Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

We are not more than ten miles off shore, but Monte Cristo dominates as though it were one of the colossal volcanoes. The vapors close in, the ribbons of gold in the western sky unroll themselves and are lost. It is night, and our last chance of seeing Cotopaxi is gone.

The voyage up the Gulf of Guayaquil and the Guayas River gives a vista of conical and pinnacled hills of living green, sparkling in their verdure like raindrops on the leaves when the sun comes out after a thunder shower. The gulf narrows, and the point is rounded at the island of Puna, which is the Ecuadorian customs and quarantine port. There are bathing-houses and pretty Summer or Winter homes,—we do not know which, for we realize that under the Equator there are no seasons. Beyond Puna the river is hardly more than half a mile across from one low bank to the opposite low bank. These are bordered with algaroba trees and cocoanut palms. There are open pastures and some neat houses, with ridges of mountains in the background, brown and green. The borders of the river are pleasant, but the miasma seems to hang over the land like a steaming blanket, and one gets the impression of malaria,—which impression is a correct one.

Lower Guayaquil is first seen, then the sloping part of the city proper. The big rectangular building in the saddle of the hills, the most prominent of all the structures, is the famous hospital,—a comforting reflection for strangers who have heard of Guayaquil’s yellow fever record and are told grewsome tales of the epidemics. Fewer than eight cases in the hospital count as a cipher, and ships get a clean bill of health. The profile of peaks back of the town apparently is not very high, and the valleys open gently between them. A closer view of the city from the ship’s deck shows that it is not such a bad sort of tropical port. Church spires and domes are many, and some very handsome buildings are discernible.

The Waterfront at Guayaquil

The harbor is full of maritime life. Pointed shoe-like canoes and sail-boats are constantly shooting around, while farther down the river are the balsas, or house rafts, with their tenants, including men and women, children, poultry, pigs, and other accessories. The timbers of these house rafts are from a native wood of the cork variety, said to be unsinkable. Apparently the living occupants of the rafts also are of cork, tumbling off into the water and bobbing about just as easily. I did not hear of any of them, even the smallest, being drowned. I noted the old American river-boat patterns, and could imagine myself on the Mississippi or the Ohio, except that this craft is even more blunt as to outline and more tub-like than anything that ever floated down from Pittsburg or St. Paul.

The crooked old part of the city is attractive in its picturesqueness, and is inviting at a distance. The newer section is so regular as to be uninteresting. The Guayaquil climate is trying to foreigners, though many of them manage to acclimate themselves. The mean temperature is 81° Fahrenheit. The extremes in the shade are 90° and 65°. During two or three days in the harbor it seemed to me that there was but one extreme and that the maximum.

The city, in addition to its commerce, has a number of local industries which include sugar-mills, breweries and distilleries, tanneries, foundries, saw-mills, and shipbuilding and repair shops. Besides the balsas small vessels built of the native timber are constructed in Guayaquil.

Guayaquil is a city of 60,000 inhabitants, the most populous port south of San Francisco, with the exception of Valparaiso. About 300 foreign vessels, with a tonnage varying from 360,000 to 375,000, enter and clear the port every year. The coasting commerce employs a considerable number of small vessels,—2,000, whose tonnage aggregates from 22,000 to 23,000. The relation of the port to a waterway across the Isthmus appears very clearly from the statement of the distances, which may be repeated. From Guayaquil to New York around Cape Horn is 11,470 miles, and the time required for the steam cargo vessels varies from 60 to 74 days. From Guayaquil to Panama is 835 miles, and to New York by this route it will be 2,864 miles, or to New Orleans 2,263 miles. The time now required, allowing for transshipment by the railway and the consequent unloading and reloading of the freight, varies from 14 to 20 days. With through water communication and the advantages which will justify supplying coal for faster trips, the time need not exceed eight or nine days. From Guayaquil to Liverpool via Cape Horn is 10,795 miles; to Havre, 10,577 miles; to Hamburg, 11,203 miles. The difference in maritime advantage is exhibited by the subtraction of the distance from Panama or Colon to those ports.

In years when no long-continued quarantine interrupts the commercial movement, the imports vary from $7,000,000 to $7,500,000, and the exports are $9,000,000 to $9,300,000. In 1904 the imports were $7,670,000, and the exports $11,642,000. Relatively, 90 per cent of the foreign commerce of Ecuador passes through Guayaquil. It is the entrepôt for the interior region and also for much of the coast. Esmeraldas in the north has a little foreign trade, and also Machala in the south. But their imports and exports hardly affect the volume of commerce that is concentrated in Guayaquil.