This has disturbances of its own. The game-cocks, which no self-respecting cholo would be without, challenge one another shrilly from their respective patios; that moment is rare when a child is not squalling at the top of its voice, the mother, after the passive way of quiteños, making no effort to silence it; cholos whistle all day long at their labors or pastimes; men and boys habitually call one another by ear-splitting finger-whistles; ox-carts, mule-trains, or laden donkeys refuse to move unless several arrieros trot behind them incessantly screaming and whistling; droves of cattle are led through the streets by an Indian blowing a bocina, a horn-like, six-foot length of bamboo; unoccupied youths like nothing better than to kick an empty tin can up or down the cobbled street; every school-boy on his way home or to school twice a day takes a big copper coin, or in lieu thereof an iron washer, and throws it at every cobblestone of his route in a local game of “hit it”; the barking of dogs never ends; every Indian who loses a distant relative, or who can concoct some other fancied cause for grief, sits on the sidewalk just out of reach of the contents of one’s slop-bucket, rocking back and forth, and burdening the air with a mournful wail that rises and falls in cadenced volume; for unbroken hours iron-tired coaches clatter over the uneven cobbles; every native on horseback must show off to his admiring friends and the fair sex in general by forcing his animal to canter and capriole up and down the line of flagstones in the middle of the narrow street; three blind newsboys, brothers indistinguishable one from another, appear in succession, pausing every few yards to bellow in deepest bass a complete summary of the day’s news, as if they were reading all the headlines of the papers they carry for sale; and to it all the church-bells add their never broken clanging. Apparently there is no law against disturbing the peace; without the power to silence the church-towers it would be useless, at best.
In those rare moments around midnight when the city threatens to fall silent, it is the police themselves that tide it over. An officer’s whistle screeches at a corner, to be answered down block after block, until it all but dies out in the distance; then back it comes, and continues unbrokenly until the church-bells drown it out. Not only that, but he is a rare policeman who does not while away the night and keep up his courage by playing discordant tunes on his whistle whenever it is not in official use.
To add to its discordance, Quito’s voices, due perhaps to some climatic condition, are often distressing, particularly the shrill, raspy ones of the women of the masses, who have somewhere picked up the habit of shrieking whenever they have anything to say—which is often. Unlike Bogotá, Quito has a very faulty pronunciation. The sound “sh,” for instance, is frequent in the Quichua dialect of the region, and though not all quiteños speak the aboriginal tongue, the sound has crept into their Spanish, and they tack it on at every opportunity—“A ver-sh, Nicanor-sh.” “Le voy á llamar-sh.” As in all South America, the town has the unpleasant habit of hissing at any one whose attention is desired, and the word “pues” has been cut down to a mere “pss” to be hooked on whenever possible:—“Si, pss! Va venir-sh mañana, pss.” The “ll” has become a French “j,” as in Central America and Panama, so that a street is not a calle but a “caje,” a key is a “jave,” and the newcomer will have difficulty in recognizing the place mentioned as “Beja-Coja,” however familiar he may be with the Bella Colla. Many localisms and Quichua words have found place in the general speech. A baby is always a “guagua” (wawa), frequently corrupted with a Spanish diminutive to “guaguita”; a boy is more often a “huambra” than a muchacho; and the traveler who does not know the aboriginal term “huasi-cama” would have difficulty in referring to the Indian house-guard and general servant of the lower patio.
But when its noise grows overwhelming and its picturesqueness pales to mere uncleanliness, the stout-legged visitor has only to climb over the outer crust of Quito in almost any direction to revel in the stillness and feast his eyes on vistas of rolling valleys and mountains, fresh spring-green to the very snow-line. A path, for instance, zigzags up the falda of Pichincha, steeper than any Gothic roof, through the scattering of red-tiled Indian huts called Guarico, and climbs until all Quito in its Andean pocket sinks to a toy city far beneath. Another road mounts doggedly round and round mountain-spurs and headlands until it is lost in clouds, and only the immediate world underfoot remains visible. The air grows almost wintry; oxen and Indian women, and now and then a man of the same downcast race, come hobbling down out of the mist above, with bundles of cut brush on their backs. Far up, the road swings around on the brink of things, pauses a moment as if to gather courage, then pitches headlong down out of sight into a light-gray void, as through a curtain shutting off the “Oriente,” the hot lands and unbroken forests of eastern Ecuador, a totally different world, where the Amazon begins to weave its network, and “wild” Indians roam untrammeled.
CHAPTER VII
DOWN VOLCANO AVENUE
On the morning of February eighth, “Meech” called me at five. I had already been some time awake, such was the excitement of so unusual an event as going on a journey. The morning mists had only begun to clothe the flanks of Pichincha when I broke the clinch of “Don Panchito’s” last abrazo and creaked away down the cobbles of Calle Flores and across the Plaza Santo Domingo in the hob-nailed mining-boots suited to the long, stony trail and the rainy season ahead. The remnant of my letter of credit I had turned into gold sovereigns and sewed them in the band of my trousers; on my back were my worldly—or at least my South American—possessions, including the awkward bulk of the developing-tank packed with films and chemicals. That day had passed when I dreamed of driving an Indian carrier before me, and experience had taught me not to risk the assistance of the mails. Thus the world roamer must leave behind in turn each dwelling-place, after growing somewhat attached to it, for all its faults, to go its way alone again as in the past, glad—or merely sorry—when once in a while the cable brings him a whisper of it, as from some former half-forgotten existence.
It was a familiar route for the first few miles. Now and again I overtook Indians carrying enormous loads of tinajas, dull-red earthen jars and pots of all sizes enclosed in a kind of fish-net, often topped by a great roll of esteras, mats made of lake-reeds which serve the carriers as beds. Men and women alike raised their hats to me and mumbled some obsequious greeting. They were bound for Latacunga market, several days distant from their villages; yet even on so long a journey, rare was the woman from whose load did not peer the head of a baby. Lower down, inhabited haycocks and huts of swamp-grass centered in beautiful potato fields, red or purple with blossoms. A cherry-tree, here called by the Quichua term capulí, producing a fruit larger but not unlike our “choke-cherry,” alternated with what looked like the Canadian thistle.
Three hours later, near the eucalyptus grove of the Flores estate that marks Quito’s southern sky-line, I topped the ridge that marked my hitherto furthest south. The long pile of Pichincha, its three peaks now standing sharply forth, still lay close beside me, the rolling green lower ridges subsiding into the mountain lap where Quito, like a tiny ant’s city, still lay visible, the Panecillo that bulks so large from the central plaza sunk to an insignificant mole-hill. Beyond, far across it, hovered the hazy-blue ranges of the north; Cayambe resolutely astride the equator, pointed Cotacache, streaked near the top with new-fallen snow, piercing the transparent highland sky. For a long time thereafter, as often as I topped a land-billow, I kept getting little broken glimpses of the town from the ever-rising world, until at last, toward noon, as a mighty mountain wave tossed me high on its crest, the view of the city of the equator flashed forth a moment more; then Quito and all its surroundings sank away into the irretrievable past.
Before me lay a new world. With the leisurely dignity of its builder, García Moreno, the highway descended into a great distance-blue hoya, one of those saucer-shaped valleys that abound all down Ecuador’s avenue of volcanoes. Occasionally a horseman in shaggy goatskin trousers stared curiously at me; now and then there passed a file of donkeys under sheet-iron roofs,—a cargo of corrugated iron, the importer of which still prefers this primitive transportation to the more hasty railroad with its startling freight charges. Dandelions and white clover flecked the evergreen fields; frogs sang their bass chorus in many a brook and pántano. Here the way followed more or less the route of the great military highway of the Incas. There were two of these; one of the llanos, or lowlands of the coast, and this more famous one along the crest of the cordillera, built during several reigns and finished under Huayna Ccápac.
