Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

A GLIMPSE OF ECUADOR

Tranquil Ship Life—Dissolving View of Panama Bay—The Comforting Antarctic Current—Seeking Cotopaxi and Chimborazo—Up the Guayas River—Activity in Guayaquil Harbor—Old and New Town—Shipping via The Isthmus and Cape Horn—Chocolate and Rubber Exports—Railway toward Quito—A Charming Capital—Cuenca’s Industries—Cereals in the Inter-Andine Region—Forest District—Minerals in the South—Population—Galapagos Islands—Political Equilibrium—National Finances.

SHIP life along coast from Panama south is dreamful, placid, nerve-soothing.

“This South Sea,” wrote the Augustine Friar Calancha, in his chronicle of the early Spanish voyagers, “is called the Pacific because, in comparison with the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, its storms are less violent and fewer and its calm is more tranquil. It is also called the sea of drunkards because a drunken man might navigate in it. Both oceans and ships are ruled over by five beautiful stars in the form of a cross, in a happy prognostic of holy domination over sea and land—at the sight of which the devil even when most enraged retreats and leaves all in tranquillity.” This is surely a happy description of the quiet ocean and a devout poet’s image of the Southern Cross.

The steamers are commodious floating Summer homes. The smooth waters of the Pacific make it possible to have a type of vessel that would be impracticable for transatlantic voyages. Deck cabins, a dining-saloon on the upper deck, and ample room are properties of them all. Some of the steamers are twin screw, though such enterprise hardly was demanded by the traffic and this type is not so comfortable as the single screw. From Panama to Valparaiso, 3,100 miles by the stops, there is rarely enough of a ripple to send the most sensitive traveller below with symptoms of sea-sickness.

The voyage is a marine trip along a great winding Continental street, with stops at many corners and turns up many lanes. Up and down the coast means putting into innumerable wayports. This makes them more or less acquainted with one another, and one coast community feels an interest in what is happening in a neighbor port a thousand miles away. The vessels bring the gossip,—usually of trade, of the value of the last cargo, of quarantine, of troubles with the native longshoremen, of disputes with the minor officials, and of political events or the latest revolution. The through freight is not yet sufficient for the big steamers to omit the minor landings and make quick time, which could be done if Guayaquil, Callao, and Valparaiso were the only ports touched. This should be a matter of eight or ten days from Panama to Valparaiso, whereas now it takes from twenty-one to twenty-three days. The time will be shorter when the through traffic developed by the Panama Canal has had a chance to grow.

As the steamer threads its way out into the ocean through Panama Bay, the vista is of cone-shaped, vivid green-clad volcanic mountains rising sheer out of the water. On a disappearing view they look like gopher mounds on the prairies. At sunset the sky is of indigo-blue and the waters are a maroon expanse, but the next night the great copper disk in the west burnishes the liquid plain, which seethes at its embrace.

For two days the voyage is apt to be disagreeably hot, though the air rarely becomes so stifling that the deck cabins have to be abandoned. The weather is decently comfortable in the daytime. The nights may be choking, but this does not last long. The third day the equatorial line is crossed, not very far out at sea yet out of sight of land. The Humboldt, or Antarctic, current is met as it sweeps up from Cape Horn, and its refreshing coolness is enjoyed for the remainder of the voyage. The only unpleasant feature is that during the season from April to August the fogs which hang over the mainland charge the atmosphere with too much moisture, and there is no relief by their precipitation into rain; yet the discomfort from this cause is not serious.

Only the small coasting-vessels put into the minor Colombian and Ecuadorian ports. On the Pacific side Colombia has but one shipping-point of consequence—Buenaventura, where the bay bends in a deep inlet. It is the gateway to the immensely rich country of the Cauca and of the overland route by Cali and the mountain passes through the Cordilleras to Bogota.

“It is a strange thing,” says my Lord Francis Bacon, “that in sea voyages where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries.” But down the West Coast, after crossing the equatorial line, much more than sky and sea is to be seen and the diary-maker need not be furtive in his occupation. On the larger steamers one is always straining the eyes for Ecuador’s famous volcanoes, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo. They are not often visible from the sea, though Cotopaxi is sometimes to be discerned. One evening I thought I caught a glimpse of one of these giant summits. It was towards sunset. Off shore was a seeming range of peaked clouds, then through a pink mist a sloping green and brown profile disclosed itself; after that bolder conical elevations, a dim fringe of them, and finally an unmistakable crown. “It is Monte Cristo,” the ship’s mate told me. “We are in the Bay of Caracas.” The chalk-like surface was of sheer cliffs sliced as by a knife and with a fleece spreading alongside half-way up to the summit. “Snow?” “Oh, no; only the surf.”