Ecuador has a treasury of wealth in her vast cacao groves. The cacao tree, which grows wild in the forests, is from sixteen to forty feet high and bears a fruit in which the beans lie buried in a cucumber-shaped pod five to ten inches long and three or four inches thick. The bean itself in its raw state resembles a thick almond. When ripe, the pods are cut from the tree by means of a knife with a curved blade, set on the end of a long pole, an implement specially designed to remove them without injury. The pods are then gathered in heaps and left on the ground to dry for a day or two before the beans are removed and cured. From cacao comes cocoa. The name “cacao” signifies the raw, and “cocoa” the finished product. There is still another name—coca—which is often confused with these, but coca is nothing like cacao. Coca is the Peruvian plant from the leaves of which cocaine is extracted. The cacao bean contains the cocoa we drink at our breakfast tables, and our chocolate.
On the skill employed in the curing, which is an extremely delicate process, to a great extent depends the quality of the output and its flavor and color. When ready for the market, the bean is dark red outside and chocolate tinted within. Analyses show that it is rich in fats, albuminoids, caffeine and theobromine, which last is what imparts to it its principal characteristics. What we know as chocolate differs from cocoa in that, in the former compound, the cocoa butter is not extracted; from the latter it is. Cocoa is really a factory product. The cured bean is treated differently in the various countries to suit the taste of the public, and chocolate also is prepared in different ways for the various uses. American and French chocolates are sold all over the world.
The tobacco grown in the Province of Esmeraldas on the coast is claimed to be comparable with that produced in Cuba. And this reminds me that, unless tradition is at fault, the town of Atacames, from around which some of the best of it comes, has quite a unique history of its own. In 1623, so the story goes, a vessel laden with seven hundred African slaves was on its way from Panamá to Peru, where they were to be worked in the mines. When near the mouth of the Esmeralda River, they mutinied, massacred the officers and sailors of the ship, and, landing at Atacames, took possession of the town and killed or drove away every man in the neighborhood, Indian or Spanish, but spared the women, whom they kept as wives. Afterward, however, instead of indulging in further depredations, they kept within the territory they had conquered, and, mixing with the Cayapas, who had attained an unusual state of civilization for lowland Indians before the invasion, became miners and agriculturists on their own account. These African mutineers, therefore, protected by the reputation for ferocity they had acquired in their stroke for freedom, were thus the founders of what afterward became an intelligent and industrious community. The women, particularly, are famous for their skill in making Panamá hats.
Indeed, aside from agriculture, the most important industry in all the coast provinces is the making of these hats. Guayaquil long since supplanted Panamá as the principal market for them. Those of the finest texture, the ones that are so soft and delicately woven that they can be folded and put in a coat pocket like a handkerchief and will last a lifetime, are made of a peculiar grass called jipi-japa, for which the town in the Province of Manavi is named, and, in the weaving of them, considerable time and great skill is required. These we seldom, if ever, see in this country. Many go to Paris, Italy, and Spain; more are taken by the planters along the coast, and in Cuba, who are willing to pay as much as $80 to $100 for them. They are woven by the women by hand, and only in the moonlight, these best grades, because the sun would harden the material, artificial light would attract insects, and the dampness that comes with sunset is necessary to give the flexibility so essential to their beauty. The coarser grades, such as we see here, are woven in the daytime, but under water, in tubs.
Guayaquil, a city of about 50,000 inhabitants, is Ecuador’s principal seaport, and, next to Valparaiso and Callao, the busiest and most important on the Pacific side of the continent. All the way up from Callao the steamer hugs the shore as closely as safety will permit. There is little change in the view. The same arid strip of low-lying coast land, dotted with rocky promontories, fringed here and there with cliffs and crossed with occasional stretches of green where the rivers flow through to the sea, continues day after day—the same background of mountains rising tier on tier for thousands and thousands of feet, in the morning partly obscured by heavy banks of clouds that later melt away and leave the rugged contour sharply silhouetted against the bright blue, are bathed in the evening, as the sun sinks toward the horizon, in the purple haze that becomes them best. Yet there are also the same calm sea and rainless sky and the same cool, aromatic breezes that make the lazy hours on deck a continual delight.
And so it is with mixed feelings of regret and relief that one enters the Gulf of Guayaquil—relief, for here, as we steam past the island of Puna, where Pizarro camped for months awaiting reinforcements before beginning the conquest of Peru, the aspect of the shore line changes and we see foliage as fresh and green and as wildly luxuriant as any in the basins of the interior. Passing the island, we come to the mouth of the Guayas, the greatest of South American rivers emptying into the Pacific. The city is sixty miles beyond at the head of the estuary. The first glimpse we catch is of a street, called El Malecon, that extends along the water front for two miles or more from a shipyard to a hill crowned by a fortress. This is at once the principal shopping, café, and amusement place, the favorite promenade, the warehouse district, and the quay where the lighters that ply between it and the vessels anchored out in the river take on and unload their cargoes. It is faced with what from the deck appear to be long rows of white stone and marble buildings of beautiful and graceful architectural design, for the most part of the usual Moorish type. Long series of arcades in front of the shops remind one of those of the Rue de Rivoli in Paris; above are pretty balconies sheltered by blinds and awnings of gaily colored canvas, screening groups of ladies who like to sit in them and watch the lively scene below as they sip their coffee and chat.
But picturesque as it all is, one finds on going ashore, that the walls of these imposing-looking edifices are merely shells of split bamboo, plastered with cement, ornamented with stucco and painted to resemble marble and stone, which sad experience has taught the people of the city will not resist earthquakes as well as this more elastic imitation they have been compelled to substitute. The residences of the well-to-do are constructed of the same materials and with wide verandas from ground to roof, enclosed with Venetian blinds. Few are elaborately furnished. In that climate it is thought better, for the sake of spaciousness and comfort, to forego evidences of wealth in the form of carpets, hangings, and upholstery, which keep out air and retain the heat. The poor of the suburbs have thatched bamboo or adobe huts with floors of hardened earth. As in Canton, China, many of them live on the water on rafts made from balsa, a species of timber nearly as buoyant as cork, or else of hollow trunks of bamboo. A number of logs, forty or fifty feet long, are lashed together in such a way that they can be propelled by either oars or sails, and a bamboo hut is built in the center. These often serve as the homes of whole families for generations, and are so substantial that they are used in the coasting as well as the river trade for bringing produce to market.
STREET SCENE IN GUAYAQUIL.
