Part 21

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.