Toward evening the ascent became rapid and the road horrible beyond conception, growing narrower and rougher as we advanced. Indeed, our way had long since ceased to be a road. In the dense forest, where sunshine never comes, rocks, mud, and fallen trees in rapid alternation macadamize the path, save where it turns up the bed of a babbling brook. In the comparatively level tracts, the equable step of the beasts has worn the soil into deep transverse ridges, called camellones, from their resemblance to the humps on a camel's back. In the precipitous parts the road is only a gully worn by the transit of men and beasts for ages, aided by torrents of water in the rainy season. As we ascend, this changes to a rocky staircase, so strait that one must throw up his legs to save them from being crushed, and so steep that horse and rider run the risk of turning a somersault. It is fearful to meet in a narrow defile, or where the road winds around the edge of a precipice, a drove of reckless donkeys and mules descending the mountain, urged on by the cries and lashes of the muleteers behind. Yet this has been the highway of Ecuadorian commerce for three hundred years. In vain we tried to reach the little village of Camino Real on the crest of the ridge; but the night was advancing rapidly, and crawling up such a road by starlight was not a little dangerous. So we put up at a miserable tambo, Pogyos by name. It was a mud hut of the rudest kind, windowless and unfloored; very clean, if it had been left to nature, but man and beast had rendered it intolerably filthy. Our hostess, a Quichua woman, with tattered garments, and hair disheveled and standing up as if electrified, set a kettle on three stones, and, making a fire under it, prepared for us a calabash of chicken and locro. Locro, the national dish in the mountains, is in plain English simply potato soup. Sitting on the ground, we partook of this refreshment by the aid of fingers and wooden spoons, enticing our appetites by the reflection that potato soup would support life. The unkempt Indian by our side, grinning in conscious pride over her successful cookery, did not aid us in this matter. Fire is used in Ecuador solely for culinary purposes, not for warmth. It is made at no particular spot on the mud floor, and there is no particular orifice for the exit of the smoke save the chinks in the wall. There is not a chimney in the whole republic. As the spare room in the establishment belonged to the women, we gentlemen slept on the ground outside, or on beds made of round poles. The night was piercingly cold. The wished-for morning came at last, and long before the sun looked over the mountains we were on our march. It was the same terrible road, running zigzag, or "quingo" fashion, up to Camino Real, where it was suddenly converted into a royal highway.
We were now fairly out of the swamps of the lowlands, and, though under the equator, out of the tropics too. The fresh mountain breeze and the chilly mists announced a change of climate.[12] Fevers and dysenteries, snakes and musquitoes, the plantain and the palm, we had left behind. Camino Real is a huddle of eight or ten dwellings perched on the summit of a sierra a thousand feet higher than the top of Mount Washington. The views from this stand-point compensate for all past troubles. The wild chaos of mountains on every side, broken by profound ravines, the heaps of ruins piled up during the lapse of geologic ages, the intense azure of the sky, and the kingly condor majestically wheeling around the still higher pinnacles, make up a picture rarely to be seen. Westward, the mountains tumble down into hills and spread out into plains, which, in the far distant horizon, dip into the great Pacific. The setting sun turns the ocean into a sheet of liquid fire. Long columns of purple light shoot up to the zenith, and as the last point of the sun sinks beneath the horizon, the stars rush out in full splendor; for at the equator day gives place to night with only an hour and twenty minutes of twilight. The mountains are Alpine, yet grander than the Alps; not so ragged as the granite peaks of Switzerland, but with rounder heads. The prospect down this occidental slope is diversified by deep valleys, lands-lides, and flowering trees. Magnificent are the views eastward,
"Where Andes, giant of the western star,
Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world."
The majestic dome of Chimborazo was entirely uncovered of clouds, and presented a most splendid spectacle. There it stood, its snow-white summit, unsullied by the foot of man, towering up twice as high as Etna. For many years it received the homage of the world as the highest point in America; but now the Aconcagua of Chile claims the palm. Still, what a panorama from the top of Chimborazo, could one reach it, for the eye would command ten thousand square miles!
Our road gently winds down the sierra, giving us at every turn sublime ideas of what nature can do in tossing up the thin crust of our globe. But sublimity is at a discount here—there is too much of it. Suddenly we are looking down into the enchanting valley of Chimbo. This romantic and secluded spot is one of those forgotten corners of the earth which, barricaded against the march of civilization by almost impassable mountains, and inhabited by a thriftless race, has been left far behind in the progress of mankind. Distance lends enchantment to the view. We are reminded of the pastoral vales of New England. Wheat takes the place of the sugar-cane, barley of cacao, potatoes of plantains, and turnips of oranges. Bamboo sheds have given way to neatly whitewashed villages, and the fields are fenced with rows of aloe. But, drawing nearer, we find the habitations are in reality miserable mud hovels, without windows, and tenanted by vermin and ragged poverty. There are herds of cattle and fields of grain; yet we shall not find a quart of milk or a loaf of bread for sale. The descent into the valley is very precipitous, and, after a rain, alarmingly slippery. Mules, drawing their legs together, slide down with startling velocity, and follow the windings with marvelous dexterity.
We arrived at Guaranda at 5 P.M. on the third day after leaving Bodegas. This is a desolate town of two thousand souls, dwelling in low dilapidated huts made of the most common building material in the Andes—adobe, or sun-dried blocks of mud mingled with straw.[13]
The streets are rudely paved, and pitch to the centre, to form an aqueduct, like the streets of old Sychar. The inhabitants are in happy ignorance of the outside world. They pass the day without a thought of work, standing on the Plaza, or in front of some public office, staring vacantly into space, or gossiping. A cockfight will soonest rouse them from their lethargy. They seem to have no purpose in life but to keep warm under their ponchos and to eat when they are hungry. Guaranda is a healthy locality, lying in a deep valley on the west bank of the Chimbo, at an elevation, according to our barometer, of 8840 feet, and having a mean temperature slightly less than that of Quito. It is a place of importance, inasmuch as it is the resting-place before ascending or after descending the still loftier ranges, and much more because it is the capital of the region which yields the invaluable cinchona, or Peruvian bark.[14] This tree is indigenous to the Andes, where it is found on the western slope between the altitudes of two thousand and nine thousand feet, the species richest in alkaloids occupying the higher elevations, where the air is moist. Dr. Weddell enumerates twenty-one species, seven of which are now found in Ecuador, but the only one of value is the the C. succirubra (the calisaya has run out), and this is now nearly extinct, as the trees have been destroyed to obtain the bark. This species is a beautiful tree, having large, broadly oval, deep green, shining leaves, white, fragrant flowers, and red bark, and sometimes, though rarely, attains the height of sixty feet. A tree five feet in circumference will yield fifteen hundred pounds of green bark, or eight hundred of the dry. The roots contain the most alkaloid, though the branches are usually barked for commerce. The true cinchona barks, containing quinine, quinidine, and cinchonine, are distinguished from the false by their splintery-fibrous texture, the latter being pre-eminently corky. The cascarilleros begin to hunt for bark in August. Dr. Taylor, of Riobamba, found one tree which gave $3600 worth of quinine. The general yield is from three to five pounds to a quintal of bark. The tree has been successfully transplanted to the United States, and particularly to India, where there are now over a million of plants. It was introduced into India by Markham in 1861. The bark is said to be stronger than that from Ecuador, yielding twice as much alkaloid, or eleven per cent. The quinine of commerce will doubtless come hereafter from the slopes of the Himalayas instead of the Andes. In 1867 only five thousand pounds of bark were exported from Guayaquil. The Indians use the bark of another tree, the Maravilla, which is said to yield a much stronger alkaloid than cinchona. It grows near Pallatanga.
We left Guaranda at 5 A.M. by the light of Venus and Orion, having exchanged our horses for the sure-footed mule. It was a romantic ride. From a neighboring stand-point Church took one of his celebrated views of "The Heart of the Andes." But the road, as aforetime, was a mere furrow, made and kept by the tread of beasts. For a long distance the track runs over the projecting and jagged edges of steeply-inclined strata of slate, which nobody has had the energy to smooth down. At many places on the road side were human skulls, set in niches in the bank, telling tales of suffering in their ghastly silence; while here and there a narrow passage was blocked up by the skeleton or carcass of a beast that had borne its last burden. At nine o'clock we came out on a narrow, grassy ridge called the Ensillada, or Saddleback, where there were three straw huts, with roofs resting on the ground, and there we breakfasted on locro. During our stay the Indians killed a pig, and before the creature was fairly dead dry grass was heaped upon it and set on fire. This is the ordinary method of removing the bristles.
Still ascending, we lose sight of the valley of the Chimbo, and find ourselves in a wilderness of crags and treeless mountains clothed with the long, dreary-looking paramo grass called paja. But we are face to face with "the monarch of the Andes," and we shall have its company the rest of the day. The snowy dome is flooded with the golden light of heaven; delicate clouds of softest hues float around its breast; while, far below, its feet are wrapped in the baser mists of earth. We attained the summit of the pass at 11 A.M. All travelers strive to reach it early in the morning, for in the afternoon it is swept by violent winds which render it uncomfortable, if not dangerous. This part of the road is called the "Arenal," from the sand and gravel which cover it. It is about a league in length, and crosses the side of Chimborazo at an elevation of more than fourteen thousand feet. Chimborazo stands on the left of the traveler. How tantalizing its summit! It appears so easy of access; and yet many a valiant philosopher, from Humboldt down, has panted for the glory and failed. The depth of the snow and numerous precipices are the chief obstacles; but the excessively rarefied air is another hinderance. Even in crossing the Arenal, a native of the lowlands complains of violent headache, a propensity to vomit, and a difficulty of breathing. The Arenal is often swept by snow-storms; and history has it that some of the Spanish conquerors were here frozen to death. The pale yellow gravel is considered by some geologists as the moraine of a glacier. It is spread out like a broad gravel walk, so that, without exaggeration, one of the best roads in Ecuador has been made by Nature's hand on the crest of the Andes.