feet) was only "a slight tightness across the head and chest." "There was some imagination even in this (he adds); for, upon finding fossil shells on the highest ridge, I entirely forgot the puna in my delight." De Saussure says truly: "The strength is repaired as speedily as it has been exhausted. Merely a cessation of movement for three or four minutes, without even seating one's self, seems to restore the strength so perfectly that, on resuming progress, one feels able to climb at a single stretch to the very peak of the mountain."
[CHAPTER VI.]
Astronomic Virtues of Quito.— Flora and Fauna of the Valley of Quito.— Primeval Inhabitants of the Andes.— Quichua Indians.
Quito, with a position unparalleled for astronomical purposes, has no observatory. The largest telescope in the city is about five feet long, but the astute professor of natural philosophy in the Jesuit College who has charge of it had not the most distant idea that an eclipse of the sun would occur on the 29th of August, and an eclipse of the moon fifteen days later. In ancient days this "holy city" had within it the Pillar of the Sun, which cast no shadow at noon, and a temple was built for the god of light. The title of the sovereign Inca was the Child of the Sun; but there was very little knowledge of astronomy, for, being the national religion, it was beyond the reach of scientific speculation.
The atmosphere of Quito is of transparent clearness. Humboldt saw the poncho of a horseman with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of ninety thousand feet. The sky is of a dark indigo color; the azure is less blended with white because of the extreme dryness of the air. The stars stand out with uncommon brilliancy, and the dark openings between them the great German compared to "tubes through which we look into the remotest depths of space." It is true at Quito, as Humboldt noticed at Cumana, that the stars do not twinkle when they are more than fifteen degrees high; "the soft planetary light" of the stars overhead is not mere rhetoric.
Living under the equatorial line, Quitonians enjoy the peculiar privilege of beholding the stars of both hemispheres, the guiding stars of Ursa Major as well as the Magellanic Clouds and Southern Cross, not omitting that black spot near the latter, "the unappropriated region in the skies reserved by Manager Bingham for deposed American presidents."
The zodiacal light here appears in all its glory. This strange phenomenon has long puzzled philosophers, and they are still divided. It is generally considered to be produced by a continuous zone of infinitesimal asteroids. The majority place this zone beyond the orbit of the earth, and concentric with the sun. But Rev. George Jones, of Philadelphia, who has spent several years in observing this light, including eight months in Quito, considers it geocentric, and possibly situated between the earth and its satellite. At New York only a short pyramidal light, and this only at certain seasons, is to be seen; but here, an arch twenty degrees wide, and of considerable intensity, shoots up to the zenith, and Mr. Jones affirms that a complete arch is visible at midnight when the ecliptic is at right angles to the spectator's horizon. We have not been so fortunate as to see it pass the zenith; and Professor Barnard contends that it never does pass. We may remark that the main part of the zodiacal light shifts to the south side of the celestial equator as we cross the line. To us the most magnificent sight in the tropical heavens is the "Milky Way," especially near Sobieski's Shield, where it is very luminous. We observed that this starry tract divided at α Centauri, as Herschel says, and not at β, as many maps and globes have it. The brightest stars in the southern hemisphere follow the direction of a great circle passing through ε Orionis and α Crucis.
Another thing which arrests the attention of the traveler is the comparatively well-defined boundary-line between day and night. The twilight at Quito lasts only an hour and a half; on the coast it is still shorter. Nor is there any "harvest moon," the satellite rising with nearly equal intervals of forty-eight minutes.
From the stars we step down to the floral kingdom on the Andes, using as our ladder of descent the following sentence from Humboldt, at the age of seventy-five: "If I might be allowed to abandon myself to the recollections of my own distant travels, I would instance among the most striking scenes of nature the calm sublimity of a tropical night, when the stars—not sparkling, as in our Northern skies—shed their soft and planetary light over the gently heaving ocean; or I would recall the deep valleys of the Cordilleras, where the tall and slender palms pierce the leafy veil around them, and wave on high their feathery and arrow-like branches."
Father Velasco praises Ecuador as "the noblest portion of the New World." Nature has doubtless gifted it with capabilities unsurpassed by those of any other country. Situated on the equinoctial line, and embracing within its limits some of the highest as well as lowest dry land on the globe, it presents every grade of climate, from the perpetual summer on the coast and in the Orient to the everlasting winter of the Andean summits, while the high plateau between the Cordilleras enjoys an eternal spring. The vegetable productions are consequently most varied and prolific. Tropical, temperate, and arctic fruits and flowers are here found in profusion, or could be successfully cultivated. As the Ecuadorian sees all the constellations of the firmament, so Nature surrounds him with representatives of every family of plants. There are places where the eye may embrace an entire zone, for it may look up to a barley-field and potato-patch, and down to the sugar-cane and pine-apple.
Confining our attention to the Quito Valley, we remark that the whole region from Pichincha to Chimborazo is as treeless as Palestine. The densest forest is near Baños. The most common tree is the "Aliso" (Betula acuminata). Walnut is the best timber. There are no pines or oaks.[37] The slopes of the mountains, between twelve and fifteen thousand feet, are clothed with a shrub peculiar to the high altitudes of the Andes, called Chuquiragua. This is a very valuable shrub; the twigs are used for fuel, and the yellow buds as a febrifuge. The castor-oil-tree grows naturally by the road side, sometimes to the height of twelve feet.
A very useful as well as the most ordinary plant in the valley is the American aloe, or "Century Plant."[38] It is the largest of all herbs. Not naturally social, it imparts a melancholy character to the landscape as it rises solitary out of the arid plain. Most of the roads are fenced with aloe hedges. While the majority of tropical trees have naked stems with a crown of leaves on the top, the aloe reverses this, and looks like a great chandelier as its tall peduncle, bearing greenish-yellow flowers, rises out of a graceful cluster of long, thick, fleshy leaves. When cultivated, the aloe flowers in much less time than a century; but, exhausted by the efflorescence, it soon dies. Nearly every part serves some purpose; the broad leaves are used by the poorer class instead of paper in writing, or for thatching their huts; sirup flows out of the leaves when tapped, and, as they contain much alkali, a soap (which lathers with salt water as well as fresh) is also manufactured from them; the flowers make excellent pickles; the flower-stalk is used in building; the pith of the stem is used by barbers for sharpening razors; the fibres of the leaves and the roots are woven into sandals and sacks; and the sharp spines are used as needles. A species of yucca, resembling the aloe, but with more slender leaves and of a lighter green, yields the hemp of Ecuador.
The "crack fruit" of Quito, and, in fact, of South America, is the chirimoya.[39] Its taste is a happy mixture of sweetness and acidity. Hanke calls it "a masterwork of Nature," and Markham pronounces it "a spiritualized strawberry." It grows on a tree about fifteen feet high, having a broad, flat top, and very fragrant flowers. The ripe fruit, often attaining in Peru the weight of sixteen pounds, has a thick green skin, and a snow-white pulp containing about seventy black seeds. Other pomological productions are alligator pears, guavas, guayavas, granadillas, cherries (a small black variety), peaches (very poor), pears (equally bad), plums, quinces, lemons, oranges (not native), blackberries, and strawberries (large, but flavorless).[40] The cultivation of the grape has just commenced. Of vegetables there are onions (in cookery, "the first, and last, and midst, and without end"), beets, carrots, asparagus, lettuce, cabbages, turnips, tomatoes (indigenous, but inferior to ours), potatoes (also indigenous, but much smaller than their descendants),[41] red peppers, peas (always picked ripe, while green ones are imported from France!), beans, melons, squashes, and mushrooms. The last are eaten to a limited extent; Terra del Fuego, says Darwin, is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article of food.
The most important grains are barley, red wheat, and corn, with short ears, and elongated kernels of divers colors. Near the coast three crops of corn a year are obtained; at Quito it is of slower growth, but fuller. The sugar-cane is grown sparingly in the valley, but chiefly on the Pacific coast. Its home is Polynesia. Quito consumes about one hundred and fifty barrels of flour daily. The best sells for four dollars a quintal. The common fodder for cattle is alfalfa, an imported lucerne. There is no clover except a wild, worthless, three-leaved species (Trifolium amabile). Nearly all in the above list are cultivated for home consumption only, and many valuable fruits and vegetables which would grow well are unknown to Quitonians. As Bates says of the Brazilians, the incorrigible nonchalance and laziness of the people alone prevent them from surrounding themselves with all the luxuries of a temperate as well as tropical country.
It would be an endless task to speak of the flowers. It must suffice to state that a Synopsis Plantarum Æquatoriensium, the life-work of the venerable Professor Jameson, of the University of Quito, has just been published by the tardy government. Botanists will find in these two small volumes many new species unknown to American science, and others more correctly described by one who has dwelt forty years among the Andes. The last zone of vegetation nearest the snow-line consists chiefly of yellow-flowering Compositæ. In fact, this family includes one fourth of the plants in the immediate vicinity of Quito. The next most numerous family is the Labiatæ, and then follow Leguminosæ and Gentians. Although the Rosaceæ is represented, there is not one species of the genus Rosa not even in the whole southern hemisphere. The magnificent Befaria, found in the lower part of the valley, is called "the Rose of the Andes." Fuchsias may be considered characteristic of South America, since they are so numerous; only one or two kinds occur in any other part of the world. Flowers are found in Quito all the year round, but the most favorable months are December and May. Yellow is the predominating color. The higher the altitude, the brighter the hues of any given species. Thus the Gentiana sedifolia is a small, light blue flower in the lowlands, but on the Assuay it has bright blue petals three times as large and sensitive. This accords with Herschel's statement: "The chemical rays of the spectrum are powerfully absorbed in passing through the atmosphere, and the effect of their greater abundance aloft is shown in the superior brilliancy of color in the flowers of Alpine regions."
America is plainly the continent of vegetation; and wherever the vegetable element predominates, the animal is subordinated. We must not look, therefore, for a large amount or variety of animal life in the Ecuadorian forests. Time was when colossal megatheroids, mastodons, and glyptodons browsed on the foliage of the Andes and the Amazon; but now the terrestrial mammals of this tropical region are few and diminutive. They are likewise old-fashioned, inferior in type as well as bulk to those of the eastern hemisphere, for America was a finished continent long before Europe. "It seems most probable (says Darwin) that the North American elephants, mastodons, horse, and hollow-horned ruminants migrated, on land since submerged near Behring's Straits, from Siberia into North America, and thence, on land since submerged in the West Indies, into South America, where for a time they mingled with the forms characteristic of that southern continent, and have since become extinct."[42] The rise of the Mexican table-land split up the New World into two well-defined zoological provinces. A few species, as the puma, peccari, and opossum, have crossed the barrier; but South America is characterized by possessing a family of monkeys, the llama, tapir, many peculiar rodents, and several genera of edentates.
The tapir, the largest native quadruped, is sometimes found on the mountains, but never descends into the Quito Valley. A link between the elephant and hog, its true home is in the lowlands. The tapir and peccari (also found on the Andean slopes) are the only indigenous pachyderms in South America, while the llama[43] and deer (both abounding in the valley) are the only native ruminants; there is not one native hollow-horned ruminant on the continent. The llama is the only native domesticated animal; indeed, South America never furnished any other animal serviceable to man: the horse, ox, hog, and sheep (two, four, and six-horned), are importations. Of these animals, which rendered such important aid in the early civilization of Asia and Europe, the genera even were unknown in South America four centuries ago; and to-day pure Indians with difficulty acquire a taste for beef, mutton, and pork. The llama is still used as a beast of burden; but it seldom carries a quintal more than twelve miles a day. The black bear of the Andes ascends as high as Mont Blanc, and is rarely found below three thousand five hundred feet. The puma, or maneless American lion, has an immense range, both in latitude and altitude, being found from Oregon to the Straits of Magellan, and nearly up to the limit of eternal snow. It is as cowardly as the jaguar of the lowlands is ferocious. It is a very silent animal, uttering no cry even when wounded. Its flesh, which is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste, is eaten in Patagonia. Squirrels, hares, bats (a small species), opossums, and a large guinea-pig (Cuye del Monte), are found in the neighborhood of Quito.
As only about sixty species of birds are common to North and South America, the traveler from the United States recognizes few ornithic forms in the Valley of Quito. Save the hummers, beautiful plumage is rare, as well as fine songsters. But the moment we descend the Eastern Cordillera into the interior of the continent, we find the feathered race in robes of richest colors. The exact cause of this brilliant coloring in the tropics is still a problem. It can not be owing to greater light and heat, for the birds of the Galápagos Islands, directly under the equator, are dull.[44]
The males, both of birds and butterflies, are the most gaudily dressed. In the highlands the most prominent birds are the condor and the humming-bird. These two extremes in size are found side by side on the summit of Pichincha. The condor appears in its glory among the mountains of Quito. Its ordinary haunt is at the height of Etna. No other living creature can remove at pleasure to so great a distance from the earth; and it seems to fly and respire as easily under the low barometric pressure of thirteen inches as at the sea-shore. It can dart in an instant from the dome of Chimborazo to the sultry coast of the Pacific. It has not the kingly port of the eagle, and is a cowardly robber: a true vulture, it prefers the relish of putrescence and the flavor of death. It makes no nest, but lays two eggs on a jutting ledge of some precipice, and fiercely defends them. The usual spread of wings is nine feet. It does not live in pairs like the eagle, but feeds in flocks like its loathsome relative, the buzzard. It is said to live forty days without food in captivity, but at liberty it is very voracious. The usual method of capture is to kill an old mare (better than horse, the natives say), and allow the bird to gorge himself, when he becomes so sluggish as to be easily lassoed. It is such a heavy sleeper, it is possible to take it from its roost. The evidences in favor of and against its acute smelling powers are singularly balanced. For reasons unknown, the condor does not range north of Darien, though it extends its empire through clouds and storms to the Straits of Magellan. In the Inca language it was called cuntur, and was anciently an object of worship. The condor, gallinazo, turkey-buzzard, and caracara eagle (says Darwin) "in their habits well supply the place of our carrion crows, magpies, and ravens—a tribe of birds widely distributed over the rest of the world, but entirely absent in South America." The condor appears on the gold coins of New Granada and Chile. Of Trochilidæ there are hosts. The valley swarms with these "winged jewels" of varied hues, from the emerald green of Pichincha to the white of Chimborazo. They build long, purse-like nests by weaving together fine vegetable fibres and lichens, and thickly lining them with silk-cotton. In this delicate cradle, suspended from a branch, the female lays two eggs, which are hatched in about twelve days. The eggs are invariably white, with one exception, those of a species on the Upper Amazon, which are spotted. The young have much shorter bills than their parents. The humming-bird is exclusively American: the nearest form in the Old World is the nectarinia, or sunbird. Other birds most commonly seen in the valley are: Cyanocitta turcosa (Jay), Pœcilothraupis atrierissa, Pheuticus chrysogaster, Chlorospingus superciliaris, Buthraupis chloronata, Tanagra Darwini, Dubusia selysia, Buarremon latinuchus, and B. assimilis. The only geese in the valley are a few imported from Europe by Señor Aguirre, of Chillo, and these refuse to propagate.
Reptiles are so rare in the highlands the class can hardly be said to be represented. During a residence of nearly three months in the Quito Valley we saw but one snake.[45] Nevertheless, we find the following sentence in such a respectable book as Bohn's Hand-book of Modern Geography: "The inhabitants of Quito are dreadfully tormented by reptiles, which it is scarcely possible to keep out of the beds!" Of frogs there are not enough to get up a choir, and of fishes there is but one solitary species, about a finger long.[46] The entomology of Quito is also brief, much to the satisfaction of travelers from the insectiferous coast. Musquitoes and bedbugs do not seem to enjoy life at such an altitude, and jiggers[47] and flies are rare. Fleas, however, have the hardihood to exist and bite in the summer months, and if you attend an Indian fair you will be likely to feel something "gently o'er you creeping." But fleas and lice are the only blood-thirsty animals, so that the great Valley of Quito is an almost painless paradise. Of beetles and butterflies there are a few species, the latter belonging for the most part to the familiar North American genera Pyrameis and Colias. At Vinces, on the coast, we found the pretty brown butterfly, Anartia Jatrophæ, which ranges from Texas to Brazil. A light-colored coleopter is eaten roasted by the inhabitants. The cochineal is raised in the southern part of the valley, particularly in Guananda, at the foot of Tunguragua, where the small, flat-leaved cactus (Opuntia tuna), on which, the insect feeds, is extensively cultivated. The male is winged, but the female is stationary, fixed to the cactus, and is of a dark brown color. It takes seventy thousand to make a pound, which is sold in the valley for from sixty cents to $3. The best cochineal comes from Teneriffe, where it was introduced from Honduras in 1835. The silk-worm is destined to work a revolution in the finances of Ecuador; Quito silk gained a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition. No bees are hived in the republic; the people seem to be content with treacle. The Italian species would undoubtedly thrive here. The bees of Ecuador, like all the bees of the New World, are inferior to those of the Old World. Their cells are not perfectly hexagonal, and their stings are undeveloped. They are seldom seen feeding on flowers. Mollusca in the Quito Valley are not great in number or variety. They belong principally to the genera Bulimus, Cyclostoma, and Helix. The first is as characteristic of the Southern Continent as Helix of the North and Achatina of Africa.
From the animal creation we mount by a short step to the imbruted Indian. When and by whom the Andes were first peopled is a period of darkness that lies beyond the domain of history. But geology and archæology are combining to prove that Sorata and Chimborazo have looked down upon a civilization far more ancient than that of the Incas, and perhaps coeval with the flint-flakes of Cornwall, and the shell-mounds of Denmark. On the shores of Lake Titicaca are extensive ruins which antedate the advent of Manco Capac, and may be as venerable as the lake-dwellings of Geneva. Wilson has traced six terraces in going up from the sea through the province of Esmeraldas toward Quito; and underneath the living forest, which is older than the Spanish invasion, many gold, copper, and stone vestiges of a lost population were found. In all cases these relics are situated below high-tide mark, in a bed of marine sediment, from which he infers that this part of the country formerly stood higher above the sea. If this be true, vast must be the antiquity of these remains, for the upheaval and subsidence of the coast is exceedingly slow.
Philology can aid us little in determining the relations of the primeval Quitonians, for their language is nearly obscured by changes introduced by the Caras, and afterward by the Incas, who decreed that the Quichua, the language of elegance and fashion three hundred years ago, should be the universal tongue throughout the empire.[48] Quichua is to-day spoken from the equator to 28° S. (except by the Aymará people), or by nearly a million and a half. We found it used, corrupted, however, by Spanish, at the month of the Napo. There are five dialects, of which the purest is spoken in Cuzco, and the most impure in Quito. The Indians of the northern valley are descendants of the ancient Quitus, modified by Cara and Peruvian blood. They have changed little since the invasion of Pizarro. They remember their glory under the Incas, and when they steal any thing from a white man, they say they are not guilty of theft, as they are only taking what originally belonged to them. Some see in their sacred care of Incarial relics a lingering hope to regain their political life. We noticed that the pure mountaineers, without a trace of Spanish adulteration, wore a black poncho underneath, and we were informed by one well acquainted with their customs that this was in mourning for the Inca. We attended an Indian masquerade dance at Machachi, which seemed to have an historical meaning. It was performed in full view of that romantic mountain which bears the name of the last captain of Atahuallpa. There is a tradition that after the death of his chief, Rumiñagui burned the capital, and, retiring with his followers to this cordillera, threw himself from the precipice. The masquerade at Machachi was evidently intended to keep alive the memory of the Incas. Three Indians, fantastically adorned with embroidered garments, plumed head-dresses, and gold and silver tinsel, representing Atahuallpa and his generals, danced to music of the rudest kind, one individual pounding on a drum and blowing on a pipe at the same time. Before them went three clowns, or diablos, with masks, fit caricatures of the Spaniards. Like all other Indian feasts, this ended in getting gradually and completely drunk. During the ceremony a troop of horsemen, gayly dressed, and headed by one in regimentals with a cocked hat, galloped twice around the Plaza, throwing oranges at the people; after which there was a bull-bait.
The features of the Quichuans have a peculiar cast, which resembles, in D'Orbigny's opinion, no other American but the Mexican, and some ethnologists trace a striking similarity to the natives of Van Diemen's Land. They have an oblong head (longitudinally), somewhat compressed at the sides and occiput; short and very slightly arched forehead; prominent, long, aquiline nose, with large nostrils; large mouth, but not thick lips; beautiful enduring teeth; short chin, but not receding; cheek-bones not prominent; eyes horizontal, and never large; eyebrows long; thick, straight, coarse, yet soft jet black hair; little or no beard; a long, broad, deep, highly-arched chest; small hands and feet; short stature, seldom reaching five feet, and the women still shorter; a mulatto color (olive-brown says D'Orbigny, bronze says Humboldt), and a sad, serious expression. Their broad chests and square shoulders remind one of the gorilla; but we find that, unlike the anthropoid ape, they have very weak arms; their strength lies in their backs and legs. They have shrewdness and penetration, but lack independence and force. We never heard one sing.[49] Always submissive to your face, taking off his hat as he passes, and muttering, "Blessed be the altar of God," he is nevertheless very slow to perform. Soured by long ill treatment, he will hardly do any thing unless he is compelled. And he will do nothing well unless he is treated as a slave. Treat him kindly, and you make him a thief; whip him, and he will rise up to thank you and he your humble servant. A certain curate could never trust his Indian to carry important letters until he had given him twenty-five lashes. Servile and timid, superstitious and indolent, the Quichuans have not half the spirit of our North American Indians. It has passed into a proverb that "the Indian lives without shame, eats without repugnance, and dies without fear." Abject as they are, however, they are not wholly without wit. By a secret telegraph system, they will communicate between Quito and Riobamba in one hour. When there was a battle in Pasto, the Indians of Riobamba knew of it two hours after, though eighty leagues distant.
The civilization of South America three centuries ago was nearly confined to this Andean family, though they had attained only to the bronze period. In the milder character of their ancient religion and gentleness of disposition they are strongly distinguished from the nations that encircled the vale of Anahuac, the centre of civilization on the northern continent. But little of this former glory is now apparent. The Incas reached an astronomical knowledge which astonished the Spaniards, but the Quichuans of to-day count vaguely by moons and rains. Great is the contrast between the architecture of this century and that in the days of Huayna-Capac. There are few Incarial relics, however, in the Valley of Quito, for the Incas ruled there only half a century. The chief monuments are the tolas or mounds (mostly at Cuenca), containing earthen vessels and bronze hatchets and earrings; the Inga-pirrca, or oval fortress, and the Intihuaicu, or temple of the sun, near Cañar; the Inga-chungana, a massive stone resembling a sofa, where the Inca reposed to enjoy the delightful prospect over the Valley of Gulán; and remnants of causeways and roads.
[CHAPTER VII.]
Geological History of South America.— Rise of the Andes.— Creation of the Amazon.— Characteristic Features of the Continent.— Andean Chain.— The Equatorial Volcanoes.
Three cycles ago an island rose from the sea where now expands the vast continent of South America. It was the culminating point of the highlands of Guiana. For ages this granite peak was the solo representative of dry land in our hemisphere south of the Canada hills. In process of time, a cluster of islands rose above the thermal waters. They were the small beginnings of the future mountains of Brazil, holding in their laps the diamonds which now sparkle in the crown of Dom Pedro II. Long protracted eons elapsed without adding a page to the geology of South America. The Creator seems to have been busy elsewhere. Decorating the north with the gorgeous flora of the carboniferous period, till, in the language of Hugh Miller, "to distant planets our earth must have shone with a green and delicate ray," he rubbed the picture out, and ushered in the hideous reptilian age, when monstrous saurians, footed, paddled, and winged, were the lords of this lower world. All the great mountain chains were at this time slumbering beneath the ocean. The city of New York was sure of its site; but huge dinotheria wallowed in the mire where now stand the palaces of Paris, London, and Vienna.
At length the morning breaks upon the last day of creation, and the fiat goes forth that the proud waves of the Pacific, which have so long washed the table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, shall be stayed. Far away toward the setting sun the white surf beats in long lines of foam against a low, winding archipelago—the western outline of the coming continent. Fierce is the fight for the mastery between sea and land, between the denuding power of the waves and the volcanic forces underneath. But slowly—very slowly, yet surely—rises the long chain of islands by a double process; the submarine crust of the earth is cooling, and the rocks are folded up as it shrivels, while the molten material within, pressed out through the crevices, overflows and helps to build up the sea-defiant wall. A man's life would be too short to count even the centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro: supposing the Andes to have risen at this rate uniformly and without interruption, seventy thousand years must have elapsed before they reached their present altitude. But when we consider that, in fact, it was an intermittent movement—alternate upheaval and subsidence—we must add an unknown number of millennia.
Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level, and again were slowly brought up to their present height. The suns of uncounted ages have risen and set upon these sculptured forms, though geologically recent, casting the same line of shadows century after century. A long succession of brute races roamed over the mountains and plains of South America, and died out ages ere man was created. In those pre-Adamite times, long before the Incas ruled, the mastodon and megatherium, the horse and the tapir, dwelt in the high valley of Quito; yet all these passed away before the arrival of the aborigines: the wild horses now feeding on the pampas of Buenos Ayres were imported from Europe three hundred and thirty-three years ago.[50]
And now the Andes[51] stand complete in their present gigantic proportions, one of the grandest and most symmetrical mountain chains in the world. Starting from the Land of Fire, it stretches northward and mounts upward until it enters the Isthmus of Panama, where it bows gracefully to either ocean, but soon resumes, under another name, its former majesty, and loses its magnificence only where the trappers chase the fur-bearing animals over the Arctic plains. Nowhere else does Nature present such a continuous and lofty chain of mountains, unbroken for eight thousand miles, save where it is rent asunder by the Magellanic Straits, and proudly tossing up a thousand pinnacles into the region of eternal snow. Nowhere in the Old World do we see a single well-defined mountain chain, only a broad belt of mountainous country traversing the heart of the continent.
The moment the Andes arose, the great continental valley of the Amazon was sketched out and moulded in its lap. The tidal waves of the Atlantic were dashing against the Cordilleras, and a legion of rivulets were busily plowing up the sides into deep ravines; the sediment produced by this incessant wear and tear was carried eastward, and spread out stratum by stratum, till the shallow sea between the Andes and the islands of Guiana and Brazil was filled up with sand and clay. Huge glaciers (thinks Agassiz), afterward descending, moved over the inclined plane, and ground the loose rock to powder.[52] Eddies and currents, throwing up sand-banks as they do now, gradually defined the limits of the tributary streams, and directed them into one main trunk, which worked for itself a wide, deep bed, capable of containing its accumulated flood. Then and thus was created the Amazon.
In South America Nature has framed her works on a gigantic scale. Where else combined do we see such a series of towering mountains, such a volume of river-water, and such wide-spreading plains? We have no proper conception of Andine grandeur till we learn that the top of the tallest mountain in North America is nearly a mile beneath the untrodden dome of Chimborazo; nor any just view of the vast dimensions of the Amazonian Valley till we find that all the United States could be packed in it without touching its boundaries; nor any adequate idea of the Amazon itself till we ascertain that it drains a million square miles more than the Mississippi.
South America is a triangular continent, with its axis, the Andes, not central, as in Europe, but lying on its extreme western edge, and in harmony with the well-known law that the highest mountains and the grandest volcanoes face the broadest ocean. The highlands of Brazil and Guiana have neither volcanic nor snow-clad peaks.[53] Like all the dry land which first appeared, these primitive mountains on the Atlantic border trend east and west. The result of this position is a triple river system—the Orinoco, Amazon, and La Plata, draining three immense plains—the llanos of Venezuela, the sylvas of Brazil, and the pampas of the Argentine Republic. The continuity and extent of these vast depressions are more remarkable even than the height and length of the mountain chains.[54]
Such are the characteristic features of South America; they are not repeated in any other continent.[55] Not one feature could be changed without destroying those peculiarities of soil and climate which so remarkably distinguish South America. Its position on the equator places it in the path of the vapory trade winds, which continually sweep over it westward till they strike the Andes, which, like a great condenser, roll a thousand streams eastward again to feed the mighty Amazon. So effectual is that barrier, not a drop of moisture passes it, and the trade wind is not felt again on the Pacific till you are one hundred and fifty miles from the coast. Were the Andes on the Atlantic side, South America would be turned into a vast Sahara. As it is, the interest which attaches to this continent, save a few relics of the Incas, is exclusively that of pure nature. Nowhere does Nature affect us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur; nowhere does she exhibit wilder freaks or more startling contrasts; nowhere do we find such a theatre for the free development of vegetable and animal life.
The long and lofty chain of the Andes is certainly one of the grandest results of the plications and uplifts of the earth's crust. While the waves of the Pacific, from Panama to Patagonia, submissively kiss the feet of the Andes, and the showers that swell the Amazon fall within sight of the mariner on that peaceful ocean, the Rocky Mountains are situated five hundred miles from the sea. The space west of the Andes does not contain 20,000 square leagues, while the country east of it equals 424,600. While the compact Andes have an average width of only sixty miles,[56] the straggling mountain system beyond the Mississippi has the breadth of the Empire State; but the mean elevation of the latter would scarcely reach the bottom of the Quito Valley. The mountains of Asia may surpass the Cordilleras in height, but, situated beyond the tropics, and destitute of volcanoes, they do not present that inexhaustible variety of phenomena which characterizes the latter. The outbursts of porphyry and trachytic domes, so characteristic of the high crests of the Cordilleras, impart a physiognomy quite distinct from that presented by the mountains of Europe. The Andes offer, in the least space, the greatest possible variety of impressions.[57] There is near Huanca, Peru, a coal-bed lifted up to the enormous height of 14,700 feet, and on the side of Chimborazo there is a salt spring 13,000 feet above the sea. Marine shells have not been found in Europe above the summit of the Pyrenees, or 11,700 feet; but the Andes can show some a thousand feet higher. A strange sight, to see shells once crawling on the bottom of the ocean now resting at an elevation twice the height of Mount Washington!
Beneath the Southern Cross, out of a sea perpetually swept by fearful gales, rise the rocky hills of Terra del Fuego. It is the starting-point of that granite chain which winds around the earth in a majestic curve, first northwesterly to the Arctic Sea, thence by the Aleutian and Japanese Isles to Asia, crossing the Old World southwesterly from China to South Africa.
Skirting the bleak shores of Patagonia in a single narrow sierra, the Andes enter Chile, rising higher and higher till they culminate in the gigantic porphyritic peak of Aconcagua. At the boundary-line of Bolivia, the chain, which has so far followed a precise meridional direction, turns to the northwest, and, at the same time, separates into two Cordilleras, inclosing the great table-land of Desaguadero. This wonderful valley, the Thibet of the New World, has four times the area of New York State, and five times the elevation of the Catskill Mountain House. At one end of the valley, perched above the clouds, is silvery Potosi, the highest city in the world; at the other stands the once golden capital of Cuzco. Between them is Lake Titicaca [58] (probably an ancient crater), within which is an island celebrated as the cradle of the strange empire of Peru, which, though crushed by Pizarro in its budding civilization, ranks as the most extraordinary and extensive empire in the annals of American history. The Cordillera, of which Sahama, Sorata, and Illimani are the pinnacles, so completely inclose this high valley that not a drop of water can escape except by evaporation. At the silver mines of Pasco the Andes throw off a third cordillera, and with this triple arrangement and a lower altitude, enter the republic of Ecuador. There they resume the double line, and surpass their former magnificence. Twenty volcanoes, presided over by the princely Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, rise out of a sublime congregation of mountains surrounding the famous valley of Quito. In New Granada there is a final and unique display of Andine grandeur: the Cordilleras combine just above the equator into one dizzy ridge, and then spread out like a fan, or, rather, like the graceful branches of the palm. One sierra bends to the east, holding in its lap the city of Bogota, and, rolling off a thousand streams to swell the Orinoco, terminates in the beautiful mountains of Caracas; the central range culminates in the volcanic Tolima,[59] but is soon lost in the Caribbean Sea; the western chain turns to the left, humbling itself as it threads the narrow isthmus, and expands into the level table-land of Mexico. You may cross Mexico from ocean to ocean in a carriage, but no wheeled vehicle ever crossed South America.