In 1864 Urbina, with the countenance and assistance of Peru, invaded the southern province, Loja, but the insurrection was promptly crushed. Next year Moreno's term expired, and he named a disciple and friend to be president in his place, but his own political preponderance was so unquestioned and his prestige so enormous in the barracks, convents, and pulperias that he continued the real ruler of the country. His understudy did not please him and he demanded and received a resignation. The incumbent next selected proved insubordinate and had to be displaced by force. When Moreno declared himself provisional dictator the Guayaquil liberals undertook an armed resistance, but by 1869 he was firmly in the saddle once more. He kept his hold on the government, apparently becoming more securely entrenched each year in the love and confidence of the soldiery, the priests, and the common people. From the safety of exile the liberals wrote crushing pamphlets against him and his despotism, his favouritism toward the clergy, his steady, relentless policy of conservatism and reaction. But their attempts at insurrection were feeble and in 1875 he was re-elected as a matter of course. The liberals, hopeless of ending his domination constitutionally or by open war, had recourse to assassination. On the 6th of August a party of young Creoles deliberately killed him at midday on the principal square of Quito in the presence of the populace and the soldiery.
The murderers were executed and the vice-president succeeded to the vacancy. However, no one appeared big enough to fill Moreno's shoes, and his death made civil war inevitable. After a few months the vice-president was deposed; then one of Moreno's ministers remained at the head of affairs for a short time; but finally Antonio Borrero was selected president in constitutional form. He proved not to possess the resolution requisite to cope with the situation. General Veintemilla, commander of the troops in Guayaquil, revolted in the name of the liberal party, defeated Borrero, and went through the usual form of summoning a convention, adopting a new Constitution, and having himself named president. He held power insecurely and by the aid of a personal party from 1878 to 1883, but neither conservatives nor liberals were satisfied. The radicals attacked him furiously for not putting in practice anti-clerical principles, and the conservatives never trusted him. When his constitutional term expired, the army proclaimed him dictator, but he soon fell before the combined forces of his enemies. During the fighting José Camano came to the front, and now seized the presidency. Alfaro, the principal liberal leader who had co-operated with Camano in overthrowing Veintemilla, made war against his late ally, but was defeated. The new president, once securely in his seat, formed close relations with the clergy and the old partisans of Moreno, and though the liberal chiefs kept up a guerilla warfare in the forests and swamps, he finished out his term. In 1888 he was succeeded by Antonio Flores, who followed his predecessor's policy in the main, and was in his turn succeeded by another friend of Camano's—Luis Cordero. It was not until 1895 that the liberals were able to gather their forces for a formidable rebellion. Camano was then governor of Guayaquil, and the immediate occasion of the outbreak was the charge that he had taken part in the sale of the Chilean iron-clad, Esmeralda, to Japan, then at war with China. It was claimed that Ecuador had acted as a go-between and committed a wilful breach of the rules governing the conduct of neutral nations. President Cordero's prestige was seriously compromised by this incident. His forces were defeated in several actions and he resigned. Alfaro, who had been in exile since 1883, returned, took possession of Guayaquil, was proclaimed dictator, and finally completely overthrew the conservatives in the battle of Gatajo. His election to the presidency followed in 1897, and he was succeeded four years later by the present incumbent, General Leonidas Plaza.
PRINCIPAL STREET IN GUAYAQUIL.
The Ecuador coast is one of the most fertile and lovely regions on the earth. It already furnishes a considerable proportion of those tropical products of which the great nations of the temperate zone demand more every year. Like a Luzon which has been stranded at the foot of the Andes, its green shores refresh the eyes of the north-bound traveller tired of the dreary desert that stretches from Valparaiso to the Gulf of Guayaquil; it possesses the best harbour on the Pacific south of Panama and one of the few in all South America which is not mountain-locked. Between the Cordillera and the sea there is room for untold millions of cacao and coffee trees. In spite of civil war and political upheavals which have made her custom-house so often the prey of irresponsible bandits, masquerading under the name of dictators, Guayaquil's population and wealth have increased until she has outstripped the hoary old capital, which, enthroned on a volcano side, overlooks a narrow strip of cultivable land. Nevertheless the plateau is still predominant in the Ecuadorian state, and supports a vast majority of the population. Nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the Andean region are Indians, mostly in a condition not far removed from bondage, by circumstance and their own distrustful natures shut up within the narrow limits of an existence which has no outlook over the mountains. None the less, they are sturdy fellows, admirably suited to the climate of those high altitudes, and though their numbers have been practically stationary since the Spanish conquest, the failure to increase has been rather due to lack of room than to misgovernment, vice, or the want of the qualities that make for success in the struggle for existence. In that day, now near at hand, when a great railway shall connect the string of towns on the Ecuador plateau with Peru and Colombia, and when branches shall run to the ports and take the place of the well-nigh impassable trails down the tremendous, rain-soaked slopes of the Andes, the mountain region of Ecuador may be transformed and revivified by new systems of agriculture, and the artistic taste and remarkable ingenuity of the people may find a market and a reward. The railway from Guayaquil long stopped at the foot of the mountains, but within the last three years the almost insurmountable difficulties of the ascent have been overcome by American engineers, and the line is being rapidly built along the plateau to Quito. Ecuador already supplies the world with Panama hats, and other manual industries may flourish when unfavourable transportation conditions are removed. Not only are the common people patiently industrious, but they possess innate good taste and artistic feeling. Such a people has special aptitudes, sure to give it a place in that vastly complicated workshop into which the multifarious needs of modern civilisation are transforming the earth. The plateau of Ecuador does not, however, offer room for any considerable immigration, and its wheat, barley, and potatoes do not and will not much more than suffice for local consumption. Ecuador's great future lies in the beautiful and as yet sparsely peopled Pacific plain, and in the vast and absolutely unknown forests which stretch east from the Andes.
