QUITO. THE CAPITAL OF ECUADOR.
ON the west coast of South America is found the perfection of sea-travel—fine ships, fair weather, and a still sea. Although one floats under, or rather over, the equator, the atmosphere is cool, the breezes delicious, and the water as smooth as a duck-pond. The Pacific Navigation Company is a British institution, founded by an American, Mr. William Wheelwright, of New York, which has been sending vessels from Panama to Liverpool, through the Straits of Magellan, for over forty years, and has not only a monopoly of transportation on the coast, but subsidies from the British Government and the various South American States whose ports it enters. It charges enormous rates for freight and passengers, the tariff from Valparaiso being forty dollars per ton for freight and two hundred and ninety-seven dollars per head for passengers for a distance about as great as from New York to Liverpool; but the company gives its patrons the best the country affords, and until the recent steam greyhounds were turned out to race across the ocean, had the finest and largest ships afloat. One set of vessels run from Panama to Valparaiso, where a change is made to another set, built for heavy seas, which go through the Straits of Magellan, via Rio de Janeiro, to Liverpool.
Those which ply along the west coast from Panama southward are built for fair weather and tropical seas, with open decks and airy state-rooms, through which the breezes bring refreshing coolness. Such vessels would not live long in the Atlantic nor in the Caribbean Sea, but find no heavy weather
ALONG THE COAST.
on the Pacific, where the wind is “never strong enough to ruffle the fur on a cat’s back,” as the sailors say, and ships sail in a perpetual calm. The trip to Chili, however, is long and tiresome, lasting twenty-five days. Less than half the time is spent at sea, as there are thirty-eight ports at which the vessels, under the company’s contracts, are obliged to call. Guayaquil, the commercial metropolis of Ecuador, and next to Callao, Peru, and Valparaiso, Chili, the most important place on the coast, is the first stopping-place, four days from Panama. Although the westernmost city of South America, Guayaquil has about the same longitude as Washington, and is only two degrees south of the equator. It is sixty miles from the sea, on a river which looks like the Mississippi at New Orleans, and stretches along the low banks for more than two miles.
One’s first impression, if he arrives at night, is that the ship has anchored in front of a South American Paris, so brilliant are the terraces of gas-lamps, rising one after the other, as the town slopes up towards the mountains. When morning dawns the deception is renewed, and one has a picture of Venice before him, with long lines of white buildings, whose curtained balconies look down upon gayly clad men and women floating upon the river in quaint-looking, narrow gondolas and broad-bosomed rafts. Unless he is warned in time, the traveller meets with a sudden and disgusting surprise upon disembarking, for the gondolas are nothing but “dug-outs” bringing pineapples and bananas from up the river; the rafts are balsam-logs lashed together with vines, and the houses are dilapidated skeletons of bamboo, whitewashed, which look as if they had been erected by an architectural lunatic, and would tumble into the river with the first gust of wind. The streets are dirty and have a repulsive smell, and the half-naked Indians which throng them are continually scratching their bodies for fleas and their heads for lice. Half the filth that festers under the tropic sun in Guayaquil would breed a sudden pestilence in New York or Chicago, yet the inhabitants say it is a healthy city, where yellow-fever or cholera never comes.
A narrow-gauge street railway, or tramvia, as they call it, reaches from the docks a couple of miles to the edge of the city, and upon its cars the products of the plantations are brought to the docks and loaded by lighters upon outgoing vessels. Like all Spanish ports, this one has no wharfage, but ships of whatever tonnage have to anchor in the river a mile or so from shore, and release or receive freight upon barges, which are towed, not by tugs, for there is not such a thing in all that region, but by oarsmen in a row-boat. Passengers have to reach the steamers in a similar way.
When we arrived there we were immediately surrounded by a crowd of boatmen, who clambered up the sides of the vessel, screaming with all the strength of their lungs the merits of their boats. Their vociferousness and persistency would make the Niagara Falls hackmen green with jealousy; and the fact that most of them were bare up to their thighs, and entirely shirtless, made the scene picturesque, although somewhat alarming to a timid person. The costume of the Ecuador boatmen is equivalent to a pair of cotton bathing-trunks, and they are as much at home in the water as in their canoes.
THE RIVER AT GUAYAQUIL.
With twenty-five or thirty of these naked black men surrounding him, shoving and pushing one another, screaming, gesticulating, and performing a war-dance of the most extraordinary description, a timid man is apt to be deceived by appearances, and imagine that he has fallen into the hands of a tribe of hungry cannibals, instead of a party of innocent Sambos who wish to promote his welfare. As soon as these maniacs discovered we were Americans, they were smart enough to introduce into the bedlam as much of our mother-tongue as they could command, making the scene all the more amusing. One big fellow, black as midnight, with only about half a yard of muslin and a dilapidated panama hat to protect his person from the elements, jumped up and down, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Me Americano! me Americano! Me been to Baltimoore!” Becoming interested in the fellow, we learned that he had been a sailor on a Spanish man-of-war which several years ago visited that city.
Among the crowd of howling dervises was a pleasant-looking fellow with a whole pair of pantaloons and a linen duster on. He was not so noisy as the rest, and could speak a little English. Taking him aside, I told him how large our party was, and where we wanted to go. He agreed to take us and our luggage ashore for two dollars, and was at once engaged; whereupon, instead of going off and minding their own business, the crowd began to abuse Pepe—for that, he said, was his name—and the rest of us in the most violent manner; and when the baggage was brought up they seized upon it, and each man attempted to carry a piece into his own boat. But the mate of the steamer was equal to the occasion, and laid about him with so much energy that the deck was soon cleared.
The street railway only extends to the limits of the city, but a short walk beyond it gives one a glimpse of the rural tropics. At one end of the main street, which runs along the river front, is a fortress-crowned hill, from the summit of which a charming view of the surrounding country can be obtained, but the better plan is to take a carriage and drive out a few miles. The road is rough and dusty, but passes among cocoa-nut groves and sugar plantations, through forests fairly blazing with the wondrous passion-flower, so scarlet as to make the trees look like living fire; with pineapple-plants and banana-trees bending under the enormous loads of fruit they carry. The rickety old carriage passed along until our senses were almost bewildered by visions none of us had ever seen. Nowhere can one find a more beautiful scene of tropical vegetation in its full glory, and no artist ever mingled colors that could convey an adequate idea of nature’s gorgeousness here.
The most beautiful thing in the tropics is a young palm-tree. The old ones are more graceful than any of our foliage plants, but they all show signs of decay. The young ones, so supple as to bend before the winds, are the ideal of grace and loveliness, as picturesque in repose as they are in motion. The long, spreading leaves, of a vivid green, bend and sway with the breeze, and nod in the sunlight with a beauty which cannot be described.
THE RIVER ABOVE GUAYAQUIL.
There is considerable business done in Guayaquil, and some of the merchants carry stocks of imported goods valued at half a million dollars, with an annual trade of double that amount. It is the only town in Ecuador worth speaking of in a commercial point of view, and its tradesmen do the entire wholesale business of that republic. The shipments of cocoa, rubber, hides, coffee, ivory, nuts, and cinchona (quinine) bark amount to about $6,000,000 a year, and the imports, the President of Ecuador told us, amount annually to $10,000,000. There is no way to ascertain the truth of his Excellency’s statements, as the Government keeps no statistics of its commerce, and he admitted that it was only an estimate based upon the amount of duties collected; but one may be allowed to doubt that a country like Ecuador, the most backward, ignorant, and impoverished in all America, can purchase for many years in succession twice as much as it sells.
AN AVERAGE DWELLING.
Founded in 1535 by one of the lieutenants of Pizarro, Guayaquil has been the market for five hundred miles of coast ever since, but now it is almost destitute of native capital, nearly all the merchants being foreigners, mostly English and German, with one or two from the United States. It is the only place in Ecuador in which modern civilization exists; the rest of the country is a century behind the times. Since its foundation Guayaquil has been burned several times, and often plundered by pirates; now its commercial condition seems secure from all dangers except revolutions, which are epidemic in Ecuador. In fact, the country would feel queer without one. Earthquakes are frequent, but the elastic bamboo houses only shiver—they never fall. To the torch of the revolutionist, however, they are like tinder, and the blocks that have been burned over testify to its effectiveness as a weapon of destruction.
GUAYAQUIL.
Over the entrances to the houses are tin signs, each of which represents the flag of the country of which the dweller within is a citizen; and upon these signs are painted warnings to revolutionary looters or incendiaries—“This is the property of a citizen of Great Britain;” or, “This is the property of a citizen of Germany;” or, “This is the property of a citizen of the United States”—and the robber and torch-bearer are expected to respect them as such, but seldom do.
Bolivar freed Ecuador from the Spanish yoke, as he did Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Peru, and it was one of the five States which formed the United States of Colombia under his presidency; but the priests had such a hold upon the people that liberty could not live in an atmosphere they polluted, and the country lapsed into a state of anarchy which has continued ever since. The struggle has been between the progressive element and the priests, and the latter have usually triumphed. It is the only country in America in which the Romish Church survives as the Spaniards left it. In other countries popish influence has been destroyed, and the rule which prevails everywhere—that the less a people are under the control of that Church the greater their prosperity, enlightenment, and progress—is illustrated in Ecuador with striking force.
A PERSON OF INFLUENCE.
One-fourth of all the property in Ecuador belongs to the bishop. There is a Catholic church for every one hundred and fifty inhabitants: of the population of the country ten per cent. are priests, monks, or nuns; and two hundred and seventy-two of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year are observed as feast or fast days.
The priests control the Government in all its branches, dictate its laws and govern their enforcement, and rule the country as absolutely as if the Pope were its king. As a result seventy-five per cent. of the children born are illegitimate. There is not a penitentiary, house of correction, reformatory, or benevolent institution outside of Quito and Guayaquil; there is not a railroad or stage-coach in the entire country, and until recently there was not a telegraph wire. Laborers get from two to ten dollars a month, and men are paid two dollars and a quarter for carrying one hundred pounds of merchandise on their backs two hundred and eighty-five miles. There is not a wagon in the republic outside of Guayaquil, and not a road over which a wagon could pass. The people know nothing but what the priests tell them; they have no amusements but cock-fights and bullfights; no literature; no mail-routes, except from Guayaquil to the capital (Quito), and nothing is common among the masses that was not in use by them two hundred years ago. If one-tenth of the money that has been expended in building monasteries had been devoted to the construction of cartroads, Ecuador, which is naturally rich, would be one of the most wealthy nations, in proportion to its area, on the globe.
A FAMILY CIRCLE.
There once was a steam railroad in Ecuador. During the time when Henry Meiggs was creating such an excitement by the improvements he was making in the transportation facilities of Peru, the contagion spread to Ecuador, and some ambitious English capitalists attempted to lay a road from Guayaquil to the interior. A track seventeen miles long was built, which represents the railway system of Ecuador in all the geographies, gazetteers, and books of statistics; but no wheels ever passed over this track, and the tropical vegetation has grown so luxuriantly about the place where it lies that it would now be difficult to find it. Last year a telegraph line was built connecting Guayaquil with Quito, the highest city in the world; but there is only one wire, and this is practically useless, as not more than seven days out of the month can a message be sent over it. The people chop down the poles for firewood, and cut out pieces of the wire to repair broken harness whenever they feel so disposed. Then it often takes a week for the line-man to find the break, and another week to repair it. In the Government telegraph office I saw an operator with a ball and chain attached to his leg—a convict who had been sent back to his post because no one else could be found to work the instrument. A young lady took the message and the money. There is a cable belonging to a New York company connecting Guayaquil with the outside world, but rates are extremely high, the tariff to the United States being three dollars a word, and to other places in proportion.
CATHEDRAL AT GUAYAQUIL, BUILT OF BAMBOO.
Although almost directly under the equator, the temperature of Guayaquil seldom rises above ninety, and after two o’clock in the day it is always as cool as a pleasant summer morning in New England. A fresh breeze called the chandny blows over the ice-capped mountains, and brings health to a city which would otherwise be uninhabitable. On clear afternoons Mount Chimborazo, or “Chimbo” as they call it for short, until recently supposed to be the highest in the hemisphere, can be seen—white, jagged, and silently impressive—against the clear sky.
A COMMERCIAL THOROUGHFARE.
The road to Quito is a mountain-path around the base of Chimbo, traversed only on foot or mule-back, and then only during six months of the year; for in the rainy season it is impassable, except to experienced mountaineers.
During the rainy seasons the recent President, Don Jesus
THE PRESIDENT’S PALACE.
Maria Caamaño, resided in Guayaquil, in a barracks guarded by soldiers, where he could watch the collection of customs and see to the suppression of revolutions. He was the representative of the Church party, and the people of the interior were loyal to him; but the liberal element, which mostly exists on the coast, where a knowledge of the world has come, was in a perpetual state of revolt, and required constant attention. A fortress overlooking the town of Guayaquil, and a gun-boat in the harbor, keep the people in subjection. We called upon the President at his headquarters, and found him swinging in a hammock and smoking a cigarette. He is a man of slight frame, with noticeably small hands and feet, which he appeared quite anxious should not escape our observation. He has a pleasant and intelligent face, but seemed to be bewildered when we drew him into conversation about the commerce of his country. He was educated in Europe, and has the reputation of being a man of culture, although the abject tool of the priests.
THE OUTSKIRTS OF GUAYAQUIL.
Notwithstanding the rest of the country is still in the middle ages, Guayaquil shows symptoms of becoming a modern town. It has gas, street-cars, ice-factories, and other improvements, all introduced by citizens of the United States. The custom-house is built of pine from Maine and corrugated iron from Pennsylvania, and a citizen of New York erected it. An American company has a line of paddle-wheel steamers, constructed in Baltimore, on the river, and the only gun-boat the Government owns is a discarded merchant-ship which plied between New York and Norfolk. Some of the houses, although built of split bamboo and plaster, are very elegantly furnished, and the stores show fine stocks of goods. But the rear portion of the city is so filthy that one has to hold his nose as he passes through it. The people live in miserable dirt hovels, and the buzzard is the only industrious biped to be seen.
A BUSINESS OF IMPORTANCE.
There is no fresh water in town, but all that the people use is brought on rafts from twenty miles up the river, and is peddled about the place in casks carried upon the backs of donkeys or men. It looks very funny to see the donkeys all wearing pantalettes—not, however, from motives of modesty, as the native children go entirely naked, and the men and women nearly so, but to protect their legs and bellies from the gadfly, which bites fiercely here. Bread as well as water is peddled about the town in the same way, and vegetables are brought down the river on rafts and in dug-outs, which are hauled upon the beach in long rows, and present a busy and interesting scene. Guayaquil is famous for the finest pineapples in the world—great juicy fruits, as white as snow and as sweet as honey. It is also famous for its hats and hammocks made of the pita fibre from a sort of cactus. The well-known Panama hats are all made in Guayaquil and the towns along that coast, but get their name because Panama merchants formerly controlled the trade.
A PINEAPPLE FARM.
One afternoon, at Guayaquil, I witnessed a singular ceremony, which is, however, very common there. One of the churches had been destroyed by an earthquake, and funds were needed to repair it. So the priest took the image of the Virgin from the altar, and the holy sacrament, and carried them about the city under a canopy, clad in his sacerdotal vestments. He was preceded by a brass band, a number of boys carrying lighted candles and swinging incense urns, and followed by a long procession of men, women, and children. The assemblage passed up and down the principal street, stopping in front of each house. While the band played, priests with contribution plates entered the houses, soliciting subscriptions, and the people in the procession kneeled in the dust and prayed that the same might be given with liberality. Where money was obtained a blessing was bestowed; where none was offered a curse was pronounced, with a notice that a contribution was expected at once, or the curse would be daily repeated.
A WATER MERCHANT.
All imported goods are first brought to Guayaquil, and from that point distributed. Those destined for Quito are conveyed by steamboat up the rivers for a distance of sixty miles. From the termination of the steamboat route the distance to Quito is two hundred and sixty miles, making the
A FREIGHT TRAIN ON THE WAY.
total distance from Guayaquil three hundred and twenty miles. Between the upper end of the steamboat route and Quito all packages of merchandise that do not weigh more than two hundred pounds are conveyed on the backs of horses, mules, or donkeys. The average cost in United States currency—in which all values are stated—is four dollars per one hundred pounds between Guayaquil and Quito. Pianos, organs, safes, carriage-bodies, large mirrors, and some other articles too heavy or too bulky to be carried on a single horse are placed on a frame of bamboo poles and carried on the shoulders of men the entire land portion of the journey. A piano weighing about six hundred pounds can be carried by twenty-four men in two divisions, one half serving as a relay to the other half. Although labor is very low-priced, the man-carriage is quite expensive. A cart-road, or railroad, both of which are feasible and practicable, would greatly reduce the expense of transportation, and would materially influence domestic manufactures, as well as the introduction of foreign manufactured products. It seems almost impossible that any American goods could, after undergoing such a tremendous carriage, compete with native manufactures, however crude, in Quito, and yet they do. Nearly all the furniture in use in that city is brought from the United States in separate parts and put together on arrival; and in that, the highest and oldest city in America, many people sleep on Grand Rapids beds. The twelve breweries running in Quito import their hops from the United States and Europe, and with railroad facilities American beer, as well as hops, could be liberally sold in Quito. American refined sugars are largely consumed, although the native products are very good.
A PASSENGER TRAIN.
Ecuador, with about one million inhabitants, has only forty-seven post-offices, but they are so widely distributed that it requires a mail carriage of 5389 miles to reach them all; seventy-two miles by canoes and 5317 by horses and mules. About five hundred miles of the seaboard service is also covered by foreign steamship mail service. Between Quito and Guayaquil there are two mails each way per week by couriers—the usual time one way, travelling day and night, being six days. Other sections of the country are less favored by mail service, the receipt and departure of mails ranging from once a week to once a month, as people happen to be going.
During the year 1885 there were carried within the country 2,989,885 letters, and 50,700 letters were sent to foreign countries, eighty per cent. of them being between Guayaquil and the neighboring towns. No interior postage is charged on newspapers, whether of domestic or foreign publication. Interior letter postage is five cents each one-fourth ounce. The postage on letters to foreign countries is twelve cents each half ounce and one cent per ounce on newspapers.
THE COMMON CARRIER.
The social and political condition of Ecuador presents a picture of the dark ages. There is not a newspaper printed outside of the city of Guayaquil, and the only information the people have of what is going on in the world is gained from the strangers who now and then visit the country, and from a class of peddlers who make periodical trips, traversing the whole hemisphere from Guatemala to Patagonia. These peddlers are curious fellows, and there seems to be a regular organization of them. They are like the old minstrels that we read of in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. They practise medicine, sing songs, cure diseased cattle, mend clocks, carry letters and messages from place to place, and peddle such little articles as are used in the households of the natives. It often takes them three or four years to make a round trip, going invariably on foot, and carrying packs upon their backs. When their stock is exhausted they replenish it at the nearest source of supply, and are ever welcome visitors at the homes of the natives. This internal trade does not amount to much in dollars and cents, but supplies the lack of retail establishments and newspapers.
HOTEL ON THE ROUTE TO QUITO.
The capital and the productive regions of Ecuador are accessible only by a mule-path, which is impassable for six months in the year during the rainy season, and in the dry season it requires eight or nine days to traverse it, with no resting-places where a man can find a decent bed, or food fit for human consumption. This is the only means of communication between Quito and the outside world, except along the mountains southward into Bolivia and Peru, where the Incas constructed beautiful highways which the Spaniards have permitted to decay until they are now practically useless. They were so well built, however, as to stand the wear and tear of three centuries, and the slightest attempt at repair would have kept them in order.
Although the journey from Guayaquil to Quito takes nine days, Garcia Moreno, a former President of Ecuador, once made it in thirty-six hours. He heard of a revolution, and springing upon his horse went to the capital, had twenty-two conspirators shot, and was back at Guayaquil in less than a week. Moreno was President for twelve years, and was one of the fiercest and most cruel rulers South America has ever seen. He shot men who would not take off their hats to him in the streets, and had a drunken priest impaled in the principal plaza of Quito, as a warning to the clergy to observe habits of sobriety or conceal their intemperance. There was nothing too brutal for this man to do, and nothing too sacred to escape his grasp. Yet he compelled Congress to pass an act declaring that the republic of Ecuador “existed wholly and alone devoted to the services of the Holy Church,” and forbidding the importation of books and periodicals which did not receive the sanction of the Jesuits. He divided his army into four divisions, called respectively “The Division of the Blessed Virgin,” “The Division of the Son of God,” “The Division of the Holy Ghost,” and “The Division of the Body and Blood of Christ.” He made the “Sacred Heart of Jesus” the national emblem, and called his bodyguard the “Holy Lancers of Santa Maria.” He died in 1875 by assassination, and the country has been in a state of political eruption ever since.
WAITING FOR THE MULES TO FEED.
Although the road to Quito is over an almost untrodden wilderness, it presents the grandest scenic panorama in the world. Directly beneath the equator, surrounding the city whose origin is lost in the mist of centuries, rise twenty volcanoes, presided over by the princely Chimborazo, the lowest being 15,922 feet in height, and the highest reaching an altitude of 22,500 feet. Three of these volcanoes are active, five are dormant, and twelve extinct. Nowhere else on the earth’s surface is such a cluster of peaks, such a grand assemblage of giants. Eighteen of the twenty are covered with perpetual snow, and the summits of eleven have never been reached by a living creature except the condor, whose flight surpasses that of any other bird. At noon the vertical sun throws a profusion of light upon the snow-crowned summits, when they appear like a group of pyramids cut in spotless marble.
EN ROUTE TO THE SEA.
Cotopaxi is the loftiest of active volcanoes, but it is slumbering now. The only evidence of action is the frequent rumblings, which can be heard for a hundred miles, and the cloud of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night, which constantly arises from a crater that is more than three thousand feet beyond the reach of man. Many have attempted to scale it, but the walls are so steep and the snow is so deep that ascent is impossible even with scaling-ladders. On the south side of Cotopaxi is a great rock, more than two
SOMEWHERE NEAR THE SUMMIT.
thousand feet high, called the “Inca’s Head.” Tradition says that it was once the summit of the volcano, and fell on the day when Atahaulpa was strangled by the Spaniards. Those who have seen Vesuvius can judge of the grandeur of Cotopaxi if they can imagine a volcano fifteen thousand feet higher shooting forth its fire from a crest covered by three thousand feet of snow, with a voice that has been heard six hundred miles. And one can judge of the grandeur of the road to Quito if he can imagine twenty of the highest mountains in America, three of them active volcanoes, standing along the road from Washington to New York.
THE ALTAR.
The city of Quito lies upon the breast of a very uncertain and treacherous mother, the volcano Pichincha, which rises to an altitude of sixteen thousand feet, or about four thousand five hundred feet above the plaza. Since the Conquest the volcano has had three notable eruptions—in 1575, 1587, and 1660, when the city was almost entirely destroyed. In 1859 there was a severe earthquake followed by an eruption, which, while it did not do much damage in the city itself, caused great destruction and loss of life in the surrounding towns and villages. In 1868 the great convulsion which extended along the entire South Pacific coast was severely felt in Ecuador, where, it is stated, seventy-two towns were destroyed and thirty thousand people killed.
A STREET IN QUITO.
There was a great scare in Ecuador in the summer of 1868 because of the violent eruption of the volcano Tunguragua, one of the largest in the group, rising nearly two thousand feet above the line of perpetual snow; but after a few days of agitation, in which immense masses of lava and ashes were thrown out of the crater, the eruption subsided without doing much damage.
WHERE PIZARRO FIRST LANDED.
Here in these mountains, until the Spaniards came, in 1534, existed a civilization that was old when Christ was crucified; a civilization whose arts were equal to those of Egypt; which had temples four times the size of the Capitol at Washington, from a single one of which the Spaniards drew twenty-two thousand ounces of solid silver nails; whose rulers had palaces from which the Spaniards gathered ninety thousand ounces of gold and an unmeasured quantity of silver. Here was an empire stretching from the equator to the antarctic circle, walled in by the grandest groups of mountains in the world; whose people knew all the arts of their time but those of war, and were conquered by two hundred and thirteen men under the leadership of a Spanish swineherd who could neither read nor write.
The age of Quito is unknown. The present city was built by the Spaniards after the Conquest, but it stands upon the foundations of a city they destroyed, which was older than the knowledge of men. The history of the ancient place dates back only a few years before the arrival of the Spaniards in the country; for they, ignorant men, interested in nothing but plunder, destroyed every means by which its antiquity could have been traced.
Ecuador was the scene of the first conquest. The Spaniards, under Pizarro, landed first on the island of Puna, at the mouth of the harbor of Guayaquil, and first stepped upon the main coast at Tumbez, in Peru, a few miles southward. Here they found that the Incas, for the first time in the history of that remarkable race, were at war. Huayna-Capac, the greatest of the Incas, made Quito his capital, and there lived in a splendor unsurpassed in ancient or modern times. At his death he divided his kingdom into two parts, giving Atahualpa the northern half, and Huscar what is now Bolivia and the southern part of Peru. The two brothers went to war, and while they were engaged in it Pizarro came. Everybody who has read Prescott’s fascinating volumes knows what followed. With the aid of the Spaniards Atahualpa conquered his brother, and then the Spaniards conquered him. When he lay a prisoner in the hands of the guests he had treated so hospitably, he offered to fill his prison with gold if they would release him. They agreed, and his willing subjects brought the treasure; but the greedy Spaniards, always treacherous, demanded more, and Atahualpa sent for it. Runners were hurried all over the country, and the simple, unselfish people surrendered all their wealth to save their king. But Pizarro became tired of waiting for the treasure to come, and the men in charge of it, being met by the news that Atahualpa had been strangled, buried the gold and silver in the Llanganati, where the Spaniards have been searching for it ever since.
No amount of persuasion, temptation, or torture could wring from the Indians the secret of the buried gold. Two men of modern times are supposed to have known its hidingplace. One of them, an Indian, became mysteriously rich, and built the Church of San Francisco, in Quito. On his deathbed he is said to have revealed to the priest who confessed him that his wealth came from the hidden Inca treasure, but he died without imparting the knowledge of its location.
EQUIPPED FOR THE ANDES.
Another man, Valverde by name, a Spaniard, married an Inca woman, and is supposed to have learned the secret from her, for he sprang from abject poverty to the summit of wealth almost in a single night, “without visible means of support.” Valverde, when he died, left as a legacy to the King of Spain a guide to the buried treasure. Hundreds of fortunes have been wasted, and hundreds of lives have been lost, in vain attempts to follow Valverde’s directions. They are perfectly plain to a certain point, where the trail ends, and cannot be followed farther because of a deep ravine, which the credulous assert has been opened by an earthquake since Valverde died. These searches have been prosecuted by the Government as well as by private individuals; and if all the money that has been spent in the search for Atahualpa’s ransom had been expended on roads and other internal improvements, the country would be much richer, and the people much more prosperous than they are.
The devotion of the Indians to the memory of their king, who was strangled three hundred and fifty years ago, is very touching. When “the last of the Incas” fell, he left his people in perpetual mourning, and the women wear nothing but black to-day. It is a pathetic custom of the race not to show upon their costumes the slightest hint of color. Over a short black skirt they wear a sort of mantle, which resembles in its appearance, as well as in its use, the manta that is worn by the ladies of Peru, and the mantilla of Spain. It is drawn over their foreheads and across their chins, and pinned between the shoulders. This sombre costume gives them a nun-like appearance, which is heightened by the stealthy, silent way in which they dart through the streets. The cloth is woven on their own native looms, of the wool of the llama and the vicuna, and is a soft, fine fabric.
While the Indians are under the despotic rule of the priests, and have accepted the Catholic religion, three hundred and fifty years of submission have not entirely divorced them from the ancient rites they practised under their original civilization. Several times a year they have feasts or celebrations to commemorate some event in the Inca history. They never laugh, and scarcely ever smile; they have no songs and no amusements; their only semblance to music is a mournful chant which they give in unison at the feasts which are intended to keep alive the memories of the Incas. They cling to the traditions and the customs of their ancestors. They remember the ancient glory of their race, and look to its restoration as the Aztecs of Mexico look for the coming of Montezuma. They have relics which they guard with the most sacred care, and two great secrets which no tortures at the hands of the Spaniards have been able to wring from them. These are the art of tempering copper so as to give it as keen and enduring an edge as steel, and the burial-place of the Incarial treasures.
THE OLD INCA TRAIL.
THE OLD INCA TRAIL.
The Spaniards are the aristocracy, poor but proud—very proud. The mixed race furnishes the mechanics and artisans; while the Indians till the soil and do the drudgery. A cook gets two dollars a month in a depreciated currency, but the employer is expected to board her entire family. A laborer gets four or six dollars a month and boards himself, except when he is fortunate to have a wife out at service. The Indians never marry, because they cannot afford to do so. The law compels them to pay the priest a fee of six dollars—more money than most of them can ever accumulate. When a Spaniard marries, the fee is paid by contributions from his relatives.
It is a peculiarity of the Indian that he will sell nothing at wholesale, nor will he trade anywhere but in the marketplace, on the spot where he and his forefathers have sold garden-truck for three centuries. Although travellers on the highways meet whole armies of Indians bearing upon their backs heavy burdens of vegetables and other supplies, they can purchase nothing from them, as the native will not sell his goods until he gets to the place where he is in the habit of selling them. He will carry them ten miles, and dispose of them for less than he was offered at home. An old woman was trudging along one day with a heavy basket of pineapples and other fruits, and we tried to relieve her of part of her load, offering ten cents for pineapples which could be had for a quartillo, or two and a half cents, in market. She was polite but firm, and declined to sell anything until she got to town, although there was a weary, dusty journey of two leagues ahead of her. The guide explained that she was suspicious of the high price we offered, and imagined that pineapples must be very scarce in market, or we would not pay so much on the road; but it is a common rule for them to refuse to sell except at their regular stand. A gentleman who lives some distance from town said that for the last four years he had been trying to get the Indians, who passed every morning with packs of alfalfa (the tropical clover), to sell him some at his gate, but they invariably refused to do so; consequently he was compelled to go into town to buy what was carried past his own door. Nor will the natives sell at wholesale. They will give you a gourdful of potatoes for a penny as often as you like, but will not sell their stock in a lump. They will give you a dozen eggs for a real (ten cents), but will not sell you five dozen for a dollar. This dogged adherence to custom cannot be accounted for, except on the supposition that their suspicions are excited by an attempt to depart from it.
In Ecuador there are no smaller coins than the quartillo, and change is therefore made by the use of bread. On his way to market the purchaser stops at the bakery and gets a dozen or twenty breakfast-rolls, which cost about one cent each, and the market-women receive them and give them as change for small purchases. If you buy a cent’s worth of anything and offer a quartillo in payment, you get a breakfast-roll for the balance due you. The landlord at the hotel requires you to pay your board in advance, because he has no money to buy food and no credit with the market-men; the muleteers ask for their fees before starting, because their experience teaches them wisdom. There is scarcely a building in the whole republic in process of construction or even undergoing repairs. Death seems to have settled upon everything artificial, but Nature is in her grandest glory.
A TYPICAL COUNTRY MANSION.
Architecturally, Quito is not unlike other Spanish-American towns, except that it is dirtier and a little more dilapidated. There is not even an excuse for a hotel, and private hospitality is restricted by the poverty of the people. Few people ever go there—only those who are compelled—and the demand for a hotel is not sufficient to justify the establishment of one. One-fourth of the entire city is covered with convents, and every fourth person you meet is a priest, or a monk, or a nun. There are monks in gray, monks in blue, monks in white, monks in black, and orders that no one ever heard of before. There are all sorts of priests, also, in all sorts of rigs, wearing the outlandish hats which are seen elsewhere only upon the theatrical stage. Some of the holy fathers look as if they had just been “making up” for a comic opera, and the jolly or grim old fellows one sees in Vibert’s pictures are found on almost every corner in Quito.
A WAYSIDE SHRINE.
At the entrance to many dwellings may be seen the figure of a saint with candles burning around it, and the people appear to be continually coming from or going to church. The bells are constantly clanging, and it seems to a stranger as if the entire city were given up to perpetual devotions. The next most noticeable thing is the filthiness. The streets are used as water-closets, in daylight as well as in the dark, and are never cleaned from one year’s end to another. There are no wagons or carriages, and only seldom can a cart be seen, the backs of mules, men, and women being the only vehicles of transportation. There is an unaccountable prejudice against water in every form, the natives believing that its frequent use will cause fevers and other diseases. When they have returned from a journey they never think of washing their faces for several days, for fear of taking a fever, but wipe off the flesh with a dry towel. I do not believe a Quito woman ever washes her face. She keeps it constantly covered with chalk, and looks as if some one had been trying to whitewash her. I do not know how she would look al fresco, but she has beautiful eyes, lips, and teeth, and a perfect figure till she reaches the age of thirty-five or thereabouts, after which she becomes either very fat or very lean.
CHARCOAL PEDDLER.
If it were not for the climate, Quito would be in the midst of a perpetual pestilence; but notwithstanding the prevailing filthiness, there is very little sickness, and pulmonary diseases are unknown. Mountain fever, produced by cold and a torpid liver, is the commonest type of disease. The population of the city, however, is gradually decreasing, and is said to be now about sixty thousand. There were five hundred thousand people at Quito when the Spaniards came, and a hundred years ago the population was reckoned at double what it now is. Half the houses in the town are empty, and to see a new family moving in would be the sensation of the decade. Most of the finest residences are locked and barred, and have remained so for years. The owners are usually political exiles, who are living elsewhere, and can neither sell or rent their property. Political revolutions are so common, and the results are always so disastrous to the unsuccessful, that there is a constant stream of fugitives leaving the State.
Although Ecuador is set down in the geographies as a republic, it is simply a popish colony, and the power of the Vatican is nowhere felt so completely as here. The return of a priest from a visit to Rome is as great an event as the declaration of independence; and so subordinated is the State to the Church that the latter elects the President, the Congress, and the judges. Not long ago a law was in force prohibiting the importation of any books, periodicals, or newspapers without the sanction of the Jesuits. A crucifix sits in the audience-chamber of the President and on the desk of the presiding officer of Congress. All the schools are controlled by the Church, and the children know more about the lives of the saints than about the geography of their own country. There is not even a good map of Ecuador.
No lady ever goes to mass (and all go once a day) without a small Indian boy or a maid-servant following her with a strip of carpet or hassock, upon which she kneels during service. There are no pews in the churches, but the floors are marked off like a chess-board, and each square numbered. These squares, about two or three feet in dimensions, are rented to those who belong to the parish, and when a man goes to church he hunts for his place on the floor and kneels down within the narrow space.
As in Mexico, servants go in droves. Families seldom have less than four or five, and each adult brings along all his or her kin, who are expected to lodge and feed with the father’s or mother’s employer. But it does not cost much to keep them, and the wages of my lady’s maid in New York or Chicago would support a whole village. They want nothing but black beans, called frijoles, and tortillas. Meat and bread are unknown luxuries.
GOVERNMENT BUILDING AT QUITO.
The Spaniards are famous for their politeness, and in Ecuador, as in all other parts of South America, courtesy is a part of their religion. The lowest, meanest man in Quito is politeness personified, but it is all on the surface. He will stab you or rob you as soon as your back is turned. The Ecuadorian gentleman will promise you the earth, but will not give you even a pebble. This hypocrisy results in mutual distrust. No one ever believes what is said to him; partnerships in business are seldom formed, and corporations are unknown. If a man gets a little cash he never invests it in public enterprises, but keeps it in a stocking for fear he may be swindled—and the fear is well founded. Only the Indians keep faith, and that exclusively among themselves. To steal from a Spaniard they consider not only proper but justifiable. The Spaniards stole all they have from them. They never rob, swindle, or betray one another. They are as faithful as death to their own race.
COURT OF A QUITO DWELLING.
Once upon a time there was a revolutionary conspiracy among the Indians. An uprising was to occur simultaneously all over the republic. As the natives could neither read nor write, they were given bundles of sticks, each bundle containing the same number. One was to be burned each day, and the night after the last was burned was to see the uprising. None betrayed the secret. Of the many thousands who were admitted to the conspiracy not one violated faith.
All sorts of labor are done in the most primitive manner. The agriculturists do not plough, but plant the seed by poking a hole in the ground with a stick. Threshing and corn-shelling are done by driving horses over the grain. The hair is removed from hogs, not by hot water and scraping, but by burning. Everything is done in the slowest and most difficult way. For that reason, and because the interior is so isolated from the rest of mankind, the country does not know the meaning of the words progress and prosperity. Until the influence of the Romish Church is destroyed, until immigration is invited and secured, Ecuador will be a desert rich in undeveloped resources. With plenty of natural wealth, it has neither peace nor industry, and such a thing as a surplus of any character is unknown. One of the richest of the South American republics, and the oldest of them all, it is the poorest and most backward.
On the south-west side of Quito, within half a mile of the city’s centre, flows the Machangari River, a small, rapid, and never-failing stream. The rapid fall of the water provides mill-sites every few rods, which are utilized by six small flour-mills and a small manufactory of woollen blankets. The six flour-mills, having a total of eighteen run of stone, give employment to twenty-four men, whose daily wages range from twelve to twenty-five cents. In the whole woollen blanket manufactory forty persons are employed, at average daily wages of twelve cents. Aside from the water-motors mentioned, the only motor in use is a small steam-engine in a suburban village, used in a sugar refinery where twelve persons work for wages ranging from twelve to twenty cents per day. The manufacture of adobe, hard brick, and roofing-tile is carried on more or less in conjunction, and gives employment to about three hundred men and women, the women exercising the right of doing any kind of work
WHAT THE EARTHQUAKES LEFT
performed by the men. No machinery is used, the brick and tile being moulded by hand in a box. These workers receive each twelve cents a day. The making of pottery is carried on in a small way at about fifty places, furnishing work for about one hundred persons, who when hired earn twelve cents a day. There is one manufactory of silk and high hats at which twelve men are employed, at twenty-five cents a day. There are also about fifty places at which Indian felt hats are made, a total of one hundred persons being employed, with wages at twelve cents a day. Matting manufacturing is carried on at three places, at which hand-looms only are used. The material employed is the fibre of the cactus, which is very serviceable. Thirty persons at this pursuit earn from eighteen to twenty cents per day wages. There is no foundery in Quito, and all of the iron-working is restricted to what is done in a few blacksmith shops. There is one combined cart and blacksmith shop, at which carts are made and general repairing is done, employing ten men at twenty-five cents a day. The industries mentioned have long been established. There are also numerous tailor shops, shoe-shops, tin-shops, and carpenter shops. At the latter are made sofas, bureaus, tables, and all other articles of furniture difficult of transportation by pack-animals. Nearly all the chairs in use were brought from the United States, packed in parts, and were put together when sold. Coffins also are made at the carpenter shops. All of the work done at these shops is done by hand.
A PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR.
The only industry that has sprung up in recent years is that of beer-making, which has been inspired and promoted by the German element. There have been established twelve breweries, which employ a total of one hundred and twenty men, at average daily wages of twenty cents. The barley used is of native growth, and is bought at a low price. The hops are imported from the United States and Europe, and by reason of expensive transportation are very costly.
AN ECUADOR BELLE.
Though Quito has a population of about sixty thousand, it has had for a long period considerable note as a place of art in sculpture and painting, and has several public-schools of ordinary grade, and three universities, in charge of the priests, yet it has never been a field in which literature thrived, or the business of printing flourished. It contains no newspaper, and but one weekly journal is issued. This is the oficial paper, and is devoted solely to the publication of official documents. Its circulation is about one thousand copies, exclusively among government and foreign officials, and is gratuitous. The principal printing establishment is owned and managed by the Government, in which twenty persons are employed. Among its material are one rotary press (on which the official paper is printed), five hand-lever presses, and a good assortment of type. No work is done except for government use. There are five other small printing concerns, each employing from two to six persons, at which is done the miscellaneous printing of the public. They use nothing but hand-lever presses. The presses and type were purchased, in the United States.
Revolutions in Ecuador are frequent, and they usually begin by an attempt to assassinate the President. The plan of procedure is usually for the discontented political faction to create a mutiny in the army, either by bribes to the officers or promises of promotion. As the private soldiers always obey their officers, like so many automatons, and are as willing to fight on one side as the other, to secure the officers is to secure the army. The next step is to seize the barracks and arsenal, put the President to death, proclaim some one else provisional dictator, and then call a junta, or convention, to nominate “a constitutional Executive.” Señor Caamaño seems to bear a charmed life, for during his term of four years as President he had numerous remarkable escapes. The last attempt to assassinate him was in January, 1886, while he was journeying from Guayaquil to Quito. He was riding, as travellers usually do, by night, to escape the heat of the sun, when his small escort was attacked by a band of mountaineers, and fled, leaving the President to look out for himself. He jumped from his horse, ran into the forest which lines the road, and creeping through the trees to the river, swam to the other side, and made his way, thirty miles on foot, to the hacienda of a friend, where he knew he would find refuge. For two days and nights he was in the forest without food, and when he finally reached a safe haven was totally exhausted. For a week or ten days he lay ill with a fever, but couriers were sent to Guayaquil and Quito who arrived there before the reports of his assassination, and assured the officials of the Government of his safety. At the same time a mutiny broke out at the military garrisons in both cities, but was quelled, and the leaders summarily shot.
Since the inauguration of Don Antonio Flores as President, in 1888, Ecuador has been at peace, and shows bright promises for the future. He is the foremost statesman of the republic; has ability, wealth, knowledge, and experience surpassing most of his fellow-citizens, and, what is equally effectual among the Spanish-American people, the prestige of a venerated name. His father was a Venezuelan, and at one time represented New Grenada in the Cortes at Madrid. General Flores stood with Bolivar at the head of the Revolution for Independence, organized the Republic of Ecuador, and was its first President. The son has inherited his father’s ability, his patriotism and zeal, and has spent his life in the civil, diplomatic, judicial, and military service. He did not seek the presidency, and therefore entered upon the duties of his office free of all entanglements, and with the one purpose, to modernize this Hermit of Republics, and bring its people to the standard of nineteenth century civilization.
From Guayaquil to Callao, and in fact to the end of the continent, the western coast of South America presents an unbroken line of mountains, with a strip of desert between them and the sea. Occasionally some stream from the mountains brings down the melted snow and opens an oasis. These oases have been utilized by the planters as far back as the Conquest, when the industrious Jesuits made as vigorous a war upon the desert as upon the Incas, and conquered one as easily as they conquered the other. Wherever this barren strip has been irrigated it produces enormous crops of sugar, coffee, and other tropical products, and the whole of it might be redeemed by the introduction of a little capital and industry. If the money that has been wasted in revolutions had been expended in the development of its mines, and the soldiers had dug irrigating ditches with as much ardor as they have fought each other, there would be no richer country on the globe. Wherever the Incas touched the earth it produced in profusion, and their wealth was fabulous. Their empire extended three thousand miles north and south, and about four hundred miles east and west, from the Pacific to the great forests of the Amazon, which their simple tools were unable to subdue.
In no part of the world does nature assume more imposing forms. Deserts as repulsive as Sahara alternate with valleys as rich and luxuriant as those of Italy. Eternal summer smiles under the frown of eternal snow. The rainless region—this desert strip which lies between the Andes and the sea—is
A HOTEL ON THE COAST.
about forty miles in width, and the panorama presented to the voyager is a constant succession of bare and repulsive wastes of sand and rocks, uninhabited, whose silence is broken only by the incessant surf, the bark of the sea-lions, and the screams of the water-birds which haunt its wave-worn and forbidding shore. The coast is dotted with small rocky islands, which have been the roost of myriads of birds for ages, and furnish guano for commerce. The steamers seem to furnish them their only entertainment, and they surround every vessel which passes, soaring about and above the masts, screaming defiance to the invaders of their resorts. The water, too, is full of animal life. Nowhere does the sea offer science so many curious forms of animate nature; monsters unknown to northern waters can be seen from the decks of the steamers, and at night their movements about the vessel are shown by a line of fire which always follows their fins. The water is so strongly impregnated with phosphorus that every wave is tipped with silver, and every fish that darts about leaves a brilliant trail like that of a comet. The larger fishes, the sharks and porpoises, find great sport in swimming races with the ship, and under the bowsprit a small army of them are to be seen every evening, sailing along beside the vessel, darting back and forth before its bows, leaping and plunging over one another. Their every motion is apparent, and the outlines of their bodies are as distinct as if drawn with a pencil of fire. Nowhere is this phenomenon so conspicuous.
The first point beyond Guayaquil is the island of Puna, where Pizarro first landed, and where he waited with a squad of thirteen men while the deserters from his expedition went back to Panama in his ships, promising to send reinforcements, which afterwards came. Beside Puna is the famous Isle del Muerto (dead man’s island), which looks like a corpse floating in the water. Just below, and the northernmost town of Peru, is Tumbez, where Pizarro met the messengers from Atahualpa’s army who came to ask the object of his visit.
Behind Tumbez are the petroleum deposits of Peru, which have been known to the natives ever since the times of the Incas, but they were ignorant of the character or the value of the oil. A Yankee by the name of Larkin, from Western New York, came down here to sell kerosene, and recognized the material which the Indians used for lubricating and coloring purposes as the same stuff he was peddling. An attempt has been made to utilize the deposits, which are very extensive, but so far they have not been successful in producing a burning fluid that is either safe or agreeable.
At each of the little ports on the Peruvian coast the steamer stops and takes on produce for shipment to Liverpool or Germany. These towns are simply collections of mud huts, inhabited by fishermen or the employés of the steamship company, dreary, dusty, and dirty. Back in the country, along the streams which bring fertility and water down from the mountains, are places of commercial importance, the residences of rich hacienda owners, and the scenes of historic events as well as prehistoric civilization. The products of the country are sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton, while those of the town are “Panama” hats and fleas. In each one of the ports the natives are busy braiding hats from vegetable fibres, and the results of their labor find a market at Panama and in the cities of the coast, where, as in Mexico, a man’s character is judged by what he wears on his head. The hats are usually made of toquilla, or pita, an arborescent plant of the cactus family, the leaves of which are often several yards long. When cut, the leaf is dried, and then whipped into shreds almost as fine and tough as silk. Some of these hats are made of single fibres, with not a splice or an end from the centre of the crown to the rim. It often requires two or three months to make them, and the best ones are braided under water, so as to make the fibre more pliable. They sometimes cost as much as two hundred and fifty dollars, but last a lifetime, and can be packed away in a vest-pocket, turned inside out, and worn that way, the inside being as smooth and well finished as the other. The natives make beautiful cigar-cases too; but it is difficult for a stranger to purchase either them or their hats, because they have an idea that all strangers are rich, and will pay any price that is asked. One old lady offered me a cigar-case of straw, such as is sold in Japanese stores for one or two dollars, and politely agreed to sell it for twenty dollars. When I told her I could get a silver one for that price, she came down to eighteen dollars, then to twelve dollars, and finally to one dollar. They have no idea of the value of money, and are habitually imposed upon by local traders, who exchange food for their straw-work at merely nominal rates, and then sell the hats at enormous figures.
At each of the ports where the steamer stops an army of officials come aboard to get a good dinner or breakfast and a cocktail or two at the expense of the steamship company. They wear gay uniforms and swords, and there is usually one inspector, or official, for every ten packages of merchandise. First, there is the “captain of the port,” with his retinue; then the governor of the district, with his staff; then the collector of customs, with a battalion of inspectors; and, finally, the commandante of the military garrison and all his subordinates. The deck of the vessel fairly swarms with them, and as the steamer’s arrival is the only event to give variety to the monotony of their lives, they celebrate it for all it is worth. It is little wonder that the governments of these South American countries are poor, with all these tax-eaters at every little town of four or five hundred inhabitants.
CUSTOMS OFFICERS.
There are a great many more railroads in Peru than is generally supposed. Nearly all of the coast towns have a line connecting them with the plantations of the interior; and as there are no harbors, but only open roadsteads, expensive iron piers have been constructed through the surf from which merchandise is lifted into barges or lighters and taken to the ships, which anchor a mile or so from the shore. Where there are no piers the lighters are run through the surf when the tide is high, are loaded at low tide, and then floated off to buoys to await the arrival of vessels.
A HOME ON THE COAST.
All along the coast there is a system of “deck trading” carried on by the people of the country. Men and women come on board with market produce, fruits, and other articles, which are strewn about the deck, and are sold to people who visit the vessel at each port for the purpose of buying. These traders are charged passage-money and freight by the steamship companies, but are a nuisance to the other passengers. Each female trader brings a mattress to sleep upon, a chair to use during the day, her own cooking and chamber utensils, and spends a greater part of her life abroad, sailing from one port to another.
At Payta we took on a battalion of Peruvian soldiers, with one brass-mounted officer to every seven men. The Peruvian soldier always has his wife with him; at least there is a woman who maintains such a relation. The ceremony of marriage is not observed, nor is it to any great extent in civil life, for the expense of matrimony is so great that among the cholos, as the peasants are called, men and women live their lives together without any formality, and with the sanction of public sentiment, even if they lack the sanction of the law. For this the Catholic Church is responsible, and to it can be traced the cause of the illegitimacy of more than half of the population. The fee charged by the priests for performing the ceremony of marriage is so excessive that the poor cannot pay it; hence marriage is practically placed under what may be called a prohibitory tariff. This prevails in all of the South American countries where the Church still holds its power, but in those which are now under the control of the Liberal party the rite of civil marriage has been established by law, and the ceremony now costs from twenty-five cents to a dollar.
With each company of Peruvian troops is a squad of women called rabonas, generally one to every three or four men, volunteers who serve without pay but receive rations, and are given transportation by the Government. They are always with the men—in camp, on the march, and in battle. In camp they do the cooking and other necessary work; on the march they share the exposure and fatigue, being treated exactly as the men are, and do most of the foraging for the messes to which they belong. In battle they nurse their own wounded, rob the dead, cut the throats of enemies whom they find lying alive on the field, carry water and ammunition, and perform other brutal or useful services. They are always enumerated in the rosters of troops and in the reports of casualties, which read: so many men and so many rabonas killed and wounded; for they share the soldier’s death as well as his privations.
Some of these wives of the regiment have children with them, and there is scarcely a company without a dozen or so little youngsters, without any clew to their paternity, following their mothers’ heels. They are poor, miserable, degraded creatures, just one degree above the dogs with which
PERUVIAN SOLDIER AND RABONA.
they sleep. Their powers of endurance are extraordinary. Often it is the case that they will march twenty or thirty miles over a dusty road, carrying a child on their back, without water or food. When the latter is scarce they eat leaves of the coca-tree, which when mixed with lime are said to be very palatable and nourishing. Each woman carries a little bag of lime round her neck, into which she dips her fingers and draws out a few grains of powder to leaven a lump of leaves she is constantly chewing. The poor children have the hardest time, for they are always without rest or shelter, and often without food. But it is the experience they are born into, and they know nothing of a better life. The officers told me that the children often die on the march, when their mothers strip the clothes from them, and throw the bodies into the sand or woods, without even a burial or a tear, glad to be relieved of an encumbrance by death.
With the battalion which boarded our steamer at Payta were two women and thirty children. They were quartered upon the hurricane-deck, without any shelter but the starlit tropic sky, and were packed in, men and women together, like steers in a cattle-car. Water and food were furnished them, the latter consisting only of frijoles and tortillas. Instead of complaining of their beds upon the surface of the shelterless deck, the soldiers told me that it was the most comfortable place they had found for months, and would be glad to stay there always; but the passengers and officers of the ship would have objected, as the stench that came from them was something horrible, resembling that which is usually noticed in a crowded emigrant-car.
One night, on the unsheltered deck of the vessel, without surgical assistance or even the knowledge of the officers or crew, a child was born. The mother wrapped it in an old blanket and laid it down upon the boards. Thirty-six hours afterwards she, with the rest of the party, climbed down th ship’s side on a ladder, got into a launch in which there was scarcely standing-room, and was towed to shore, where a long and tiresome march into the mountains was to be begun the same night. On her arms was the baby, and on her back was a bag which looked as if it weighed fifty or sixty pounds. She was a mere girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age, and they said it was her first baby, of which she, like all young mothers, was uncommonly proud. This appeared to be a commonplace occurrence, for it was scarcely noticed by the other women or men of the crowd, and when I asked an officer which of his company was the father of the child, he replied, “Dios sabe” (God knows). He said there had been four similar accouchements in his company within six months, and that he thought the mothers and babies were all doing well.
“Will the child live?” I asked the surgeon.
“Live? yes; you couldn’t drown it.”
The custom of having rabonas with the army grew out of the habit the Indians had of taking their wives to war, and the marital ties became slackened by common consent. The Government not only licenses but encourages the practice, as it makes the men more contented, and, as a sanitary measure, the surgeons say, is beneficial. The ratio of disease is very small in the armies where the rabonas are allowed, as compared with that in others, and any experienced surgeon can see why this is so.
All the private soldiers in South America, at least upon the west coast, are Indians or negroes, and all the officers white. A white man, a Spaniard, whatever be his station in life, cannot be forced or persuaded to carry a musket. During the defence of Lima against the army of Chili, however, lawyers, merchants, clerks, and everybody, regardless of caste or condition, served in the ranks as they did during our war, but without uniform. They would fight in defence of their homes, but were too proud to wear the uniform of a common soldier. Hence the rank and file is composed chiefly of Indians, or cholos, a term which is used to designate the mixed race descended from the ancient and aboriginal Inca and his conqueror the Spaniard. There are very few full-blooded Indians in the country, for during the three hundred and fifty years of Spanish supremacy the original inhabitants were almost entirely exterminated. There are a good many negroes and Chinamen in Peru who are mixed with the natives indiscriminately, and they all go to compose the cholos.
There are military schools for the education of officers, and the line and staff of the armies are made up of the sons of the aristocracy, as in Germany and England. They wear a very gaudy uniform, and always appear in it, whether on duty or not. Officers are never seen in anything but full military dress, with plenty of gold lace and “flubdubs.”
The soldiers are all “volunteers.” Conscription is forbidden by the constitution of most of the republics, and a “volunteer” is an Indian who is captured on the highway, or in a saloon, or at his home, and locked up until there are enough to send to headquarters, where he is taken before a recruiting-officer, and made to sign a statement setting forth that he “volunteered” to serve his country as long as his services are needed. Then his hands are tied behind him, and he is lashed to a dozen or more other “volunteers,” who are driven down to the garrison, where uniforms are put on them, muskets furnished, and they are turned over to a drill-sergeant, who puts them through the simple tactics until they know how to carry a gun and fire it. I saw a drove of about one hundred and fifty of these “volunteers” come into Lima one day, tied up like chickens or turkeys in bunches of ten each, with an escort of twenty men, who had probably gone through the same process of “volunteering” a year or so before, and rather enjoyed the remonstrances of the conscripts. Behind the column came seventy-five or so women, weeping and chattering, and some of them had children tugging at their hands and skirts. The women could stay with their husbands if they liked, and become rabonas, and probably most of them did. With such material composing its army did Peru attempt to defend its coast and cities, with their enormous wealth, against assault by Chili.
LOOKING SEAWARD.
The soldiers of Chili are of an entirely different sort. They are naturally belligerent, and in the late war with Peru were promised free license to plunder. The soldiers of Peru were peaceable, quiet, inoffensive cholos, a silent, suffering race of people who had served under a system of peonage all their lives, had no idea what they were fighting for, and made as weak a defence as possible. Whenever they met the Chillanos in battle they always fled, even when they outnumbered the enemy; for the Chillano, reckless, daring, and combative, never remained in line of battle, but always fought with a charge and a whoop, carrying everything before him, taking no prisoners, but cutting the throat of every man he could reach.
The battle of Arica is a good example of all the engagements of the war between Chili and Peru. South of that town, which lies upon the Pacific coast, rises a great hill or promontory twelve hundred feet, and almost perpendicular, out of the sea, and then slopes off at a steep grade to the plain behind it. Upon the peak of this precipice the Peruvians placed a heavy battery for the protection of the city, manned by about twelve hundred soldiers. The Chillano men-of-war came in one day and engaged this fort in an artillery duel at long range which lasted until nightfall. During the darkness about two thousand soldiers were landed above the town; they flanked it, and creeping carefully to the foot of the hill, lay until daylight, when they dashed up the slope with a fearful charge. The cannon were all turned seaward, and were useless; the men were surprised in their sleep, and the demoralization among the Peruvians was so great that scarcely a shot was fired. Being shut off from escape, they jumped over the precipices into the sea, preferring drowning to having their throats cut with the knives of the Chillanos, who always carry them for that purpose. This was known, and always will be known, as the Arica massacre, for nearly three-fourths of the Peruvians were slaughtered.
The island of San Lorenzo, which was once the seat of a powerful fortress, protects the harbor of Callao, the second port on the Pacific coast of South America in population and commercial importance. It is the headquarters of the steamship lines and of the great mercantile houses, and the population is about one-half of foreign birth. One can hear all the languages of the earth spoken at Callao, and when we
A BOATMAN ON THE COAST.
arrived upon the dock there was a group to illustrate the cosmopolitan character of the citizens. A Chinaman, an Arab, a negro, and a Frenchman were sitting upon a box, while around them were clustered Spaniards, Englishmen, Irishmen, Germans, and Italians. The city is irregular and shabby-looking, but has been a place of great wealth. Millions after millions of dollars’ worth of silver have been shipped from here by the Spaniards—silver stolen from the temples of the Incas, or dug from the mines which they operated before the Spaniards came. It was here that the old buccaneers used to rendezvous and waylay the galleons on their way to Spain. Of recent years the importance of Callao has very much decreased. A constant succession of wars and revolutions in Peru has destroyed its commerce; and although there is usually a great deal of shipping in the harbor, the present amount of trade is below that of the past. There are two lines of railroad to Lima, the capital of the republic, which lies six miles up in the foot-hills of the Andes.
