We had not proceeded far when a troop of militia cavalry met us; these tatterdemalions would certainly have borne away the prize had they been put in competition with the infantry of Sir John Falstaff; and could I have chosen for myself, hang me if I would have entered Huaranda in their company.
The next that made their appearance were the indian dancers, singing their cachuas in Quichua, welcoming the arrival of the governor with the most discordant yellings, and such extravagant expressions as beggar all description. At the entrance of the town there was a triumphal arch! This was composed of canes, decorated with curtains of all colours and descriptions of stuffs; ribbons for streamers, and flags made of pocket handkerchiefs; silver plates, dishes, spoons, and forks were hung round it. When his excellency had arrived close to it, a curtain was withdrawn in the upper story, and an indian in the uniform of an officer, his coarse black hair stiffened with tallow and flour, still incapable of being turned into a curl, but standing upright in every direction, advanced to the front, made a most profound bow, and then stepped back; after this he looked up, and exclaimed, "angil bello, daja el papel," "beautiful angel, give me the paper," but in such a broken dialect, that nothing, save an acquaintance with the Spanish language, can afford any idea. Several white muslin handkerchiefs, which were tied in festoons above his head in imitation of clouds, opened, and down fell, or rather was lowered with a rope, an indian angel, his head as thickly cased in tallow and flour as that of his invocater; he delivered a folded paper, and was again dragged up into the muslin clouds, while the delighted multitude expressed their approbation with shouts of joy. The orator re-advanced, and read his harangue with all the rhetoric and graceful attitudes of a Bombasto. His address was succeeded by the throwing up of innumerable rockets, amid the sound of trumpets and other music stationed on one side of the arch; this was followed by our arrival at the house of the Corregidor, where a most sumptuous dinner was on the table.
Huaranda is the residence of the Corregidor, or governor of the province of Chimbo, and may be considered the capital of that province. The town is large but poor, the inhabitants being chiefly occupied as carriers. Their wealth consists in their droves of mules, which during the summer, when the road is open, are employed in conveying merchandize between Quito and Guayaquil. The climate at this place is remarkably cold, owing to its elevation above the sea and the vicinity of Chimboraso, which is seen from the town, and has the appearance of a huge white cloud piercing the blue vault of heaven.
The province of Chimbo has an extensive breed of mules in the valleys; barley, potatoes, and maize are cultivated by the indians in various parts, and some sugar cane in the bottoms of the ravines. At a place called Tomabela is a spring of salt water, which is so completely saturated that it forms large crusts on the stones against which the water dashes, and along the sides of the small stream; the indians also put the water into troughs, and stir it with a wooden spatula; the salt then crystallizes on the sides of the trough, and is taken out; this salt is packed in small baskets and sent to different parts of the kingdom, as well as to Peru; it is a specific for the cotos, bronchocele, by merely eating food seasoned with it. This valuable production is delicately white, easily pulverised, and very slightly deliquescent.
Having taken some refreshment at Huaranda, we proceeded on the following morning to the Pajonal, at the foot of the majestic Chimboraso, the giant of the Andes. The day was beautifully clear, and the view of this lofty mountain highly interesting; we had seen it at the mouth of the Guayaquil river, as well as at that city, a distance of forty leagues, where we were almost suffocated with heat; but now we felt almost perished with cold: the kingdom of lofty palms and shady plantains was in four days exchanged for a region where vegetation is reduced to its lowest ebb—the dwarf pined mosses.
A tambo, resting house, stands on the plain at the foot of Chimboraso; this had been prepared for our reception; and to contribute in a degree to make it more warm, or rather to keep out some of the cold, the inside had been neatly covered with long dry grass, called pajon, which grows on this plain. Owing to an accident, the grass caught fire in one of the rooms, at two o'clock in the morning; we immediately ran from our beds, or rather ran with our beds, for we dragged them with us, not a little pleased, in this dilemma, that we had all of us retired to rest without undressing; notwithstanding this we were dreadfully pinched by the frosty air blowing from Chimboraso on one side, or Carguairaso on the other. After the first blaze of the pajon had subsided, the indians entered the house, and dragged out a few things which had been placed inside, but fortunately the principal part of our luggage had been left on the outside. We waited till morning, sitting on our mattresses, and wrapped up in our ponchos and blankets, as near the fire as we dared to venture.
In the morning we proceeded on our journey, winding round the foot of Chimboraso, till the valley of San Juan opened on our right; we descended along a very rugged steep path, and at twelve o'clock arrived at the obrage of San Juan, belonging to Don Martin Chiriboga, where we remained till the following morning. I here beheld the South American indian reduced to the most abject state of servitude and bondage, compared to which the slave belonging to the plantations on the coast of Peru, is free indeed.
These unfortunate beings, robbed of their country, are merely allowed to exist in it; because the plunderers would only possess a barren waste without their labour: the fertility of the soil would be useless without beings to harvest the crops and manufacture the produce; the gold and the silver must sleep in the mountains if no human beings were employed to extract it. Alas! these beings are the degraded original proprietors, on whom the curse of conquest has fallen with all its concomitant hardships and penury. A miserable pittance of fourteen dollars a year is the wages of a man who works in this cloth manufactory; and ten that of him who tends a flock of sheep; and for this miserable pay they are subject to the whip and to other corporal punishments: their home is a hut, composed of rude stones placed one upon another, and thatched with the long grass from the foot of Chimboraso: here, hunger, misery, and wretchedness seem to have fixed their abode, at the sight of which pity would wring tears from the heart of oppression; but pity has no part in the composition of the oppressors of the Children of the Sun!
Some of the cloth made at this obrage was the finest I had ever seen manufactured in America, but this was by a transgression of the colonial laws, which had established the precise quality of colonial manufactures. Happy at leaving behind that misery which I could only compassionate, we left San Juan in the morning, and arrived at two o'clock in the afternoon at Riobamba, where some very neatly painted triumphal arches had been erected.
Riobamba is the capital of the province of the same name; the old town was founded in 1533, by the Adelantado Sebastian Benalcasar; it contained twenty thousand inhabitants, two parish churches, four convents, two nunneries, and a hospital; but it was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1797, when with very few exceptions the whole population perished, besides a much larger number in different parts of the province, and perhaps no remains of these terrible convulsions of nature are more awful than those at Riobamba. Some of the ruins of the old town may be seen on the acclivities of the mountains on each side the valley, where the new town now stands, separated from each other at least a league and a half; and I was shewn some ruins on each side of the valley which the inhabitants assured me had formed part of one edifice, particularly the two steeples which had belonged to the Franciscan church; these were on one side, and a portion of the body of the church on the other.