Nature has done more for Ecuador than for Ecuadorians. She laid out this beautiful valley for an Elysian field; "de Quito al Cielo" (from Quito to Heaven) is not an empty adage; and it is painful to look upon tottering walls and impassable roads, upon neglected fields and an idle population—poor as poverty in the lap of boundless natural wealth. The only really live man in the republic is the president, Señor G. Garcia Moreno, a man of wide views and great energy, standing in these respects head and shoulders above his fellow-citizens. Quito and Quito Valley owe nearly all their improvements to this one man.
It is easy to say what would be the industry of a people who spend much of their time repeating traditions of treasures buried by the Incas, and stories of gold deposits in the mountains. Of commerce there is scarcely enough to deserve the name. Quito is an ecclesiastical city, and is nearly supported by Guayaquil. Without capital, without energy, without business habits, Quitonians never embark in grand commercial schemes and industrial enterprises. There is not a highway for commerce in any direction, only a natural path (called by the innocent natives a road), which rises to the altitude of fourteen thousand feet, by which the beasts of burden pick their way over the Cordillera. And this is open only six months in the year. Should a box designed for Quito arrive at Guayaquil at the beginning of the rainy season, it must tarry half a year till Nature makes the road passable.
The unstable condition of the country does not encourage great undertakings; all business is periodically paralyzed by revolution. Merchants generally buy their goods in Lima, to which city and Guayaquil the fabrics of England and France are brought by foreigners in foreign ships. The shops of Quito, as we have remarked, are very small, without windows, and with only one wooden door. The door is double, and is fastened by a ponderous padlock. They are open from 7 A.M. till sunset, excepting between nine and ten and between three and four, when the stores are closed for breakfast and dinner; the merchants never trusting their clerks, even when they have any, which is not usually the case. They have no fixed price, but get what they can. The majority know nothing of wholesale, and refuse to sell by the quantity, fearing a cheat. An Indian woman will sell you a real's worth of oranges any number of times, but she would object to parting with a dollar's worth—her arithmetic can not comprehend it.
In the portals or arcades of the Aguirre mansion and the nuncio's palace are the stalls of the haberdashers. Articles are not wrapped in paper; customers must get them home the best way they can. Ladies of the higher class seldom go out shopping, but send for samples. It is considered disgraceful to either sex to be seen carrying any thing through the streets of Quito. The common people buy only for immediate wants—a dose of medicine, or a handful of potatoes at a time. Nearly all liquids, kerosene as well as wine, are sold by the bottle.
There was no bank in Quito in 1867, but an attempt has just been made to establish one. The paper money of Guayaquil is often at nine per cent. discount in the capital. The currency is silver adulterated with one third of copper. The smallest coin, the calé, is worth about two and a half cents. Above that are medios (five cents), reals (ten cents), two, four, and eight reals. Eight reals make a soft dollar ($0 80); ten reals, a hard dollar ($1 00). There is no copper coin—oranges and loaves of bread are sometimes used to make change; and nearly all the gold in circulation are New Granada condors and Peruvian onzas. Many of the silver pieces have large holes cut in the centre, so that they resemble rings. Government set the example (and the people followed) on the plea that it would prevent the exportation of coin. The plan has succeeded, for it does not pass out of the valley.
Nearly the only sign of progress is the late introduction of the grape and silk-worm; and these give so much promise of success that the threadbare nobility have already begun to count their coming fortunes. Husbandry is more pastoral than agricultural. Thousands of cattle are raised on the paramos, but almost wholly for beef. "A dislike to milk (observes Humboldt), or at least the absence of its use before the arrival of Europeans, was, generally speaking, a feature common to all nations of the New Continent, as likewise to the inhabitants of China." Some cheese (mostly unpressed curd) and a little butter are made, but in the patriarchal style. Only one American churn is in operation; the people insist upon first boiling the milk and then stirring with a spoon. Custom is omnipotent here, and its effects hereditary. Milking is done at any hour of the day, or whenever milk is wanted. The operation is a formidable one to these bull-fighting people. Stopping at a hacienda near Peliléo for a drink of milk, we were eye-witness of a comical sight. A mild-looking cow was driven up to the door; the woman, evidently the bravest member of the household, seized the beast by the horns; a boy tied the hind legs with a long rope, and held on to one end of it at a respectful distance; while the father, with outstretched arms, milked into a calabash.
Agricultural machinery is not in use. The first threshing-machine Quito ever saw was made in 1867 by some California miners, but it remained unsold when we last saw it. The spade is not known; the nearest approach to it is a crowbar flattened at one end. Hoes are clumsy and awkward. Yankee plows are bought more as curiosities than for use. Many a crooked stick is seen scratching the land, as in Egypt, which the cattle drag by their horns. Sometimes a number of sharp-nosed hogs are tied together and let into a field, and driven from place to place till the whole is rooted up. Corn is planted by making holes in the ground with a stick, and dropping in the seed. The soil and climate of Ecuador, so infinitely varied, offer a home to almost every useful plant. The productions of either India could be naturalized on the lowlands, while the highlands would welcome the grains and fruits of Europe. But intertropical people do not subdue nature like the civilized men of the North; they only pick up a livelihood.
Spanish Americans, like Castilians on the banks of the Tagus, have a singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or shade tree (a thing of foresight and forethought for others) in a land where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, is considered downright folly in theory and practice. A large portion of the valley, left treeless, is becoming less favorable for cultivation.
Yet, as it is, the traveler is charmed by the emerald verdure of the coast, and by "evergreen Quito"—more beautiful than the hanging gardens of Babylon—suspended far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds. In the San Francisco market we find wheat, barley, maize, beans, peas, potatoes, cabbages, beets, salads, pine-apples, chirimoyas, guavas, oranges, lemons, pears, quinces, peaches, apricots, melons, and strawberries—the last all the year round. Most of these are exotics; the early discoverers found not a cereal grain of the Old World, not an orange or apple, no sugar-cane or strawberries.[27]
There is but little manufacturing industry in the interior of Ecuador, but much more than on the coast. The chief articles manufactured are straw hats, shoes, baskets, carpets, embroidery, tape, thread, ponchos, coarse woolen and cotton cloth, saddles, sandals, soap, sugar, cigars, aguardiente, powder, sweetmeats, carved images, paints, and pottery. Wines, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silks, and fine cloth are imported. There are three cotton mills in the country; one in Chillo (established by Señors Aguirre in 1842), another in Otovalo (built by Señor Parija in 1859), and a third in Cuenca (1861). The machinery of the Chillo factory came from England; that of Otovalo from Patterson, N.J. The latter was utterly destroyed in the late great earthquake, and the proprietor killed. The cotton is inferior to that of New Orleans; it is not "fat," as mechanics say; the seeds yield only two per cent. of oil. But it is whiter than American cotton, though coarse, and can be used only for very ordinary fabrics. The average length is five eighths of an inch. One pod will produce on an average three pennyweights. The mills of Chillo and Otovalo consume 425,000 pounds annually. The first sugar-mill was erected by the Aguirres in 1840 at Nanegal.