CHAPTER VI

THE CITY OF THE EQUATOR

I settled down for months in Quito. Not only were my Canal Zone

experiences to be written, but I had long since planned to become a bona

fide resident of a typical small South American capital. A letter of

introduction won me quarters in the home of Señor Don Francisco Ordoñez

V, in the calle Flores, while Hays hung up his hat in even more

sumptuous surroundings around the corner.

But not so fast! Not even whole-hearted “Don Panchito” would have

received me in the state of sartorial delapidation of our arrival. The

people of Quito are somewhat less rigid disciples of Beau Brummel than

those of Bogotá, but they are still far from negligent in dress. Most of

the clothes indispensable to our entrance into the ranks of the gente

decente had been mailed in Jirardot, the rest had been turned over to

the American “drummer” in Cali. The first shock Quito had in store for

us was the information that no parcel of any shape or description had

come from Colombia in months, the second was the discovery that the

traveling-man had not arrived. It was hard to realize that we had

outwalked all the established means of transportation in this equatorial

land.

An unavoidable round of the shops wiped out the remnant of my savings as

a policeman, and brought me down again to the letter of credit that had

lain fallow more than a half year. Except for tailor-made suits, the

cost of replenishing a wardrobe was startling. Ready-made clothing for

men is rare in the cities of the Andes, and it is far more economical to

be fitted to order in one of the _sastrerías_ that abound in almost

every street,—dingy little rooms, their fronts all doorway, in which sit

anemic half-breed youths sewing languidly, yet incessantly, now and then

carrying the charcoal-filled “goose” out into the street to blow out the

ashes, and as dependent on the passing throng for inspiration as the

craftsmen of Damascus. As in the more northern capital, the chief line

of demarkation between the _gente_ and the _pueblo_ of Quito is the

white collar. Naturally, the tendency is to make it as wide and distinct

as possible. I had canvassed the entire city before I found my customary

brand of neckwear—at four times its American price—only to discover that

the lowest collar in stock was designed for some species of human

giraffe.

“You misunderstand me,” I protested, “I did not ask for a cuff.”

“This is a collar, señor,” cried the shopkeeper.

“Something lower, please.”

“But this is a very low collar! It is so low that no one in Quito will

wear it, and we are not importing any more of this brand.”

In the matter of shoes, I found at last a Massachusetts product that

might have served; but when I had beaten the dealer down to about twice

the American price, a seven was found to be the largest size in stock.

The merchant seemed on the verge of tears.

“Why, señor,” he gasped, gazing resentfully at the offending member,

“there is not a foot in Quito as large as that shoe.”

He did not mean exactly what he said, but it was natural that he should

have had in mind only the minority of quiteños who wear shoes. These

squeeze their feet into articles of effeminate, toothpick shape for

custom’s sake, as they force their necks into collars that come little

short of hanging, and have their trousers made sailor-fashion, that

their feet may look still more ladylike. One cannot, of course, pose as

an aristocrat on the broad hoofs of an Indian. In the end I was forced

to submit to _botas de hule_, an imitation patent-leather shoe made in

Guayaquil.

Hays concluded that with a general overhauling he could pass muster

until our bundles arrived. But on one point immediate renewal was

unavoidable. He paused in the doorway of one of the little sewing dens

to ask:

“Can you make me a pair of trousers by Saturday night?”

In spite of having pillowed for weeks on Ramsey, Hays never could

remember that Castilian trousers come singly.

“Un par, señor!” cried the tailor, “Ah, no, that is impossible so soon.

I can make you a trouser by then, but not two of them. Then, while you

are wearing the one, I can perhaps make the other, if the señor is in

such haste.”

“Oh, all right,” said Hays, suddenly recalling that trousers are—I mean

is—singular in Spanish, “go ahead. I’ll try to get along with one over

Sunday.”

The error persisted, however. It was not three days later that he was

halted at the door of his lodgings by a whining beggar.

“Una caridad, caballero! Have you not perhaps some old clothes to give a

poor unfortunate?”

[Illustration:

A view of Quito, backed by the Panecillo that bottles it up on the

south. There are six _conventos_ in sight]

[Illustration:

A patio of the Monastery of San Francisco, one of the eighteen

monasteries and convents of Quito, said to be the most extensive in

the Western Hemisphere]

“Sure,” said the generous ex-corporal of police. “I’ll bring you down a

pair of trousers.”

He did so, whereupon the beggar growled angrily:

“But you said a pair! Where is the other one?”

Few quiteño dwellings are equipped with bathrooms. I halted a passerby

to inquire for a public _casa de baños_, and was directed to the foot of

the calle Rocafuerte.

“Hot baths?” I queried, suspiciously.

“Certainly, señor,” he answered haughtily; “If you go there any morning

about ten, when the sun is shining, you will find them quite caliente.”

A crumbling old adobe gate, marked “Baños de Milagro,” gave entrance to

an aged two-story building of the same material. Passing through this, I

was astonished to find spread out before me what looked like an immense

outdoor swimming-pool. It was illusion. Nearer approach showed a broad

sheet of water barely six inches deep, a half-acre of it warming in the

sun. I suddenly recalled that the same word serves in Spanish for all

degrees of temperature from hot to luke-warm. About the basin were many

little adobe dens, in the center of each a stone basin some four feet

deep, with steps leading down into it. The fee was a mere _real_ (five

cents), for the streams that course down the face of Pichincha are

abundant. An Indian scrubbed out the pool with a broom fashioned from a

bundle of fagots, and turned it full of a water so clear that I could

have read a newspaper at the bottom. But the heating apparatus was not

particularly effective. When the icy mountain water had filled the stone

basin, cold as only a shaded spot at this altitude can be, the uninured

gringo could only grit his teeth, clutch desperately at his 60-cent bar

of imported English soap, and plunge in—and quickly out again. One such

experience was enough to explain why Quito shows so decided an aversion

to the bath.

My residence in the city was all but nipped in the bud by a mere matter

of red tape. Again the shock was administered at the post-office. When I

presented the registry slips for the package of notes on which my

proposed volume depended, they were all there, sure enough, the seals

still unbroken. But as I opened them for customs inspection, the

startled employees cried out in horrified chorus:

“Señor, it is against the law to send manuscript by mail in Ecuador!”

“These were mailed in the United States, where it is not against the

law.”

“No importa! It is illegal for them to ride in the Ecuadorian mails.

They will have to be confiscated by the government.”

“What can the government do with them?” I asked, innocently.

“Burn them, of course,” replied the clerk.

Luckily the laws of Ecuador are not so inexorable and incorruptible as

those of some other lands, but I passed a far from pleasant hour before

I discovered that saving fact. Just where the line is drawn between

“manuscrito” and mere letters, I was never able to learn. At any rate

the sender of the offending notes is still “wanted,” I believe, to serve

a year in the penitentiary of Quito.

I had not been three days in the city of the equator when I began to

feel the necessity for exercise. The “best families” lead a very

sedentary and physically idle existence, virtually spending their lives

at the bottom of a hole in the ground, for such the central plaza and

the few adjoining squares about which it is customary to stroll might be

called. Yet there are innumerable views and picturesque corners to

reward him who will climb out; and climb he must, for the city lies in a

fold of the skirts of Pichincha, out of which almost every street mounts

more or less steeply.

The main plaza is the heart of Ecuador. In its center, instead of the

“handsome brass fountain” of Stevenson’s day, rises a tall, showy

monument topped by a bronze Victory or Liberty, or some other exotic

bird, while at its base cringes an allegorical Spanish lion with a look

of pained disgust on his face and an arrow through his liver. Much of

the square is floored with cement, blinding to the eyes under the

equatorial sun and only mildly relieved by staid and too carefully

tended plots where violets, pansies, yellow poppies, and many a flower

known only to the region bloom perennially. Its diagonal walks see most

of Quito pass at least once a day. But neither Indians nor the ragged

classes pause to sit on its grass-green benches; nor may anyone carrying

a bundle pass its gates—unless the guard chances to be doing something

other than his appointed duty. On the east the square is flanked by the

two-story government “palace,” housing the presidency, the ministry,

both houses of congress, the custom-house, Ecuador’s main post-office,

and considerable else, yet still finding room for several cubby-hole

shops under its portico. To the south, siding on, rather than facing the

square, its towers barely rising above the roof, is the low cathedral,

in which are the tombs both of Sucre and his reputed assassin, Flores,

the “Washington of Ecuador.” The third and fourth sides are flanked by

the archbishop’s palace and the municipality, both with _portales_,

arcades beneath which are dozens of little den-like shops, and filled

from pillar to pillar with hawkers and their no less motley wares.

Every street of the city is roughly cobbled, with a row of flagstones

along its center for Indian carriers and four-footed beasts of burden,

and on either side a narrow, slanting slab-stone walk on which the

pedestrian whose appearance suggests the lower social standing is

expected to yield the passage. Rambling over a rolling, at times almost

hilly site, every street is due sooner or later to run off into the air

on a hillside, or to fade suddenly away into a noisome lane.

Quito has no residential section. Its chiefly two-story buildings are,

with rare exceptions, constructed of mud blocks on frames of

_chaguarquero_, the light, pithy stalk of the giant cactus, with roofs

of the familiar dull-red tiles. Whitewash and paint of many colors

strive in vain to conceal this plebeian material, and many a façade is

gay with ornamentation. Well-to-do people, who are commonly the owners

of the building they dwell in, occupy the second floor. The lower story

of the city is the business section. That portion of the house facing

the street is almost certain to be given over to from one to several

shops, the patio serving as a yard for the loading and unloading of

pack-animals, while the bare adobe cells opening on it house the family

servants and Indian retainers. To dwell almost anywhere in Quito is to

live in the upper air of a combination of slums and business houses, and

whatever the wealth or boasted aristocracy of a family, it is certain to

come into daily contact with the unwashed _gente del pueblo_ that

inhabits its lower regions and performs its menial tasks.

There are shops enough in Quito, to all appearances, to supply the

demands, if not the needs, of all the million and a half inhabitants of

Ecuador. These are, for the most part, small, one-room dungeons without

windows, flush with the sidewalk, with no other front than the doors

that stand wide open during business hours, and present at other times

their blank faces ornamented with several enormous padlocks. The quiteño

puts no trust in the small locks of modern days. Many a shop, the entire

stock of which is not worth a hundred dollars, is protected not only by

bolts and bars within, but by half a dozen of those huge and clumsy

contrivances that the rest of the world used in the Middle Ages. To

“shut up shop” is a real task in Quito, of which the lugging home of the

enormous keys is by no means the least burdensome. Naturally, if a real

burglar cared to take the trouble to journey to Quito, he would find far

less difficulty at his trade than in a city ostensibly less secure.

Besides the establishments of hundreds of men who would rather wear a

white collar than work, there are innumerable little holes in the wall,

run by “women of the people” in conjunction with their scanty household

duties, where chicha and stronger drinks, and the few foodstuffs of the

Indians and the poorer classes are displayed—and sometimes sold, though

there are barely customers enough to go round. Clothing stores, or more

exactly, cloth-shops, are perhaps most numerous, countless useless

duplications of the selfsame stock, with hundreds of bolts of as many

different weaves piled high in the open doorways. Every merchant,

however meager his supplies, announces himself an “importer and

exporter,” and after morning mass manto-wrapped women wander for hours

from shop to shop, haggling for a fancied difference of a half cent in

some purchase which, in the end, is more apt than not to be abandoned.

Business is petty at best; its ethics low, and the native quiteño is a

weak competitor of the foreigners that swarm in the city. Italians,

especially the wily Neapolitan, and “Turks,” as the ubiquitous Syrians

are called in all South America, capture much of the trade. A foreigner

remains a foreigner in Ecuador, for the country has but weak powers of

assimilation.

A unique note in the life of Quito are the “Propiedad” signs.

Revolution, with its accompanying looting, is ever imminent. The native

shopkeepers are frankly at the mercy of the looters, who only too often

are the Government itself. But the foreigner despoiled of his wares can

always lodge a complaint with his home Government; reparation may

follow, and even the punishment of the looters is conceivable. To warn

these of their peril, and to induce sober thought in times of anarchy,

the foreign merchant paints on his shop-front a huge flag of his

country, similar to that used by neutral steamers in wartime, with

surcharged words conveying the same information to those unacquainted

with the colors. Thus the German’s place of business is distinguished

with a:

+-----------+

¦ (black) ¦

¦ PROPIEDAD ¦

+-----------¦

¦ (white) ¦

¦ ALEMANA ¦

+-----------¦

¦ (red) ¦

+-----------+

[Illustration:

The family of “Don Panchito” with whom I lived in Quito. In front

stands little Mercedes, familiarly known as “Meech,” our house-maid

and general servant]

[Illustration:

Girls of the “gente decente” class of Quito, in a school run by

European nuns. The Mother Superior (right) is Belgian; the nun on

the left is Irish]

Within a few blocks of the main plaza may be noted the following

“Propiedades”: “Española, Francesa, Alemana, Belga, Danesa, Inglesa,

Italiana, Holondesa, Sueca, Chilena, Colombiana, Peruana, Venezolana,

Turca,” and one or two more. The Stars and Stripes and the words

“Propiedad Americana” appear only once—on the door of a small export

house.

Apparently every one is entitled to three guesses on the population of

Quito. The estimates range from fifty to a hundred thousand, with the

truth probably somewhere near the seventy-five thousand attributed to it

in Stevenson’s day. Its tendency of late years has been to overflow its

banks; the suburb of Guarico climbs a considerable way up the skirts of

Pichincha, and the huts of Indians have scrambled well up the flanks of

the other enclosing ridges. Though more in touch with the outside world

than Bogotá, it has much the same atmosphere of a world apart, a

peaceful, restful little sphere supplied with a few modern conveniences

of a crude, break-down-often sort, but with little of the complicated

life of twentieth-century cities. It is a splendid place to play at

life, to lie fallow and catch up with oneself, with nothing more

exciting to stir up existence than the semi-weekly concert in the plaza

mayor. A score of carriages rattle over its cobbled streets; the rails

of a tramway line had been laid years before our arrival, but the cars

had not yet been ordered. Somewhere there may be a finer climate, but it

would scarcely be worth while going far to look for it. Standing at a

height which, in the temperate zone, would be covered by eternal snows,

the city is sheltered by the surrounding ranges from the bitter chill

that descends so often upon less lofty Bogotá. In the Colombian capital

we were always suffering more or less from cold in our waking hours,

except at midday; in Quito it was possible to sit comfortably on a plaza

bench at midnight. With all the stages of nature, from planting through

blossoms, fruit, and harvest, existing side by side, its days are like

the best half-dozen culled from a northern May. There is a popular

saying that it rains thirteen months a year in Quito. But this is

slander. During my long stay, there were, to be sure, few days when it

did not rain; but the shower came almost always at a more or less fixed

hour of the afternoon, and the resident soon learned to make his plans

accordingly. The rain seemed heavier than it was in reality, for tin

spouts pour the water noisily out into the cobbled streets, the wide,

projecting eaves protecting the sidewalks. Now and then came a day heavy

with massed clouds; far more often all but an hour or so was brilliant

with sunshine.

Yet an American schoolma’am accustomed to tell her pupils that the

people of Quito all dress in white because it lies on the equator, would

be startled to see what attention even a woman in light-colored garb

attracts in its streets. On rare occasions a man in white cotton passed

through the overcoated plaza during the evening concert; but this meant

only that the tri-weekly train from Guayaquil had arrived. We met, too,

an American “drummer,” more noted for his ability as a “mixer” than for

his knowledge of geography, who had arrived with a carefully chosen

wardrobe of white linen suits—and proved a godsend to the local tailors.

Incidentally, he had come down to introduce American plumbing in

Ecuador; but that is another and still sadder story. The truth is that

moderate winter clothing is never out of place in the city of the

equator. Even at noon, with one’s shadow a round disk under foot and the

sun glaring to the eyes and burning the skin in this thin, upland air, a

leisurely climb up one of the longest streets brought no memories of the

tropics.

As in all high altitudes, there is a marked difference between sunshine

and shade. The first greeting in a quiteño house is sure to be “Cúbrese

usted” (“Put on your hat”), and however impolite it may seem to the

newcomer, none but the unwise will disregard the suggestion. Only when

one has become acclimated to the room may one uncover with impunity, for

to catch cold in Quito is a serious matter, and the road from a cold to

pneumonia is short and swift in this thin air. Thanks to the altitude,

it is the common experience of newcomers to be either unduly exhilarated

or sunk in the depths of despondency.

There is not a chimney in Quito, and no breath of smoke is ever known to

smudge her transparent equatorial sky. Factories, in the modern sense,

are unknown; cooking is the same simple operation as in the rural

districts of the Andes. The quiteño knows artificial heat, if at all,

only by hearsay. I chanced to be in the reception-room of the Minister

of Foreign Affairs one afternoon when a newly appointed Argentine

ambassador dropped in for his first informal call. In the course of the

polished small-talk that ensued, the diplomat mentioned a new law in

Buenos Aires requiring the heating of public buildings during certain

months of the year. The Minister, an unusually well-educated man for

Ecuador, stared a moment with a puzzled expression, then leaning forward

with undiplomatic eagerness, replied:

“Why, I suppose you _would_ have to have some kind of artificial heat in

those cold countries!”

From the center of the city itself not one of the snow-clad volcanoes

that encircle it like the tents of a besieging army are visible; but a

climb to the rim of the basin in any direction leads to some point of

vantage overlooking all Quito and its surroundings. Of a score of

far-reaching views, that is perhaps most striking from the summit of the

Panecillo. The “Little Loaf” that bottles up the town on the south is

well-named; it resembles nothing so much as a fat biscuit, lush green in

its covering of perpetual spring. Antiquarians have never agreed whether

the Panecillo is a natural hill, or partly or wholly built by man.

Geologically it is out of place, for all the rest of the region is rocky

and broken, and nowhere else in the vicinity has nature constructed any

symmetrical thing. Some have it that an already existing hill was

rounded off before the Conquest, as a pedestal for the Temple of the Sun

which tradition asserts adorned the summit long before the coming of the

Incas. If it is entirely man-built, the construction of the pyramids was

an afternoon sport in comparison. Somehow the imagination likes to

picture thousands of Indians of both sexes and all ages jogging like

lines of tropical ants up and down the sacred mound, with baskets of

earth on their uncomplaining backs, as they still trot to-day through

the streets of Quito under loads of every description.

A road runs round and round the Panecillo, making two full revolutions

in so leisurely and dignified a manner that it would seem almost level

did not the city below open out more and more with each step forward. At

the summit, across which sweeps a never-failing wind from the south, is

a view worth many times such a climb. All Quito lies huddled in its

pocket below, like the body of a dull-red spider with its legs cut off

at varying lengths. The city is clearly visible in its every detail,

from the very roof-tiles of its houses to the gay-colored ponchos of the

Indians, crawling like minute specks across its squares and along its

ditch-like streets. Along the earth-wrinkle at the base of Pichincha’s

long ridge are glimpses of small villages, and countless little green

fields, standing edge-up on the flank of the range, seem so close at

hand as to be almost within touch. Here the early riser may watch the

birth of clouds. At sunrise the Andes stand out sharp and clear, as if

the sky had been carefully swept during the night. Then a tiny patch of

mist detaches itself here and there from the damp flanks of Pichincha,

streaks of steel-gray clouds begin to rise under the warming sun, like a

curtain drawn from the bottom; soon the entire ridge is steaming from

end to end, and before one’s very eyes come into being and float away

across the world those masses of clouds that greet the late riser

full-grown.

In the transparent air of the highlands the eye embraces far more than

the city. The surrounding world, being above the tree-line, is bare of

any vegetation other than the brown bunch-grass; as would be the city

and its environs, also, but for the thousands of eucalyptus trees

imported in the days of García Moreno. Swinging round the circle, one

catches sight of a dozen famous volcanoes, all more or less capped with

snow. Almost due north rises the glacier-clad bulk of Cayambe, squatted

squarely on the equator, perhaps forty miles away, yet seeming just over

the ridge beyond the city. Near it, jagged Cotacache pierces the blue

heavens. Further around comes Antisana, then Sincholagua, the giant that

not many years ago blew its head off in a fit of rage. To the east

stands Pasochoa, close followed by Rumiñaui, the “Stony-Eyed,” of the

same name as the Inca-quiteño general who continued the war against the

Spaniards after the capture of Atahuallpa. Over its shoulder peers the

tip of Cotapaxi; little Corazon comes next, with Iliniza striving in

vain to hide behind it, until finally the eye has swung back to the

broad flanks of Pichincha, up which clamber Indian huts, like captive

turtles striving to escape from their enclosing basin. Above them two

ragged rock and lava peaks, often streaked with snow, the Rucu and

Guagua (“Man” and “Baby”) Pichincha, invisible from the city itself,

stand forth close at hand against the chill steel-blue of the upland

sky. Pichincha is rated a dead volcano, having given no signs of life

since 1660; but the early history of Quito is strewn with its ashes and

destruction. Quiteños are much given to bewailing their “triste”

landscape; yet few of her canvases has Nature painted with so masterly a

hand.

Three weeks after our arrival Hays burst in upon me one morning with the

information that the bundles we had mailed in Jirardot had come. Well on

in the afternoon the post-office officials saw fit to lay them before

us. A ragged boy cut the strings and spread out the contents for customs

inspection. This over, we were preparing to carry them off, when we were

halted by the grunt of an official deep in some long arithmetical

process at a nearby desk. By and by he rose and pushed toward each of us

a long list of figures:

Mercancías (Merchandise)—8500 grams.

Derechos (Duty) thereon at $2 a kilogram $ 17.00

Más 100% (Plus 100%) 17.00

Defensa Nacional 1.70

Aforro 1.57

Muellaje (wharfage) 2.23

Bodega (storage). .93

Brokerage 2.30

Timbre (stamp) .15

———

Total $ 42.88

“These are personal belongings, chiefly clothing, all more or less

worn,” I began, scenting a long controversy.

“True, señor.”

“You surely do not ask us to pay duty on personal baggage? Travelers

arrive at Guayaquil every week with several trunks, and pay no duty.”

“Only that is baggage which the traveler personally brings in with him.

The charges are $42.88—for each, señores, since the parcels are of the

same weight.”

“But you can see for yourself that they are marked ‘Value $7.’”

“The law goes by weight only, señor.”

“Why the 100% addition?”

“The new law requires all duties to be levied twice.”

“And this third item?”

“For the up-keep of the national army and navy.”

“Well, what is this _aforro_?”

“That is the freight from Panamá.”

“But the postage was prepaid from Jirardot to Quito—one dollar. Doesn’t

Ecuador belong to the Postal Union?”

“Naturally, señor, but by a special treaty with the United States

parcel-post packages pay freight across the Isthmus, and from Panamá to

here.”

“And this muellaje—?”

“The landing charges in the port of Guayaquil. Bodega is for warehouse

storage charges—”

“But the bundles came through in a mail-bag, without so much as entering

a warehouse.”

“Those are fixed charges, irrespective of special conditions. The

brokerage covers _my_ fee here in the office, and the stamp is that

which you see on the document here. The total charges are $42.88.”

“Keep ’em,” growled Hays, turning away. “Make a present of them to your

president, or dress up one of your statues of Liberty.” Naturally, he

spoke in English, for we still planned to live some time in Quito.

As we reached the door, a word from the official caused us to turn back.

He was up to his ears in another set of figures.

“We can call it cotton instead of clothing,” he said, presenting a new

list; “then the charges will be only $12.25.”

“Make it _old_ clothing,” suggested Hays.

“The law mentions clothing, without qualifications,” replied the

official, with that patient courtesy that is the chief virtue of his

race.

“The bundles do not weigh that, anyway,” I persisted. “Most of it is in

the wrappings.”

“The law specifies bulk, not net weight.”

“Keep them, with our compliments,” growled Hays, turning away.

“I’ll tell you what you can do, señores,” suggested the official; “Go

buy a stamped sheet of government paper at thirty cents and write the

Director of Posts—”

“Why can’t we write him on ordinary paper?”

“It would not be legal. Go buy a thirty-cent stamped paper and put a

ten-cent stamp on it—”

“What’s that for?”

“For the up-keep of the national army. Write the Director of Posts

reclaiming the duty you have paid—”

“_After_ we have paid it?” cried Hays. “Hardly! I have had too much

experience with Latin-American governments.”

In the end we bought the stamped paper and wrote the director, leaving

the letter with the official, who promised to forward it to his

chief—to-morrow. As the bundles contained some rather indispensable odds

and ends, and because I wished to investigate Ecuadorian government

processes to the bottom, I followed the matter up. Next day we called

twice at the post-office and finally, late in the afternoon, signed a

blank request to be given the packages duty free, without which, it

appeared, the matter could not be officially considered. Two days later

we were informed that a _junta_ had been ordered to meet and pass on the

case; there being no precedent for action. A week passed. The junta

showed no ability to get together. I took up the quest again—and spent

an afternoon in gaining admittance to the sanctum of the Director of

Posts. He was courtesy itself, but the gist of his remarks was:

“That is not baggage which comes in by mail. It is only legally so when

it crosses the frontier with its owner. However, if you wish, you might

call on the Minister of Public Instruction—who happens to be also at the

present time acting Minister of the Interior, to which department the

matter refers—and ask to have the bundles passed as baggage.”

I spent the better part of two days in the anteroom of the Ministry, a

sumptuous pink and blue adobe chamber with a score of bullet holes in

the walls—mementoes of the latest request of the populace for the

resignation of the president—only to learn:

“The law mentions no difference between old and new clothing; between

fresh and soiled linen. All clothing entering Ecuador—except as

baggage—pays the same duty; hence I see no way you can avoid it.”

I did not succeed in getting the matter before Congress—officially, at

least—though I only missed taking it up with the president through an

oversight of one of his aids. In the end I paid the $6.25 to which, by

some strange manipulation, the post-office official had reduced the

charges, and carried the object of controversy home to the calle Flores.

These small countries of tropical America remind one less of nations

than of groups of polite bandits who have taken possession of a few

mountains and valleys that they may levy tribute on whoever falls into

their hands. All of them have imitated larger powers by enacting a

“protective tariff,” without even the scant excuse that has been bloated

into a reason for it in other lands; for here there is no industry to

“protect.” Here it is not the lobbies of large financial interests that

are back of the movement, but the politicians who constitute the

“government”; the tariffs are “for revenue only”—largely for the pockets

of the politicians themselves. We of more powerful nations hardly

realize what it means to live in so small a country as Ecuador, until it

is brought home by some such incident as hearing the entire Congress

debating several hours on the question of whether two new electric-light

bulbs shall or shall not be placed in front of the government “palace.”

Religiously, Quito is still in the Middle Ages. Looked down upon from

any point of vantage, it has the aspect of an ecclesiastical capital. It

would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that half the city is taken up

by the Church. Besides its many bulking “temples” and innumerable

chapels, enormous sections of the town are swallowed up within the

confines of convents and monasteries. The largest is San Francisco,

reputed the most extensive in America. The Franciscans got in on the

ground floor in Quito. The ink with which the city was founded was

barely dry when three monks of that order arrived afoot and breathless

from Guayaquil; to be given an immense grant of land running far up the

flanks of Pichincha. The great stone cloisters were a century in

building; a veritable Chinese Wall of brick, backed by clustered hovels

of the poor, encloses what would have been six city blocks, and the

holdings of the order in haciendas and other rich properties spread far

and wide over Ecuador. During the irruption of Pichincha in 1575, the

Franciscans won the perennial worship of the masses by the simple method

of raising aloft the Hostia and commanding the flow of lava to cease—and

continuing to hold it aloft until the command was obeyed. To-day they

still loll under such withered laurels.

Two youths of Quito’s “best families” accompanied me to San Francisco. A

monk in brown greeted my companions as befitted their high rank and

potential power of beneficence; yet with an undercurrent of insincerity

and of dislike for these sons of “Liberals,” which he was unable wholly

to conceal. We passed through several flowery patios musical with

fountains and surrounded by pillared arcades, off which opened large,

vaulted chambers, to an Elysian orchard under the trees of which a score

of well-fed, well-slept monks strolled in pastoral contentment far from

the hubbub and cares of the modern world. Cigarette butts littered the

floor of a kiosk in the center; scarcely a face was to be seen in which

the signs of frequent debauch could not plainly be read. The walls and

ceiling of the adjoining church were so covered with gold that the

imagination harked back to the ransom of Atahuallpa. My companions

whispered that an American had recently offered $15,000 for the

privilege of removing what remained of the genuine metal, promising to

regild the church so expertly that the transaction would never be

detected. The offer had been considered, but declined when some

suspicion of the deal reached the public ear. The monks were still open

to similar propositions, however. Over a door of the monastery hung an

old painting of “María Dolorosa” by a famous Spanish artist. One of my

companions, himself a painter of some ability, offered a tempting sum

for permission to replace the “dusty old thing” with a brand new copy;

and the impression left by a deal of murmuring and pantomime was that

the offer would eventually be accepted.

[Illustration:

Ecuadorian soldiers before the national “palace”]

[Illustration:

Quito does not put its faith in small locks and keys. Many a shop

containing hardly $100 worth of goods has a half-dozen padlocks and

interior bolts]

When we asked permission to climb to the tower for a view of the town,

however, the monk gave us a quick, sidelong glance and regretted that

the Father Superior no longer permitted it. My companions exchanged

winks, but found no opportunity to enlighten me until we had taken our

ceremonious leave. Once outside I learned—to my astonishment—that not

merely foreigners resent having each night’s sleep broken up into a

series of detached naps by the unearthly din of Quito’s church-bells. A

few months before, several young men of the well-to-do class had formed

a conspiracy to taste the unknown luxury of one night of unbroken

slumber. Gaining admission on various pretexts to all the church-towers

of the city, the conspirators had stolen the _badajos_—clappers, I

believe we call them in English—and got rid of them so effectually that

few were ever discovered. The priests were distracted—until their

faithful henchmen of the masses had replaced the pilfered property with

pieces of railroad iron. Since then the church-towers had been closed to

the educated youth of the city.

Not far from San Francisco rises the florid façade of “La Compañía.” The

Jesuits reached the present capital of Ecuador a bit later than many of

their competitors, but they quickly overcame the handicap. They

established the first _boticas_, or drug-stores, and brooked no

competition. Besides enormous tracts of the most fertile land in the

colony, they were granted a monopoly of cattle-breeding and, being free

from taxes and the necessity of paying the King’s share, and holding the

Indians in virtual slavery at less than a nominal wage, most of which

returned to their coffers in the form of church tithes and levies, they

easily choked private competition and soon outdistanced in wealth even

the Franciscans. Their expulsion from Spanish soil greatly reduced their

power and holdings. To-day, what was once a part of their monastery is

occupied by the University and the National Library, but they are still

scarcely cramped for space. An Alsatian Jesuit, of an esthetical cast of

countenance in striking contrast to his Ecuadorian brothers, led me

fearlessly even into the belfry. He was a plainspoken man, for all his

astuteness—or perhaps by reason of it—and openly bewailed the immorality

of the native friars and what he called the “silly superstitions” of the

people. The dormitories of the boarding-school within the monastery were

divided into small cells by low wooden partitions covered with

chicken-wire, like the ten-cent lodging-houses of Chicago. Before I had

time to put a question, the Alsatian explained:

“In these countries we must keep the boys locked in their own rooms at

night, for morality’s sake.”

It is more than unusual in Latin-America, but at least one enterprising

pupil found it possible to “work his way” through the _colegio_ of the

Jesuit Fathers of Quito. His fame was still green among the gilded

youths of the city. By the rules of the institution each student is

required to go to confession once a week. The enterprising lad long

relieved his comrades of the unpleasant formality by impersonating each

in turn before the perforated disk—at the equivalent of fifty cents a

head.

Merced, Corazon, Buen Pastor, San Augustín, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara,

Carmen Antigua, Carmen Moderno, San Juan ... to name all the orders that

occupy huge spaces within the city of Quito would be like writing an

ecclesiastical directory. Down at the end of the calle Flores the

Dominicans dwell in a monastery little less extensive than that of the

Franciscans. Their wealth may be surmised from the fact that in colonial

days they held the monopoly of supplying all liquor used in “divine

worship” throughout the colony. In the center of the Plaza Santo Domingo

is a statue of Sucre, companion of Bolívar in the wars of

Spanish-American independence,—a splendid bronze of an imaginary

Hercules that should be set up in some gymnasium as a model—concerning

which there runs a tale suggestive of local conditions. Soon after its

erection an Indian living far up the mountainside above the suburb of

Guarico lost his pig. He tried every known means of recovering the

animal,—prayed to every available saint with any reputation for

miracles, squandered his meager substance in burning candles before

every shrine in Quito, and purchased many a priestly prayer. All in

vain; the pig was not to be found. At length a quiteño—whether a wag or

a sincere believer is not reported—whispered to the distracted Indian

that the most powerful saint of all was the new one in the Plaza Santo

Domingo. The credulous fellow lost no time on his way to the square,

where he knelt with a lighted candle on either side of him before the

pedestal of the Hero of Ayacucho. When he looked up from his first

invocation he noted that the statue was pointing to the battlefield on

which its original defeated the Spaniards, far up the slope of

Pichincha, which chanced also to be the location of the Indian’s hut. He

hurried homeward and, sure enough, found the pig in a hollow not far

from his dwelling. Since then “Saint Sucre” has had a great vogue with

the Indian populace of Quito.

It would be out of place to enumerate the many proofs, from personal

experiences to matters of common knowledge, from national literature to

frequent notorious scandals, of the moral laxity of the quiteño

priesthood. Whatever they may be elsewhere, celibacy and the

confessional are undeniably ill-chosen institutions for a race of

Ecuadorian caliber. The non-Catholic would not dream of berating the

churchmen in any such terms as those which frequently fall from the lips

of educated men of Quito. More than once I have heard a devout quiteña

mother bewail the fact that she dare not send her daughter to

confession, though convinced that the ceremony was requisite to the

saving of her soul. One looks in vain for any connection whatever

between religion and morality in this typical Andean capital. The

sanctimonious old _beatas_, wrapped in their black mantos, who haunt the

churches and accompany every religious procession with tears of

hysterical ecstasy coursing down their cheeks are not infrequently

procurers and go-betweens of the human vultures that dwell in, as well

as out of, the monasteries. The street-walkers of Quito are almost all

fervent mass-goers. Scores of the same faces that peer invitingly out

upon the passerby at night may be seen next morning kneeling on the

pavement of the cathedral or walking on their knees around the entire

circle of plaster saints, reciting a prayer formula before each. Nor is

this hypocrisy. These victims see no incongruity between the evening’s

doings and the morning’s occupation. To the masses, religion is a

mixture of idol worship and the performance of fixed ceremonies, wholly

divorced from their personal actions. The sins of daily life are wiped

out by a quarter-hour in the confessional; absolution is granted for the

payment of a fee and the performance of a set devotion. The brain cells

where real morality might find a foothold are packed with absurd

catechisms that leave no room for it; and of religion there remains

nothing but unthinking _costumbre_ and unreasoning fanaticism.

Quito has been called the most fanatical town of South America. Among a

score like it, the present archbishop tells the following story in his

“History of Ecuador.” About two hundred years ago some one broke into

one of the churches and stole the sacred wafers, together with the gold

ciborium in which they were kept. A few days later the stolen property

was found lying in the refuse of a ditch. Amid great weeping, a

procession of the entire population bore the sacred emblem back to its

church. For weeks the whole town dressed in deepest mourning; the

_audiencia_ gave all its attention and the police force all its efforts

to running down those “vile traitors, bestial swine, and venial

sinners,” as the gentle archbishop calls them, leaving little

misdemeanors like robbery and murder to look after themselves. Not a

clue was uncovered. At length a famous Jesuit of the time preached a

sermon that lashed the populace into such fervor that the congregation

poured forth into the streets beating themselves with chains and

scourges, most of them, men and women, naked to the waist—I am quoting

the archbishop—in a procession and religious fury that lasted from eight

at night until two in the morning. A scapegoat was imperative. The

officers of the _audiencia_, in peril of being themselves forced to

assume that rôle, redoubled their efforts, and at length found, some

distance south of the city, three Indians and a half-caste who were

reputed to have confessed to the nefarious crime. The four miscreants

were brought back to the city, kicked about the streets by the populace,

trussed up in chains in the church while the priest preached a four-hour

sermon on “the most atrocious crime in the history of Quito,” and were

finally hanged, drawn, and quartered, and hung up, still dripping with

blood, in sixteen parts of the town. The priests and their followers dug

up a potful of earth where the holy wafers had been found, and deposited

it in a heavy vase of solid gold that is still one of the precious

relics of the cathedral. Then they caused to be erected over the spot

the chapel of Jerusalem, where it stands to this day. “And,” adds the

archbishop, “no _fiel_ [faithful one] will deny that they met their just

fate for so vile and unprecedented a sacrilege.”

[Illustration:

A corner of Quito—looking through a garbage-hole into one of the many

ravines by which the city is broken up]

Ah, but that was two centuries ago. True, but permit me to bring the

fanaticism of Quito up to date. Less than a year before our arrival the

perennial struggle between the Liberals and the Conservatives, the

latter the church party, had broken out again in revolution. A

queer-looking little man, with a white goatee sprouting from a

mild-tempered chin, and wearing habitually a hat that would have been

the envy of a slap-stick comedian, had for years been president of

Ecuador. He had stolen unusually little for a Latin-American president,

and had not allowed his friends to steal more than the average.

Moreover, he had done the country much service, among other things

having induced an American to complete the railroad from the coast to

Quito. Also he had curtailed some of the unbridled graft of the church;

and strangely enough the church had resented that species of reform and

turned the power of the Conservatives against him. To be sure, the queer

little man had objected to surrendering his office to a newly elected

incumbent; but that is a common South American peccadillo. When the

populace rose and drove him out, he went down to the coast and gathered

an army of his fellow-_costeños_. But luck had deserted him. After a few

battles he was captured, together with several sons, nephews, and

henchmen. The Conservatives were triumphant. The Government ordered the

captives to be sent up to Quito. The general in command at Guayaquil

protested that such action was unsafe until the fury of the populace

evaporated. The Government assured him the danger was visionary, and

repeated the order. A special train was made up, and set out on the long

climb to the plateau. That was on a Saturday. Next morning a priest,

noted for his virulent eloquence, preached a sermon that lashed the

church-going masses into fury. At noon word came that the train had

arrived, and the prisoners hurried by automobile to the Panóptico, the

wheel-shaped penitentiary up on the lower flanks of Pichincha. The

populace quickly gathered. The bullet-holes through the false stone

walls of the dismal little mud cells, in the narrow corners of which the

prisoners crouched, were still fresh when we wandered through the place,

months later. Among the most fanatical of the mob were the police and

those whose duty it was to guard the prison. In the excitement some

twoscore prisoners escaped, and joined the rioters. The little

ex-president and his companions, dead or dying, were stripped naked,

ropes were tied to their ankles, and they were dragged for hours through

the cobbled streets of Quito, the frenzied populace raising the echoes

of the surrounding ranges with shouts of, “Long Live the Church!” “Viva

la Virgen María!”

I have two photographs taken by Don Jesús, nephew of my host, from the

window of what was later my own room, as the bodies of the former

president and his eldest son were passing. They show a throng made up

exclusively of cholos, those of mixed blood, who constitute the bulk of

Quito’s population. Not a white collar of the _gente decente_ or the

broad felt hat of an Indian is to be seen. On through the entire length

of the city the barbaric procession continued. Near the Plaza San Blas a

swarm of the lowest women in town descended with knives from their

hovels and carried off gruesome mementoes of the orgy. At length the mob

reached the Ejido, the broad, green playground of Quito, where they

hacked in pieces the bodies of the victims with machetes and whatever

implement came to hand. Some carried to their huts as souvenirs the

heads of the ex-president and his sons, from which they were recovered

with difficulty only after the frenzy had died down and been slept off.

The rest was piled in heaps and burned. Such were _los arrastres_ (“the

draggings”), to which the educated quiteño refers, if at all, in shamed

undertones.

Quito is not so light of complexion as Bogotá. Not merely is her

percentage of Indian blood higher, but even those of unmixed European

ancestry have a sallow or olive tint, and little of the color in their

cheeks frequent in the more rigorous capital of Colombia. Negroes are

unknown as residents. There is a careful gradation in caste, yet chiefly

a void in place of what, in other lands, would be a middle class. The

population is divided rather sharply between those brutalized from

carrying ox-loads on their backs, and those who remain soft and

effeminate from careful avoidance of any muscular exertion. For even the

cholo is economically either Indian or white, depending on his wealth or

occupation. To carry even a small package through the streets is to

jeopardize one’s standing as a member of the upper class. “Don’t hurry,”

a frock-tailed quiteño told me in all seriousness one day. “People will

think you are _ocupado_,” busy, that is, with vulgar work. It is

customary to raise one’s hat to every male acquaintance “of your own

class or above,” to pause and shake hands with every one considered your

equal, to ask him how he has _amanecido_ (“dawned”), to inquire after

his family individually, and to shake hands again before parting; and

that as often as you meet him, though it be every half-hour during the

day. Americans who have lived long in South America have the

hand-shaking habit chronically. The greeting, or more exactly the

acknowledgment of the greeting, of one’s inferior varies from a

patronizing heartiness to the corner tailor to a half-audible grunt to

an Indian. The latter is always addressed in the “tu” form, “because,”

as one of my Beau Brummel acquaintances put it, “there is no reason

whatever to show any respect to the Indian.” During several months’

acquaintance I found no great reason to show any to the speaker; but

that, perhaps, is beside the point.

How wholly lacking the place is in genuine democracy is frequently

illustrated. I was strolling in the _plaza mayor_ one day, for instance,

with the grandson of the “Washington of Ecuador,” a youth of American

school training and of unusually high standards, when he stepped on the

flagging surrounding the central monument. The cholo policeman on guard

hesitated, but finally screwed up unusual courage and informed the youth

in a courteous, not to say humble, manner that he had been ordered not

to let any one walk on the flagging. The descendant of Ecuador’s founder

turned a brilliant red, as if his noble house had been vilely insulted,

then so white that his blond hair seemed to become dark brown. He strode

across to the officer, who was considerably larger than he, caught him

by the coat, and all but jerked him off his feet. The policeman abjectly

apologized. The “best people” of Quito do not realize that it is not the

individual policeman, their “inferior,” giving them orders, but lawful

and orderly society speaking through him.

As in the days of Stevenson’s travels, a century ago, “the principal

occupation of persons of rank is visiting their estates, particularly at

harvest-time.” By far the greater portion of the year they spend in

town, however, leaving their haciendas in charge of _mayordomos_ little

acquainted with modern agricultural methods. The city has so few

recreative attractions that it is hard for a man of education to avoid a

more or less studious life, be it only as a pastime. Yet Quito does not

even aspire to rival Bogotá as the “Athens of South America.” Ecuador is

not without her literature, but it has come from other towns more

frequently than from the capital. The game of politics, not without its

perils, engrosses the attention of many. Then, as in most Latin-American

countries, not a few dissipate their energies in the “pursuit of

pleasure” of a rather specific kind. So assiduously does the average

quiteño devote himself to this from early youth that it is not strange

that an old man of the _decente_ class is rarely seen. There is a

considerable provincialism, even among the best educated classes. I

heard often such questions as “What is a sleigh?” “When is summer?” The

story is well vouched for that a congressman asked a colleague just back

from abroad, “Can a man get to Europe in three weeks on a good mule?”

The women of the well-dressed class in Quito are less given to the

display of mustaches than those of Bogotá. Not a few are distinctly

attractive, particularly in early youth. In later life too many suggest

in their features some years of a rather harrowing existence. Outspoken

quiteños lay this condition at the door of the priests and friars, but

mere economic pressure probably plays at least as considerable a part.

The up-keep of so many enormous ecclesiastical institutions cannot but

drain the resources of so stagnant a city. Wealth does not abound, and

feminine opportunity to earn a livelihood is narrowly restricted. It is

not strange, then, if more than one family still rated in the gentle

decente class remains with no other barrier against starvation than the

youthful freshness of its daughters. In most parts of the world a glance

suffices to distinguish a woman of public life from her respected

sisters. In Quito it is not so easy. Indeed, there seems to be no hard

and fast line between the two classes. Certain undercurrents suggest a

tacit admission that some families have only one means of tiding over

their existence until a lucky turn of politics, or of the lottery wheel,

sets them on their feet again. Then, if the girl’s career has not been

too public, she may be bestowed on a husband of a somewhat lower social

level.

Let me not leave the impression of a general laxity among the women of

Quito. The sheltered daughters of the most responsible classes are

models of modesty and domesticity. But he who dwells any length of time

in the city would be blind to overlook certain facts, be they the result

of an impoverished society or more directly fostered by those

ecclesiastical elements to whom the embittered men of higher rank charge

them.

Thus far I have said little of the, if not most numerous, at least most

conspicuous class in Quito,—the Indians. Ignoring the very considerable

number in whose veins runs a greater or less percentage of aboriginal

blood, those in whom it is still without admixture make up perhaps forty

per cent. of the population, and give the city most of its color. There

is not a house in town, from the bright-yellow, three-story adobe

dwelling of the president down, without its Indians,—family servants and

burden-bearers huddled in the mud cells about the cobbled patio of the

lower story, or homeless wretches who lie by night in any unoccupied

corner and pick up a precarious existence by day in competition with

donkeys and pack-animals. Their earth-floored kennels form the

tassel-ends of almost every street; they scatter out along all the

highways, and dot the flanks of every range and mountain spur in the

vicinity.

If they have changed since the Conquest, it is for the worse. In habits

and condition they vary scarcely at all from those of the dreary Andean

villages through which we had passed. Theirs is a purely animal

existence. They have not the faintest notion of any line between filth

and cleanliness, avoiding only that which is obviously poison, by an

instinct common to the lower animals. I have seen them drink water I am

sure a thirsty horse would not touch, and that despite the fact that

fresh water was to be had a few yards away. They literally never wash so

much as a finger, except on some such occasion as a church fiesta, when

they may pause at a pool or mud-hole on the edge of town to scrub their

feet with a stone. They speak a debauched dialect of Quichua, the tongue

of the Incas, mixed with some words of the conquered Caras, though all

understand Spanish, or at least the Indian-Spanish spoken in Quito.

[Illustration:

After the bullfight a yearling is often turned into the ring for the

amusement of the youthful male population of Quito]

[Illustration:

A group of the Indians that form so large a percentage of Quito’s

population. The hats are light gray, the ponchos, skirts, and shawls

each some crude, brilliant color]

Many consider the Andean Indian a debased Mongolian type, a theory not

without its basis in his features. In a curious old book of the National

Library of Ecuador—the “History of the Kingdom of Quito,” written in

1789, the Jesuit Padre Velasco takes up the question of the origin of

the Indian and settles it—at least to his own satisfaction. To begin

with, the Church has declared the inhabitants of the New World

“rational,” that is, descended from Adam and Eve. That point being

disposed of, it follows that “the men and animals who were found in

America must be descendants of those who emerged from Noah’s ark; for

does not the Bible say that _all_ the world was covered with water? Even

granted, for the sake of argument,” continues the razor-minded padre,

“that the mountains of South America protruded a bit above the surface

of those waters, is it conceivable that man could live for months on the

highest peaks, eating snow, drinking snow, and sleeping in snow? Could

he even have stood up for nearly a year on those pyramids of snow and

ice?” I give it up. Ask some polar explorer. What then remains of the

argument of those who still cling to the authoctonomous heresy?

Obviously there is no other recourse then to admit that the ancestors of

the race found their way to America by the Behring Strait, or across the

Pacific from the shores of Asia.

Whatever his origin, the Indian of the Andes is a distinct reality,

distinct, indeed, to all the five senses, and he varies little

throughout the length of the continent. In build he is stocky and short,

very muscular, with the strength of a mule for carrying loads on his

back, indefatigable on foot, but weak for other labor. His color is

between a tarnished copper and a more or less intense bronze. His head

is large; his neck thick and long, his eyes small, black, and

penetrating, yet at times strangely suggesting those of a dead fish; his

nose is bulky, and somewhat flattened and spread; his teeth are white,

even, and always in splendid condition; his long hair, worn sometimes

flying loose, sometimes in a single braid wound with red tape, is

jet-black, without luster, abundant, perfectly straight, strong and

coarse as that of a horse’s mane, without even a tendency to baldness.

His lips are thick and heavy, the lower one somewhat hanging, giving him

a suggestion of sulkiness. His forehead is low, his mouth large, and his

prominent cheek-bones and large ears give his face an appearance of

great width. He is broad-shouldered, with a chest like a barrel, but

slender of leg and small of foot. He grows no beard, and has almost no

hair on the body.

Men and women alike, except a rare male with a sole of home-tanned

leather secured by thongs, are bare-legged at least halfway to the

knees, their feet, like calloused hoofs, marked by stony trails and

years of barnyard wallowing. The male wears a broad, round, light-gray

hat of thick felt, a kind of pajama shirt or blouse of fancily colored

calico, or _lienzo_, a very roomy pair of “panties” of thinnest white

cotton that reach anywhere from his knees to halfway to his

undomesticated feet. Besides these garments, he is never seen without

his ruana, or poncho, which serves him as a cloak and carry-all by day,

and as a bed and covering by night. This is always of some startling,

crude color, deep red predominating, with such screaming combinations as

magenta and purple, carmine and yellow, though when sufficiently soiled

and sun-bleached, the old rose and velvety brown, the brick red or

turquoise blue, take on all the soft richness of Oriental rugs. It is

this commonly homespun garment, and the corresponding one of the women,

that make Quito such a color-splashed city.

The woman, too, copies the dress of her ancestors to remote generations.

She wears the same hat as the male—hat-pins are unknown to her, all down

the Andes—a beltless waist of coarse cloth, either open, or thin and

ragged; several strips of colored _bayeta_ (a woolish shoddy) wrapped

tightly around her draft-horse hips from waist to calves in guise of

skirt, always slit open on one side, showing an inner petticoat—once

white—though sometimes in striking solid colors, in marked contrast to

the outer skirt; and a blanket, smaller, but as audible in hue as the

poncho of the male, thrown round her shoulders like a shawl. She is fond

of gaudy earrings of colored glass or similar rubbish, ranging in size

from large to colossal; from one to a dozen strings of cheap red beads,

often the bean of a wild plant indigenous to the region, hang around her

neck; generally brass rings adorn every finger; and often many beads are

wound round and round her bare arms. She is completely devoid of

feminine charm. She needs none, for she is amply worth her keep as a

beast of burden.

As far as I know, there is no law in Quito requiring an Indian woman not

to be seen without a babe in arms, or, rather, in shawl; but if one

exists, it is seldom violated. In an hour I have seen, by actual count,

more than three hundred female aborigines pass my window in the calle

Flores, and not a score of them but bore on her back a child of from two

weeks to two years of age, to say nothing of several other bundles and

her whirling spindle. When the infant is tiny, it is carried lengthwise

at the bottom of the blanket-shawl knotted across the mother’s chest.

When it is older, it is tossed or climbs astride her broad back, lying

face down, with legs spread, while she throws her outer garment about

it, ties the knot on her chest—or on her forehead if the child is

heavy—and trots along at her work the day through, without the least

apparent notice of the offspring. The babe falls asleep, or gazes with

curious, yet rather dull, eyes at the world as it speeds by, peering

over the mother’s shoulder like an engineer from his cab, eats such food

or refuse as falls into its hands, or plays with the mother’s tape-wound

braid. The Indian woman never carries her offspring in any other manner

unless, in her rôle as a common carrier, she picks up a load too bulky

or heavy to place the infant atop, such as a bedstead, a bureau, or two

full-sized sacks of wheat—these are not exaggerations, but frequent

cargoes—when she hangs the child in front, in the concave of her figure,

like a baby kangaroo in the maternal pouch, knotting the supporting

garment across her shoulders.

The youngest baby is already inconceivably dirty, yet almost always

robustly healthy in appearance, though the infant mortality of the class

is appalling. It is an unusual experience to hear an Indian baby cry.

From its earliest years it seems to adopt that uncomplaining attitude

toward life that is so marked a characteristic of the adults. Though she

treats her offspring with no active unkindness—in all the years I spent

in South America I have never seen an Indian mother strike a child—the

aboriginal woman seems to endure it passively, like any other burden

thrust upon her from which there is no escape, carrying it where it will

be least troublesome, and never, at least openly, showing any caressing

fondness for it. The child old enough to toddle about the streets often

remains on the mother’s back, as if to hold the place for the next

comer. It is a common experience to hear an Indian child ask in a

perfectly fluent tongue for a serving at the maternal source of supply.

There is scant difference in appearance between the two sexes, and none

whatever in their labor, except that, if there is only one load, the

woman carries it, and the baby in addition. In both the half-breed and

Indian classes the women are more uncleanly than the men. Like the

latter, they work at all the coarser unskilled tasks, shoveling earth,

mixing and carrying mortar, cobbling streets; while in the matters of

loads there is nothing under two hundred pounds in weight which, once on

their backs, they cannot jog along under at a kind of limping gait that

seems tireless. Almost any day the furniture and entire possessions of

some moving household is displayed to public gaze as it jogs through

town on the backs of an Indian family. The chief water-supply of Quito

is a constant string of Indians from the fountain opposite the

government palace, with huge, red earthen jars sitting on their hips and

supported by a thong across the forehead. It is a commonplace to meet an

Indian carrying the gaudy image of some saint larger than himself. Cheap

coffins of half-rotten boards, painted sky-blue or pink and decorated

with strips of gilded paper, frequently mince past, secured by the

brilliant poncho of the carrier, knotted across his chest. I had

occasion one day to transport a typewriter a few blocks. The Indian

prepared to sling it on his back with a rope. When I objected to this

method, I found that the fellow not only could not carry it in his

hands, but that he could not lift it to his head. When I placed it

there, however, he ambled away as if he had nothing on his mind but his

hat.

Frequently an entire family takes a large job, such as carrying a

building from one end of town to another, adobe brick by brick. Such a

one passed my window for weeks. All day long they dog-trotted back and

forth in single file along the line of smooth-worn flagstones in the

middle of the street, their bare feet making absolutely no sound, never

a word or a sign of complaint finding outward expression. The man and

woman each bore the same number of mud bricks piled on their backs, and

the latter always carried the baby in her pouch, though they made a

hundred trips a day. Why the infant could not have been left at one end

or the other of the journey it was hard to guess. Two children, one a

little fellow of five with one brick on his back, his brother of seven

or eight with two, toiled all day long between father and mother, as if

they were being systematically trained for the only life before them.

The Andean Indian is even less like the tall and haughty redskin of our

country in manner than in appearance. Compared with him, the Mexican

Indian is self-assertive, bold, and ferocious. Silent and abstracted, he

takes no apparent heed of what goes on about him. Of phlegmatic

temperament, a truly wooden equanimity of temper, melancholy, taciturn,

and reserved, he is noted above all for a distrust that is perhaps

natural, but is more likely the result of centuries of privations since

the coming of the Spaniards. He has a blind submission to authority,

great attachment to the house in which he lives, and is so cowardly that

he lets himself be dominated by the most despicable members of other

races. A complete outsider in government and public affairs, he is

treated by the rest of the population like a domestic animal. The

merchant of Quito who requires a carrier to deliver some bundle does not

wait for one to offer himself. He steps into the street and snatches the

first Indian who passes, though he be on his way to a dying parent, or

preparing his child’s funeral; and the Indian performs the task as

uncomplainingly as some mechanical device, and returns to wait perhaps

an hour or two for the few cents the merchant chooses to give him. Only

when he is drunk does the aboriginal’s manner change. Then he is

garrulous and mildly disorderly. But even on a Saturday afternoon, when

the highways are lined with Indians of both sexes reeling homeward, the

gringo passes unnoticed, in marked contrast with the gantlet of

insolence, if not, indeed, of actual danger, which he must run under

like circumstances in the highlands of Mexico.

The newcomer’s sympathy for the Indian of Quito gradually evaporates

with the discovery that he is utterly devoid of ambition, as completely

indifferent to his own betterment as any four-footed animal. Pad out

this fact with all its details and ramifications, discarding entirely

the American’s ingrown tendency to imbue every human being with a

striving character, and the hopelessness of the Indian’s condition will

be more clearly realized. The Government of Ecuador gives scant

attention to the education of the aboriginals; even if it provided

schools and forced attendance, there would still remain the problem of

arousing in these people any interest in, or effort for,

self-improvement.

A simple episode will go far toward visualizing the temperament of the

Indian of Quito, and perhaps make a bit clearer the ease with which

Pizarro and his handful of tramps overthrew the Empire of the Incas. I

had gone out for a stroll one afternoon along the road to Guallabamba.

Some three miles from town a light rain turned me back. There were no

houses near, but numbers of Indians were going and coming. A short

distance ahead was a group engaged in noisy contention. Suddenly a

handsome, muscular young Indian broke away and ran toward me, his long,

black hair streaming out behind him. At his heels, cursing, came three

cholos, in the dark hats, more sober blankets and trousers of their

caste, with shorn hair and straggling suggestions of mustaches. I was

not armed—one does not trouble to carry weapons about Quito—and in my

bespattered road garb I had certainly no appearance of protective

authority. When he reached me, however, the frightened Indian, instead

of running on, turned as sharply as about a corner, and pattered along

close at my heels, breathing quickly. I continued my stroll, while the

drunken half-breeds, far more muscular than I, hovered about ten steps

in the rear, crying:

“Ah, coward! You run to the señor for protection!”

Yet not a step nearer did they approach during the furlong or more that

the procession lasted. Then, as we passed the entrance to an hacienda,

the Indian suddenly sprinted away up its avenue of eucalyptus-trees

faster than the cholos could follow. When they overtook me again, one

protested in plaintive tones:

“Ah, señor, _ese sinvergüenza de Indio_ did not deserve your

protection.”

Then they fell behind, while I, who had been an entirely passive actor

in all the scene, strolled on into the city. It would be hard to imagine

a similar incident in Mexico.

This Indian’s older daughter knocked at my door one day to say that, as

it was “Don Panchito’s” birthday, the celebration in the _sala_ next my

own room would probably keep me awake all night anyway, and had I not

better join the party. By eight the beating of the piano had begun. When

I appeared, “Don Panchito” took me on a tour of the guests, seated in

solemn quadrangle around the four walls of the room, the sexes

segregated. The South American has a custom which might well be imported

into our own land, to the relief of frequent embarrassment. As he was

introduced, each man rose, bowed profoundly, and announced his own name

in clear-cut tones,—“Enrique Burgos de Perez y Silva, servidor de

usted.” The women remained seated, but made their names similarly known.

A professional pianist, a patched, dishevelled, and hungry-looking young

man of some Indian blood, had already begun a very nearly continuous

performance at fast time, with barely two-minute intervals between the

half-hour dances. In a corner sat motionless all the evening two

professional chaperons—for “Don Panchito” was a widow—sour-faced,

sleepy-looking old women of none too immaculate habits, wrapped in black

mantos from which only nose and eyes protruded.

There were no dance cards. Each pair started in or stopped when they saw

fit, quite irrespective of the others. A man stepped across the room,

held out his gloved right hand to a girl, without a word, and she rose

to accept an invitation that apparently could not be refused—at least,

not one failed to accept it, though some of the more attractive were led

out upon the floor at least fifty times in the course of the evening.

Evidently it was “bad form” to carry on a conversation out of hearing of

the chaperon. Neither dancer visibly spoke a word until the girl wished

to stop, when she murmured “gracias” and was at once returned in silence

to her seat. As the evening wore on, several young fops dropped in,

alleging conflicting engagements as an excuse for their tardiness, and

joined the celebration without removing their lavender gloves, which,

indeed, the chilliness of the room pardoned. One of the newcomers, in

particular, stirred up the ladies to almost human expressions of

interest. He was son of the Minister of the Interior, just back from

Paris, and lost no opportunity to display the wisdom he had gleaned in

the “Capital of the World,”—a rather sharp-cornered French and an

authoritative knowledge of new and more complicated manners of hopping

about the floor to music. At frequent intervals our eight-year-old

Indian slavey, Mercedes, familiarly known as “Meech,” arrived with fiery

drinks in which we toasted “Don Panchito,” even the young girls tossing

it off without a tear. At midnight the festival raged at its height. At

one o’clock we sat down to dinner in a temperature far from agreeable to

those of us who did not dance. Then the celebration broke out anew,

though the chaperons and pianist, and even “Don Panchito,” had

disappeared. The young fops removed their gloves and took turns on the

stool. The clock was striking four when I retired, and little “Meech”

was still serving liquid gladness as uncomplainingly and

expressionlessly as ever. When I awoke at eight, she had just finished

tidying up the _sala_, and was beginning her regular daily labors.

Gradually we made the acquaintance of various celebrities. There was

“Chispa,” for instance, the little Spanish bull-fighter who gave a

benefit and “last final performance” in the plaza de toros each Sunday.

The royal sport of Spain is, at best, a gloomy pastime in

Spanish-America. Even when skilled toreadors from across the Atlantic

are to be had, the bulls raised in the Andean highlands are so _manso_

that the game degenerates into little more than public butchery. The

killing of horses is forbidden in the bull-ring of Quito, both by law

and because of the high price of those rare animals, and the toreador is

not permitted to stir up a sluggish bull by exploding _banderillos de

fuego_ on his flanks. “Chispa,” however, who was just such a “spark” as

his _apodo_ suggested, would have enlivened the most dreary

entertainment, though his companions were local amateurs, so clumsy that

he was called upon to save the life of each a dozen times during each

corrida. Each succeeding “despedida” had some new feature to draw

recreation-hungry Quito within the circular mud walls. One Sunday the

program announced the engagement of “Hombres de Yerba” and “Hombres

Gordos” (“Men of Hay” and “Fat Men”), and the inventive Spaniard was all

but forced to lock the gates against the tailend of the throng. One of

his amateurs was bound round and round with green alfalfa and set in the

center of the ring. The bull, however, either was not hungry or in no

mood for jests, and tossed the helpless fellow scornfully from his path.

The “Hombres Gordos” were made up with clown faces topped by silk hats,

their bodies padded to enormous size with excelsior. Still the

protection was not sufficient. One was thrown so savagely that the

audience agreed he had been killed—until the evening paper announced he

had merely broken a leg and several ribs. The fat man is no more beloved

in Quito than elsewhere, and the merriment went on unabated. It is

quiteño custom for the matador to _brindar_ (dedicate the death of each

bull) to some celebrity or person of means in the audience, tossing the

favored one his cap to hold during the killing, and expecting it to be

thrown back with a roll of bills in proportion to the skill of the _coup

de grace_. Toward the end of the “last final performances” the supply of

local “personages” grew so low that the eye of “Chispa,” roving around

the circle, fell upon Hays; but even as he opened his mouth for the

speech of dedication, the ex-corporal faded from public view.

Then there was Umberto Peyrounel, our first really and truly, flesh and

blood “andarín.” Derived from the Spanish word _andar_ (to walk), the

term is used in the Andes to designate a foreigner who travels on foot,

without any particular excuse for traveling at all; a peculiarly Latin

type of tramp, loving to attract attention and making his living by so

doing. We ourselves had often been styled “andarines” on the journey

from Bogotá, though this genuine article scornfully rated us

“excursionistas.” The distinction seems to be, not whether a man

“andars” on foot, but whether he makes his way without using his own

money, if such he possesses.

[Illustration:

Probably not his own in spite of the circumstantial evidence against

him]

[Illustration:

The undertaker’s delivery wagon. The coffin is sky-blue with gilt

trimmings]

We saw Umberto first at a Sunday night concert, where he was

inconspicuously amusing himself by running races with several hundred

newsboys and bootblacks around the plaza mayor. A stocky fellow, tall as

Hays, of middle age, he was modestly dressed in a suit of sky-blue

corduroy, leather leggings, and a velvet cap of the Dutch fisherman or

Quartier Latin style. Across his chest hung a row of large medals; a

flaring, wax-ended mustache all but touched his ears, and his luxurious

black hair hung loose almost to his waist. When he called on us next

morning his coiffure was done up in a simple maidenly knot at the back

of his head. On closer examination the gleaming brass medals seemed to

be glorified tobacco tags. He announced himself the son of Italian

parents, born in the Argentine, of a sect corresponding to the Huguenots

of France, known as the “martyrs of Piedmont.” Leaving home three years

before, he had walked across his native land to Chile, thence to Quito,

where he was preparing to push on to Bogotá. To the people along the

way—and even to us, until he caught the gleam in our eyes—he announced

that two great dailies of Buenos Aires and New York had offered him a

prize of $100,000 to make the journey on foot from the door of one to

that of the other. On the road he was accompanied by a dog, wore

silver-plated spurs as a sign of his rank as a _caballero_, and carried,

in addition to a revolver and rifle, some forty pounds of baggage, most

of which consisted of bulky ledgers filled with hand-written statements

of his arrival and departure on foot, signed by every corregidor,

alcalde, or native official of whatever species, by merchants, lawyers,

and editors of every place, large or small, he had visited, each adorned

with its official seal. This collecting of signatures was no mere whim;

it was the customary excuse of his fellows for surreptitiously appealing

to charity. At every hamlet he opened the ledgers—ostensibly to give the

residents the pleasure of adding their names to the roll of honor—and at

the psychological moment slipped into their hands a printed card bearing

a subtle plea for assistance in winning his great “prize.” All genuine

“andarines,” Umberto assured us, did the same, and he berated us soundly

for not having adopted the custom.

“How can you prove to the public that you have made the journey on foot,

if you do not have the testimonials of distinguished persons along the

way?” he cried, scornfully.

“The public has its choice of believing it or jumping off the end of the

dock,” Hays answered for both of us.

In plain English, Peyrounel was a beggar, though he would have been

shocked beyond words to hear us say so. He called himself a “Champion of

God,” a bitter enemy of the priesthood, and in each town of importance

gave a lecture on his journey and, later on, “if the population showed

enough intelligence,” a sermon. The religious fanatic so often proves,

sooner or later, to be in a sexually neurotic state that we were not

surprised when, several days later, Peyrounel burst out, apropos of

nothing:

“Why do girls always become enamored of strange travelers? No sooner do

I enter a town than several maidens fall desperately in love with me. I

can’t be expected to satisfy them all, can I? One has one’s work to do.”

“Wooden-headed ass that I am!” growled Hays. “If I’d only thought to

grow curls!”

“Between you and me, as men of the same profession,” went on the

collector of signatures, “I don’t mind telling you that I ride now and

then by train through a bad piece of country. What’s the use of walking

hundreds of hot desert miles, when the people will never know the

difference? For instance; here, under the seal of ——, it says that I

walked all the four hundred miles from ——. Well, I did—on a steamer most

of the way.”

In short the argentino’s mental equipment was somewhat out of repair.

One could not exactly put one’s finger on the loose screw, but it could

frequently be heard rattling. The following Sunday we attended his first

“lecture.” On the dismal daytime stage of Quito’s hitherto lifeless

Teatro Sucre sat Peyrounel, utterly alone but for the faithful dog at

his feet, thrown into silhouette by an uncurtained window at the back,

his sky-blue uniform looking more absurd than ever, his hair hanging in

long, wet, careful curls about his broad shoulders. Quito has so few

entertainments that it will endure almost anything particularly if no

admission is charged; and some three hundred men were scattered about in

the painfully upright seats, when the “andarín” rose. He read first some

incomprehensible rodomontade on the power of the will, then drew forth a

manuscript purporting to give an account of his journey, in reality

strictly confined to a list of the towns he had visited, with the height

of each above sea-level. The “lecture” was doubly unsuccessful, for when

the speaker ended with an appeal for funds to continue his statistical

journey, the gathering stampeded so effectively that all but a few had

escaped when he reached the door, and the reward of his labors was a

bare six dollars.

“Next Sunday,” he announced, when we met him in the plaza that evening,

“I am going to give the public of Quito the benefit of my conclusions on

suicide. Suicide, I shall prove, is always a prompting of the devil.

Therefore it cannot be the prompting of God. Ergo, a man should not

commit suicide, because he should never yield to the promptings of the

devil.”

Truly a Solomon of pure reason had come to Quito. Yet somehow the

authorities, always backward in such matters, failed to take advantage

of this splendid opportunity to give the Teatro Sucre another free

airing.

Never since those days in Quito have I heard the oft-repeated word

“andarín,” than the picture of Peyrounel and his curls has not come to

mind. However, he had undoubtedly covered long distances on foot, and we

exchanged many a practical hint of roadway information. He planned to

visit all the important cities of the United States, and to reach New

York within three years. His letters of introduction already included

many to American officials; he carried, for instance, one to the mayor

of Seattle. Being an experienced traveler, all may have gone well with

him south of the Rio Grande. But beyond it lay dangers he did not

suspect; for some unromantic justice of the peace, unable to distinguish

between an “andarín” and a common “vag,” between the honorable

profession of gathering seals and signatures, and mere begging, may have

the cruelty to reward him with the notorious “year and a day.”

On October tenth there was an eclipse of the sun, total at the

Ecuador-Colombia boundary, and visible in all the southern hemisphere.

In the days of the Scyri and Incas such a phenomenon was taken as a

threat that the end of the world was at hand; a sign that an angry god

was abandoning his erring people. On this occasion many of the

less-educated classes remained in the streets all night, for an

earthquake had been prophesied. The local observatory had assigned a

scientist to “note the peculiar actions of the populace and the lower

animals during the eclipse.” It came toward seven in the morning.

Gradually the brilliant sun disappeared, until only the slightest

thread, of crescent shape, remained visible; the world grew dark as at

early dusk on a heavily clouded evening, then slowly lighted up again in

all its equatorial magnificence. Observers reported that a few fowls

returned to roost; the curs slinking about the plaza seemed for a time

undecided whether to seek their nightly lairs. But the actions of the

populace were confined to the incessant smoking of cigarettes and to

making the most of an excuse to put off their day’s task as long as

possible—neither of which was unusual enough to be worthy of note. The

majority, unsupplied with smoked glasses, found this no handicap, for

the reflected eclipse in the plaza pool served the same purpose. World

scientists had been sent to many of the larger South American cities

with elaborate photographic equipment, only to find their long journeys

wasted because of clouds. They would have done better to have come to

Quito, where two unscientific vagabonds caught excellent pictures of the

phenomenon in mere kodak snapshots.

It was on the morning of November eighteenth, five months from the day

we had sailed together from the Canal Zone, that Hays and I set out

along the muddy, cobbled highway to the railway station, carrying in

turn a bundle of the size of a suitcase. By 7:30 the former corporal of

police had taken his wooden seat in the dingy little second-class car,

and had stowed his belongings under it well out of sight of the

collector; for extravagant as are its fares, the Guayaquil-Quito Railway

allows a second-class passenger only fifteen pounds of baggage. At eight

the tri-weekly train let pass unnoticed its scheduled hour of departure.

Several stocky Americans of the type easily recognized as “railroad

men,” and as many English-speaking negroes could be seen shouldering

their way in and out of the motley throng. The engineers were

leathery-skinned Americans; the conductors fat, burly Americans; the

collectors gaunt, stringy, dense-looking young Englishmen, and the

brakemen West Indian negroes who spoke a more fluent Spanish that their

superiors, and were better “mixers” among the native passengers. After a

time they decided to repair the last coach, and lay for some time under

it, tinkering at a brake-shoe. Rumor had it that this was only a ruse;

that the engineer assigned to the run had been arrested the evening

before, and that the train could not leave until his trial was over.

Whatever the cause for delay, it ended at last, and with a great

snorting and straining and blowing of steam the little old “Baldwin”

began to drag its four _wagones_ out of the station compound. First came

a box-car, crowded inside and on top with gente del pueblo; then, behind

the baggage and mail car, the densely-packed second-class; and finally

the coach-de-luxe with a dozen passengers, most of whom would hasten to

take their lawful place in the car ahead as soon as they could escape

the eyes of their fellow-townsmen thronging the station platform. The

Indian of Ecuador still commonly walks, a fact easily explained by a

glance at the exorbitant rate-sheet. It was only by dint of much

struggle that the railroad, reaching Quito four years before, had

finally settled the point that even “prominent persons” shall pay fare;

now it has taken the offensive, and collects cartage even on the bundles

and fruit the passengers are accustomed to stack in the car about them.

The engine panted asthmatically to surmount a two-foot rise, scores of

Indians and cholos running alongside, screaming farewells to their

outward-bound friends, some visibly weeping for the quiteño of the

masses considers death itself little less dreadful than departure. Then

at length the train swung round the sandbank cutting and, catching a

down-grade, was off in earnest, and reluctantly I saw “Señor Lay-O-Ice”

disappear from my South American adventures.

[Illustration:

Almost everything that moves in Quito rides on the backs of Indians]

[Illustration:

An Indian family driving away dull care—and watching me take the

picture of a dog down the street]

The attack of roaditis had seized him the day before. With no task to

hold him in Quito, he had been for a time content to spend his days at

his favorite occupation of sitting on a plaza bench. He had even paid

his rent well in advance, that he might have an anchor to windward. But

it had proved a rope of sand when the road lure came upon him, and he

had feverishly tossed together his indispensable junk and turned his

face toward other climes. From Guayaquil, “unless Yellow Jack or Bubonic

beat him to it,” he planned to push on to Cajamarca and Lima, chiefly by

sea, then to strike overland to Cuzco. Beyond South America lay various

nebulous projects,—a year around the Mediterranean, a journey through

Spain, or perhaps a return to the Zone to earn another “stake” with

which to journey to the Far East, there to adopt the yellow robe and

settle down to the tranquil life of studious inactivity he loved so

well.

Thus life moved on, even in Quito. “Chispa” of the bullring had taken

the same train, feigning a first-class wealth until out of sight of his

quiteño admirers. Peyrounel, the “andarín,” too, was gone, dog, gun,

hair, medals, spurs and ledgers, to carry back to Bogotá the map that

had piloted us southward. Only one lone gringo descended to the city in

the folds of Pichincha, to renew the task that still forbade him to

listen to the siren that beckoned him on over the encircling horizon.

To pass over in silence its uncleanliness would be to give a false

picture of Quito. Only its altitude saves the city from sudden death.

Its personal habits are indescribable; I do not use the adjective to

avoid the labor of finding one less trite, but because no other could be

more exact. If I described in detail one fourth its daily insults to the

senses, no reputable publisher would print, and no self-respecting

reader would read it. The city is surrounded by an iron ring of smells

which the susceptible stranger, accustomed to the moderate decencies of

life, can pass only in haste and trepidation. The condition of the best

kitchen in Quito would arouse a vigorous protest from an American

“hobo.” However foppish a quiteño family may be outwardly, anybody is

considered fitted to the task of washing its dishes or waiting on its

tables. Among all the tramps of the United States I have never seen one

so filthy as the human creatures that hang around hotel dining-rooms,

or, in the one or two higher-priced establishments, are at least to be

found just behind the scenes, kicking about the earth floor the rolls

which the waiter a moment later religiously lays before the guest with

silver-plated pincers. Yet clients in frock-coats and outwardly

immaculate garb are never known to raise a voice in protest. There is

exactly one way to escape these conditions in Ecuador, and that is to

keep out of the country. A modern Crœsus would be forced to endure the

same, for though he brought his own servants and even his food-supplies

with him, the Ecuadorian would find some means of reducing him to an

equality of condition, if only by opening the supplies in customs and

running his unwashed hands through them.

Among our table companions were lawyers, university professors,

newspaper editors, commonly with several rings on their fingers; yet

rare was the man whose finger-nails were not in deepest mourning, or

whose manners were not befitting a trough. On the street the passing of

the women was usually marked by an all but overwhelming scent of the

cheap and pungent perfumes to which all the “decente” class, male or

female, is addicted, and though their faces were daubed a rosy

alabaster, it was rare to see one with clean hands, or without a

distinct dead-line showing at the neck. The city is gashed by several

deep gullies with trickling streams at their bottoms, which serve as

general dumping-grounds. Not even the carrion-crow mounts to these

heights, and the city is denied the doubtful services of this tropical

scavenger. Though the world hears little of it, the death-rate from

typhoid alone in the capital rivals that of “Yellow Jacket” in

Guayaquil; and no precautions whatever are taken against it. When he has

noted these customs and worse, the visitor will be startled into shrieks

of sardonic laughter when he runs across a large two-story building

bearing an elaborately painted shield announcing it the “Oficina de

Sanidad.”

Yet the quiteño is extremely jealous of any offer of other races to do

for him that which he gives no evidence of being able to do for himself.

Once out of Colombia, we had hoped for relief from the perpetual

growling at Americans, chiefly in fiery and ill-reasoned newspaper

editorials. Barely had we crossed the frontier, however, than we found

Ecuador raging with a new grievance. The Government had recently invited

the doctor in charge of the sanitation of Panama to inspect Guayaquil

and bring his recommendations to the capital. A strict censorship on

cable messages keeps the outside world largely in ignorance of the real

conditions in the “Pearl of the Pacific.” Inside the country, however,

the real state of affairs is more nearly common knowledge. One could

pick almost at random from the local newspapers such items as:

Guayaquil, 22d. Yesterday forty cases of bubonic plague broke out in

Public School No. 5. There are seven survivors.

The resident, too, soon learns the real motives that hamper the

sanitation of that pest-hole. Once it is “cleaned up,” argue its

short-sighted merchants, foreign competitors will flock in upon them. As

to themselves, they are, with rare exceptions, immune to the two plagues

for which the port is famous, having recovered from them at some earlier

period of life. Those who have not recovered have no voice in the

matter. There are even foreign residents who bend their energies to

upholding this barrier to competition.

These interests now, abetted by unseen European elements fostering the

discontent, and the eagerness of the opposing party to make political

capital out of any cloth, whole or otherwise, had stirred the noisy

little native papers into a furor, genuine or financed, against the

Government. The people, in their turn, had worked themselves into the

conviction that the invitation was only an opening wedge of the

“Colossus of the North” to gain a hand in the rule of the country, which

it is always the part of the opposition papers to paint as imminent. We

had not been long in Quito when the attitude of the populace grew so

serious that a joint meeting of both houses of congress was called to

explain the government view of the transaction. The diplomatic corps was

present in force, and as much of the public as could find standing-room

after the two houses had been seated in the largest chamber available in

the government palace. The diminutive old Minister of Foreign Affairs,

who had lived abroad long enough to acquire a point of view, explained

the exact truth of the situation as clearly as a disinterested foreigner

might have done. But neither congress nor the populace would hear his

reasoning. The latter hooted him vociferously, calling him “Yanqui!” and

accusing him of being in the pay of the United States. The congressmen

rose one after another to charge him with fostering a conspiracy to

surrender Ecuador to the Yankees, with many references to the “beegee

steekee,” and the meeting ended with the roar of a bull-necked senator:

“Undoubtedly, Señor, we want Guayaquil sanitated; but we want it

sanitated by Latin Americans.”

The _pesuña_ and other evidences of sanitary notions of the crowd that

hemmed us in gave the speech a ludicrousness that none but an enraged

partizan could have missed. But that night the little Minister of

Foreign Affairs resigned, and when morning broke he had disappeared.

For all the handicap of the complete absence of factories and

street-cars, Quito might easily lay claim to the world’s championship in

noise. The din from its church-towers alone would bring it one of the

first prizes. It is pleasant to sit out on a sunny hillside listening to

the music of ringing church-bells as it is borne by on the Sunday

morning breeze; but in Quito they are neither bells nor are they rung.

In tone they suggest suspended masses of scrap-iron, and there is not a

bell-rope, as we understand the word, in the length and breadth of the

Andes. Barely has midnight passed, when Indians, hired for the nefarious

purpose, and mobs of street urchins eager for the opportunity, climb

into the church-towers and, catching the enormous clappers by a

rope-end, beat and pound as if each was vying with the others in an

attempt to reproduce the primeval chaos of sound, ceasing only when they

drop from exhaustion. No corner of the city is free from the metallic

uproar. Santa Catalina tower was a bare hundred yards above my pillow,

and I know scarcely a block of the town over which does not rise at

least one such source of torture, hung with at least half a dozen

bells—to use the word loosely—of varying sizes and degrees of

discordance. Once awakened, the city is never permitted to fall asleep

again. By the time it has begun to doze off once more, the ringers have

recovered, and, taking up their joyful task with renewed vigor, repeat

the performance at five-minute intervals until sunrise, and often far

into the day.

[Illustration:

The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the south. In the

background the church and monastery of Santo Domingo]

[Illustration:

Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses, the Indians of

the Andes were building their fences in a similar manner. In the

regions where rain is frequent they are roofed with tiles or thatch;

on the desert coast further south the tops afford a place of

promenade sometimes miles in length]

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.