CHAPTER VITHE CITY OF THE EQUATOR

I settled down for months in Quito. Not only were my Canal Zone experiences to be written, but I had long since planned to become a bona fide resident of a typical small South American capital. A letter of introduction won me quarters in the home ofSeñorDon Francisco Ordoñez V, in the calle Flores, while Hays hung up his hat in even more sumptuous surroundings around the corner.

But not so fast! Not even whole-hearted “Don Panchito” would have received me in the state of sartorial delapidation of our arrival. The people of Quito are somewhat less rigid disciples of Beau Brummel than those of Bogotá, but they are still far from negligent in dress. Most of the clothes indispensable to our entrance into the ranks of the gente decente had been mailed in Jirardot, the rest had been turned over to the American “drummer” in Cali. The first shock Quito had in store for us was the information that no parcel of any shape or description had come from Colombia in months, the second was the discovery that the traveling-man had not arrived. It was hard to realize that we had outwalked all the established means of transportation in this equatorial land.

An unavoidable round of the shops wiped out the remnant of my savings as a policeman, and brought me down again to the letter of credit that had lain fallow more than a half year. Except for tailor-made suits, the cost of replenishing a wardrobe was startling. Ready-made clothing for men is rare in the cities of the Andes, and it is far more economical to be fitted to order in one of thesastreríasthat abound in almost every street,—dingy little rooms, their fronts all doorway, in which sit anemic half-breed youths sewing languidly, yet incessantly, now and then carrying the charcoal-filled “goose” out into the street to blow out the ashes, and as dependent on the passing throng for inspiration as the craftsmen of Damascus. As in the more northern capital, the chief line of demarkation between thegenteand thepuebloof Quito is the white collar. Naturally, the tendency is to make it as wide and distinct as possible. I had canvassed the entire city before I found my customary brand of neckwear—at four times itsAmerican price—only to discover that the lowest collar in stock was designed for some species of human giraffe.

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

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

“Something lower, please.”

“But this is a very low collar! It is so low that no one in Quito will wear it, and we are not importing any more of this brand.”

In the matter of shoes, I found at last a Massachusetts product that might have served; but when I had beaten the dealer down to about twice the American price, a seven was found to be the largest size in stock. The merchant seemed on the verge of tears.

“Why,señor,” he gasped, gazing resentfully at the offending member, “there is not a foot in Quito as large as that shoe.”

He did not mean exactly what he said, but it was natural that he should have had in mind only the minority ofquiteñoswho wear shoes. These squeeze their feet into articles of effeminate, toothpick shape for custom’s sake, as they force their necks into collars that come little short of hanging, and have their trousers made sailor-fashion, that their feet may look still more ladylike. One cannot, of course, pose as an aristocrat on the broad hoofs of an Indian. In the end I was forced to submit tobotas de hule, an imitation patent-leather shoe made in Guayaquil.

Hays concluded that with a general overhauling he could pass muster until our bundles arrived. But on one point immediate renewal was unavoidable. He paused in the doorway of one of the little sewing dens to ask:

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

In spite of having pillowed for weeks on Ramsey, Hays never could remember that Castilian trousers come singly.

“Un par, señor!” cried the tailor, “Ah, no, that is impossible so soon. I can make you a trouser by then, but not two of them. Then, while you are wearing the one, I can perhaps make the other, if theseñoris in such haste.”

“Oh, all right,” said Hays, suddenly recalling that trousers are—I mean is—singular in Spanish, “go ahead. I’ll try to get along with one over Sunday.”

The error persisted, however. It was not three days later that he was halted at the door of his lodgings by a whining beggar.

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

A view of Quito, backed by the Panecillo that bottles it up on the south. There are sixconventosin sight

A patio of the Monastery of San Francisco, one of the eighteen monasteries and convents of Quito, said to be the most extensive in the Western Hemisphere

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

He did so, whereupon the beggar growled angrily:

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

Fewquiteñodwellings are equipped with bathrooms. I halted a passerby to inquire for a publiccasa de baños, and was directed to the foot of the calle Rocafuerte.

“Hot baths?” I queried, suspiciously.

“Certainly,señor,” he answered haughtily; “If you go there any morning about ten, when the sun is shining, you will find them quite caliente.”

A crumbling old adobe gate, marked “Baños de Milagro,” gave entrance to an aged two-story building of the same material. Passing through this, I was astonished to find spread out before me what looked like an immense outdoor swimming-pool. It was illusion. Nearer approach showed a broad sheet of water barely six inches deep, a half-acre of it warming in the sun. I suddenly recalled that the same word serves in Spanish for all degrees of temperature from hot to luke-warm. About the basin were many little adobe dens, in the center of each a stone basin some four feet deep, with steps leading down into it. The fee was a merereal(five cents), for the streams that course down the face of Pichincha are abundant. An Indian scrubbed out the pool with a broom fashioned from a bundle of fagots, and turned it full of a water so clear that I could have read a newspaper at the bottom. But the heating apparatus was not particularly effective. When the icy mountain water had filled the stone basin, cold as only a shaded spot at this altitude can be, the uninured gringo could only grit his teeth, clutch desperately at his 60-cent bar of imported English soap, and plunge in—and quickly out again. One such experience was enough to explain why Quito shows so decided an aversion to the bath.

My residence in the city was all but nipped in the bud by a mere matter of red tape. Again the shock was administered at the post-office. When I presented the registry slips for the package of notes on which my proposed volume depended, they were all there, sure enough, the seals still unbroken. But as I opened them for customs inspection, the startled employees cried out in horrified chorus:

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

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

“No importa! It is illegal for them to ride in the Ecuadorian mails. They will have to be confiscated by the government.”

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

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

Luckily the laws of Ecuador are not so inexorable and incorruptible as those of some other lands, but I passed a far from pleasant hour before I discovered that saving fact. Just where the line is drawn between “manuscrito” and mere letters, I was never able to learn. At any rate the sender of the offending notes is still “wanted,” I believe, to serve a year in the penitentiary of Quito.

I had not been three days in the city of the equator when I began to feel the necessity for exercise. The “best families” lead a very sedentary and physically idle existence, virtually spending their lives at the bottom of a hole in the ground, for such the central plaza and the few adjoining squares about which it is customary to stroll might be called. Yet there are innumerable views and picturesque corners to reward him who will climb out; and climb he must, for the city lies in a fold of the skirts of Pichincha, out of which almost every street mounts more or less steeply.

The main plaza is the heart of Ecuador. In its center, instead of the “handsome brass fountain” of Stevenson’s day, rises a tall, showy monument topped by a bronze Victory or Liberty, or some other exotic bird, while at its base cringes an allegorical Spanish lion with a look of pained disgust on his face and an arrow through his liver. Much of the square is floored with cement, blinding to the eyes under the equatorial sun and only mildly relieved by staid and too carefully tended plots where violets, pansies, yellow poppies, and many a flower known only to the region bloom perennially. Its diagonal walks see most of Quito pass at least once a day. But neither Indians nor the ragged classes pause to sit on its grass-green benches; nor may anyone carrying a bundle pass its gates—unless the guard chances to be doing something other than his appointed duty. On the east the square is flanked by the two-story government “palace,” housing the presidency, the ministry, both houses of congress, the custom-house, Ecuador’s main post-office, and considerable else, yet still finding room for several cubby-hole shops under its portico. To the south, siding on, rather than facing the square, its towers barely rising above the roof, is the low cathedral, in which are the tombs both of Sucre and hisreputed assassin, Flores, the “Washington of Ecuador.” The third and fourth sides are flanked by the archbishop’s palace and the municipality, both withportales, arcades beneath which are dozens of little den-like shops, and filled from pillar to pillar with hawkers and their no less motley wares.

Every street of the city is roughly cobbled, with a row of flagstones along its center for Indian carriers and four-footed beasts of burden, and on either side a narrow, slanting slab-stone walk on which the pedestrian whose appearance suggests the lower social standing is expected to yield the passage. Rambling over a rolling, at times almost hilly site, every street is due sooner or later to run off into the air on a hillside, or to fade suddenly away into a noisome lane.

Quito has no residential section. Its chiefly two-story buildings are, with rare exceptions, constructed of mud blocks on frames ofchaguarquero, the light, pithy stalk of the giant cactus, with roofs of the familiar dull-red tiles. Whitewash and paint of many colors strive in vain to conceal this plebeian material, and many afaçadeis gay with ornamentation. Well-to-do people, who are commonly the owners of the building they dwell in, occupy the second floor. The lower story of the city is the business section. That portion of the house facing the street is almost certain to be given over to from one to several shops, the patio serving as a yard for the loading and unloading of pack-animals, while the bare adobe cells opening on it house the family servants and Indian retainers. To dwell almost anywhere in Quito is to live in the upper air of a combination of slums and business houses, and whatever the wealth or boasted aristocracy of a family, it is certain to come into daily contact with the unwashedgente del pueblothat inhabits its lower regions and performs its menial tasks.

There are shops enough in Quito, to all appearances, to supply the demands, if not the needs, of all the million and a half inhabitants of Ecuador. These are, for the most part, small, one-room dungeons without windows, flush with the sidewalk, with no other front than the doors that stand wide open during business hours, and present at other times their blank faces ornamented with several enormous padlocks. Thequiteñoputs no trust in the small locks of modern days. Many a shop, the entire stock of which is not worth a hundred dollars, is protected not only by bolts and bars within, but by half a dozen of those huge and clumsy contrivances that the rest of the world used in the Middle Ages. To “shut up shop” is a real task in Quito, of which the lugging home of the enormous keys is by no means the least burdensome.Naturally, if a real burglar cared to take the trouble to journey to Quito, he would find far less difficulty at his trade than in a city ostensibly less secure.

Besides the establishments of hundreds of men who would rather wear a white collar than work, there are innumerable little holes in the wall, run by “women of the people” in conjunction with their scanty household duties, where chicha and stronger drinks, and the few foodstuffs of the Indians and the poorer classes are displayed—and sometimes sold, though there are barely customers enough to go round. Clothing stores, or more exactly, cloth-shops, are perhaps most numerous, countless useless duplications of the selfsame stock, with hundreds of bolts of as many different weaves piled high in the open doorways. Every merchant, however meager his supplies, announces himself an “importer and exporter,” and after morning mass manto-wrapped women wander for hours from shop to shop, haggling for a fancied difference of a half cent in some purchase which, in the end, is more apt than not to be abandoned. Business is petty at best; its ethics low, and the nativequiteñois a weak competitor of the foreigners that swarm in the city. Italians, especially the wily Neapolitan, and “Turks,” as the ubiquitous Syrians are called in all South America, capture much of the trade. A foreigner remains a foreigner in Ecuador, for the country has but weak powers of assimilation.

A unique note in the life of Quito are the “Propiedad” signs. Revolution, with its accompanying looting, is ever imminent. The native shopkeepers are frankly at the mercy of the looters, who only too often are the Government itself. But the foreigner despoiled of his wares can always lodge a complaint with his home Government; reparation may follow, and even the punishment of the looters is conceivable. To warn these of their peril, and to induce sober thought in times of anarchy, the foreign merchant paints on his shop-front a huge flag of his country, similar to that used by neutral steamers in wartime, with surcharged words conveying the same information to those unacquainted with the colors. Thus the German’s place of business is distinguished with a:

(black)PROPIEDAD(white)ALEMANA(red)

(black)PROPIEDAD

(white)ALEMANA

(red)

The family of “Don Panchito” with whom I lived in Quito. In front stands little Mercedes, familiarly known as “Meech,” our house-maid and general servant

Girls of the “gente decente” class of Quito, in a school run by European nuns. The Mother Superior (right) is Belgian; the nun on the left is Irish

Within a few blocks of the main plaza may be noted the following “Propiedades”: “Española, Francesa, Alemana, Belga, Danesa, Inglesa, Italiana, Holondesa, Sueca, Chilena, Colombiana, Peruana, Venezolana, Turca,” and one or two more. The Stars and Stripes and the words “Propiedad Americana” appear only once—on the door of a small export house.

Apparently every one is entitled to three guesses on the population of Quito. The estimates range from fifty to a hundred thousand, with the truth probably somewhere near the seventy-five thousand attributed to it in Stevenson’s day. Its tendency of late years has been to overflow its banks; the suburb of Guarico climbs a considerable way up the skirts of Pichincha, and the huts of Indians have scrambled well up the flanks of the other enclosing ridges. Though more in touch with the outside world than Bogotá, it has much the same atmosphere of a world apart, a peaceful, restful little sphere supplied with a few modern conveniences of a crude, break-down-often sort, but with little of the complicated life of twentieth-century cities. It is a splendid place to play at life, to lie fallow and catch up with oneself, with nothing more exciting to stir up existence than the semi-weekly concert in the plaza mayor. A score of carriages rattle over its cobbled streets; the rails of a tramway line had been laid years before our arrival, but the cars had not yet been ordered. Somewhere there may be a finer climate, but it would scarcely be worth while going far to look for it. Standing at a height which, in the temperate zone, would be covered by eternal snows, the city is sheltered by the surrounding ranges from the bitter chill that descends so often upon less lofty Bogotá. In the Colombian capital we were always suffering more or less from cold in our waking hours, except at midday; in Quito it was possible to sit comfortably on a plaza bench at midnight. With all the stages of nature, from planting through blossoms, fruit, and harvest, existing side by side, its days are like the best half-dozen culled from a northern May. There is a popular saying that it rains thirteen months a year in Quito. But this is slander. During my long stay, there were, to be sure, few days when it did not rain; but the shower came almost always at a more or less fixed hour of the afternoon, and the resident soon learned to make his plans accordingly. The rain seemed heavier than it was in reality, for tin spouts pour the water noisily out into the cobbled streets, the wide, projecting eaves protecting the sidewalks. Now and then came a day heavy with massed clouds; far more often all but an hour or so was brilliant with sunshine.

Yet an American schoolma’am accustomed to tell her pupils that the people of Quito all dress in white because it lies on the equator, would be startled to see what attention even a woman in light-colored garb attracts in its streets. On rare occasions a man in white cotton passed through the overcoated plaza during the evening concert; but this meant only that the tri-weekly train from Guayaquil had arrived. We met, too, an American “drummer,” more noted for his ability as a “mixer” than for his knowledge of geography, who had arrived with a carefully chosen wardrobe of white linen suits—and proved a godsend to the local tailors. Incidentally, he had come down to introduce American plumbing in Ecuador; but that is another and still sadder story. The truth is that moderate winter clothing is never out of place in the city of the equator. Even at noon, with one’s shadow a round disk under foot and the sun glaring to the eyes and burning the skin in this thin, upland air, a leisurely climb up one of the longest streets brought no memories of the tropics.

As in all high altitudes, there is a marked difference between sunshine and shade. The first greeting in aquiteñohouse is sure to be “Cúbrese usted” (“Put on your hat”), and however impolite it may seem to the newcomer, none but the unwise will disregard the suggestion. Only when one has become acclimated to the room may one uncover with impunity, for to catch cold in Quito is a serious matter, and the road from a cold to pneumonia is short and swift in this thin air. Thanks to the altitude, it is the common experience of newcomers to be either unduly exhilarated or sunk in the depths of despondency.

There is not a chimney in Quito, and no breath of smoke is ever known to smudge her transparent equatorial sky. Factories, in the modern sense, are unknown; cooking is the same simple operation as in the rural districts of the Andes. Thequiteñoknows artificial heat, if at all, only by hearsay. I chanced to be in the reception-room of the Minister of Foreign Affairs one afternoon when a newly appointed Argentine ambassador dropped in for his first informal call. In the course of the polished small-talk that ensued, the diplomat mentioned a new law in Buenos Aires requiring the heating of public buildings during certain months of the year. The Minister, an unusually well-educated man for Ecuador, stared a moment with a puzzled expression, then leaning forward with undiplomatic eagerness, replied:

“Why, I suppose youwouldhave to have some kind of artificial heat in those cold countries!”

From the center of the city itself not one of the snow-clad volcanoes that encircle it like the tents of a besieging army are visible; but a climb to the rim of the basin in any direction leads to some point of vantage overlooking all Quito and its surroundings. Of a score of far-reaching views, that is perhaps most striking from the summit of the Panecillo. The “Little Loaf” that bottles up the town on the south is well-named; it resembles nothing so much as a fat biscuit, lush green in its covering of perpetual spring. Antiquarians have never agreed whether the Panecillo is a natural hill, or partly or wholly built by man. Geologically it is out of place, for all the rest of the region is rocky and broken, and nowhere else in the vicinity has nature constructed any symmetrical thing. Some have it that an already existing hill was rounded off before the Conquest, as a pedestal for the Temple of the Sun which tradition asserts adorned the summit long before the coming of the Incas. If it is entirely man-built, the construction of the pyramids was an afternoon sport in comparison. Somehow the imagination likes to picture thousands of Indians of both sexes and all ages jogging like lines of tropical ants up and down the sacred mound, with baskets of earth on their uncomplaining backs, as they still trot to-day through the streets of Quito under loads of every description.

A road runs round and round the Panecillo, making two full revolutions in so leisurely and dignified a manner that it would seem almost level did not the city below open out more and more with each step forward. At the summit, across which sweeps a never-failing wind from the south, is a view worth many times such a climb. All Quito lies huddled in its pocket below, like the body of a dull-red spider with its legs cut off at varying lengths. The city is clearly visible in its every detail, from the very roof-tiles of its houses to the gay-colored ponchos of the Indians, crawling like minute specks across its squares and along its ditch-like streets. Along the earth-wrinkle at the base of Pichincha’s long ridge are glimpses of small villages, and countless little green fields, standing edge-up on the flank of the range, seem so close at hand as to be almost within touch. Here the early riser may watch the birth of clouds. At sunrise the Andes stand out sharp and clear, as if the sky had been carefully swept during the night. Then a tiny patch of mist detaches itself here and there from the damp flanks of Pichincha, streaks of steel-gray clouds begin to rise under the warming sun, like a curtain drawn from the bottom; soon the entire ridge is steaming from end to end, and before one’s very eyescome into being and float away across the world those masses of clouds that greet the late riser full-grown.

In the transparent air of the highlands the eye embraces far more than the city. The surrounding world, being above the tree-line, is bare of any vegetation other than the brown bunch-grass; as would be the city and its environs, also, but for the thousands of eucalyptus trees imported in the days of García Moreno. Swinging round the circle, one catches sight of a dozen famous volcanoes, all more or less capped with snow. Almost due north rises the glacier-clad bulk of Cayambe, squatted squarely on the equator, perhaps forty miles away, yet seeming just over the ridge beyond the city. Near it, jagged Cotacache pierces the blue heavens. Further around comes Antisana, then Sincholagua, the giant that not many years ago blew its head off in a fit of rage. To the east stands Pasochoa, close followed by Rumiñaui, the “Stony-Eyed,” of the same name as the Inca-quiteñogeneral who continued the war against the Spaniards after the capture of Atahuallpa. Over its shoulder peers the tip of Cotapaxi; little Corazon comes next, with Iliniza striving in vain to hide behind it, until finally the eye has swung back to the broad flanks of Pichincha, up which clamber Indian huts, like captive turtles striving to escape from their enclosing basin. Above them two ragged rock and lava peaks, often streaked with snow, the Rucu and Guagua (“Man” and “Baby”) Pichincha, invisible from the city itself, stand forth close at hand against the chill steel-blue of the upland sky. Pichincha is rated a dead volcano, having given no signs of life since 1660; but the early history of Quito is strewn with its ashes and destruction. Quiteños are much given to bewailing their “triste” landscape; yet few of her canvases has Nature painted with so masterly a hand.

Three weeks after our arrival Hays burst in upon me one morning with the information that the bundles we had mailed in Jirardot had come. Well on in the afternoon the post-office officials saw fit to lay them before us. A ragged boy cut the strings and spread out the contents for customs inspection. This over, we were preparing to carry them off, when we were halted by the grunt of an official deep in some long arithmetical process at a nearby desk. By and by he rose and pushed toward each of us a long list of figures:

“These are personal belongings, chiefly clothing, all more or less worn,” I began, scenting a long controversy.

“True,señor.”

“You surely do not ask us to pay duty on personal baggage? Travelers arrive at Guayaquil every week with several trunks, and pay no duty.”

“Only that is baggage which the traveler personally brings in with him. The charges are $42.88—for each,señores, since the parcels are of the same weight.”

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

“The law goes by weight only,señor.”

“Why the 100% addition?”

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

“And this third item?”

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

“Well, what is thisaforro?”

“That is the freight from Panamá.”

“But the postage was prepaid from Jirardot to Quito—one dollar. Doesn’t Ecuador belong to the Postal Union?”

“Naturally,señor, but by a special treaty with the United States parcel-post packages pay freight across the Isthmus, and from Panamá to here.”

“And this muellaje—?”

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

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

“Those are fixed charges, irrespective of special conditions. The brokerage coversmyfee here in the office, and the stamp is that which you see on the document here. The total charges are $42.88.”

“Keep ’em,” growled Hays, turning away. “Make a present of them to your president, or dress up one of your statues of Liberty.” Naturally, he spoke in English, for we still planned to live some time in Quito.

As we reached the door, a word from the official caused us to turn back. He was up to his ears in another set of figures.

“We can call it cotton instead of clothing,” he said, presenting a new list; “then the charges will be only $12.25.”

“Make itoldclothing,” suggested Hays.

“The law mentions clothing, without qualifications,” replied the official, with that patient courtesy that is the chief virtue of his race.

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

“The law specifies bulk, not net weight.”

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

“I’ll tell you what you can do,señores,” suggested the official; “Go buy a stamped sheet of government paper at thirty cents and write the Director of Posts—”

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

“It would not be legal. Go buy a thirty-cent stamped paper and put a ten-cent stamp on it—”

“What’s that for?”

“For the up-keep of the national army. Write the Director of Posts reclaiming the duty you have paid—”

“Afterwe have paid it?” cried Hays. “Hardly! I have had too much experience with Latin-American governments.”

In the end we bought the stamped paper and wrote the director, leaving the letter with the official, who promised to forward it to his chief—to-morrow. As the bundles contained some rather indispensable odds and ends, and because I wished to investigate Ecuadorian government processes to the bottom, I followed the matter up. Next day we called twice at the post-office and finally, late in the afternoon, signed a blank request to be given the packages duty free, without which, it appeared, the matter could not be officially considered. Two days later we were informed that ajuntahad been ordered to meet and pass on the case; there being no precedent for action. A week passed. The junta showed no ability to get together. I took up the quest again—and spent an afternoon in gaining admittance to the sanctum of the Director of Posts. He was courtesy itself, but the gist of his remarks was:

“That is not baggage which comes in by mail. It is only legally so when it crosses the frontier with its owner. However, if you wish, you might call on the Minister of Public Instruction—who happens to be also at the present time acting Minister of the Interior, to which departmentthe matter refers—and ask to have the bundles passed as baggage.”

I spent the better part of two days in the anteroom of the Ministry, a sumptuous pink and blue adobe chamber with a score of bullet holes in the walls—mementoes of the latest request of the populace for the resignation of the president—only to learn:

“The law mentions no difference between old and new clothing; between fresh and soiled linen. All clothing entering Ecuador—except as baggage—pays the same duty; hence I see no way you can avoid it.”

I did not succeed in getting the matter before Congress—officially, at least—though I only missed taking it up with the president through an oversight of one of his aids. In the end I paid the $6.25 to which, by some strange manipulation, the post-office official had reduced the charges, and carried the object of controversy home to the calle Flores.

These small countries of tropical America remind one less of nations than of groups of polite bandits who have taken possession of a few mountains and valleys that they may levy tribute on whoever falls into their hands. All of them have imitated larger powers by enacting a “protective tariff,” without even the scant excuse that has been bloated into a reason for it in other lands; for here there is no industry to “protect.” Here it is not the lobbies of large financial interests that are back of the movement, but the politicians who constitute the “government”; the tariffs are “for revenue only”—largely for the pockets of the politicians themselves. We of more powerful nations hardly realize what it means to live in so small a country as Ecuador, until it is brought home by some such incident as hearing the entire Congress debating several hours on the question of whether two new electric-light bulbs shall or shall not be placed in front of the government “palace.”

Religiously, Quito is still in the Middle Ages. Looked down upon from any point of vantage, it has the aspect of an ecclesiastical capital. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that half the city is taken up by the Church. Besides its many bulking “temples” and innumerable chapels, enormous sections of the town are swallowed up within the confines of convents and monasteries. The largest is San Francisco, reputed the most extensive in America. The Franciscans got in on the ground floor in Quito. The ink with which the city was founded was barely dry when three monks of that order arrived afootand breathless from Guayaquil; to be given an immense grant of land running far up the flanks of Pichincha. The great stone cloisters were a century in building; a veritable Chinese Wall of brick, backed by clustered hovels of the poor, encloses what would have been six city blocks, and the holdings of the order in haciendas and other rich properties spread far and wide over Ecuador. During the irruption of Pichincha in 1575, the Franciscans won the perennial worship of the masses by the simple method of raising aloft the Hostia and commanding the flow of lava to cease—and continuing to hold it aloft until the command was obeyed. To-day they still loll under such withered laurels.

Two youths of Quito’s “best families” accompanied me to San Francisco. A monk in brown greeted my companions as befitted their high rank and potential power of beneficence; yet with an undercurrent of insincerity and of dislike for these sons of “Liberals,” which he was unable wholly to conceal. We passed through several flowery patios musical with fountains and surrounded by pillared arcades, off which opened large, vaulted chambers, to an Elysian orchard under the trees of which a score of well-fed, well-slept monks strolled in pastoral contentment far from the hubbub and cares of the modern world. Cigarette butts littered the floor of a kiosk in the center; scarcely a face was to be seen in which the signs of frequent debauch could not plainly be read. The walls and ceiling of the adjoining church were so covered with gold that the imagination harked back to the ransom of Atahuallpa. My companions whispered that an American had recently offered $15,000 for the privilege of removing what remained of the genuine metal, promising to regild the church so expertly that the transaction would never be detected. The offer had been considered, but declined when some suspicion of the deal reached the public ear. The monks were still open to similar propositions, however. Over a door of the monastery hung an old painting of “María Dolorosa” by a famous Spanish artist. One of my companions, himself a painter of some ability, offered a tempting sum for permission to replace the “dusty old thing” with a brand new copy; and the impression left by a deal of murmuring and pantomime was that the offer would eventually be accepted.

Ecuadorian soldiers before the national “palace”

Quito does not put its faith in small locks and keys. Many a shop containing hardly $100 worth of goods has a half-dozen padlocks and interior bolts

When we asked permission to climb to the tower for a view of the town, however, the monk gave us a quick, sidelong glance and regretted that the Father Superior no longer permitted it. My companions exchanged winks, but found no opportunity to enlighten meuntil we had taken our ceremonious leave. Once outside I learned—to my astonishment—that not merely foreigners resent having each night’s sleep broken up into a series of detached naps by the unearthly din of Quito’s church-bells. A few months before, several young men of the well-to-do class had formed a conspiracy to taste the unknown luxury of one night of unbroken slumber. Gaining admission on various pretexts to all the church-towers of the city, the conspirators had stolen thebadajos—clappers, I believe we call them in English—and got rid of them so effectually that few were ever discovered. The priests were distracted—until their faithful henchmen of the masses had replaced the pilfered property with pieces of railroad iron. Since then the church-towers had been closed to the educated youth of the city.

Not far from San Francisco rises the floridfaçadeof “La Compañía.” The Jesuits reached the present capital of Ecuador a bit later than many of their competitors, but they quickly overcame the handicap. They established the firstboticas, or drug-stores, and brooked no competition. Besides enormous tracts of the most fertile land in the colony, they were granted a monopoly of cattle-breeding and, being free from taxes and the necessity of paying the King’s share, and holding the Indians in virtual slavery at less than a nominal wage, most of which returned to their coffers in the form of church tithes and levies, they easily choked private competition and soon outdistanced in wealth even the Franciscans. Their expulsion from Spanish soil greatly reduced their power and holdings. To-day, what was once a part of their monastery is occupied by the University and the National Library, but they are still scarcely cramped for space. An Alsatian Jesuit, of an esthetical cast of countenance in striking contrast to his Ecuadorian brothers, led me fearlessly even into the belfry. He was a plainspoken man, for all his astuteness—or perhaps by reason of it—and openly bewailed the immorality of the native friars and what he called the “silly superstitions” of the people. The dormitories of the boarding-school within the monastery were divided into small cells by low wooden partitions covered with chicken-wire, like the ten-cent lodging-houses of Chicago. Before I had time to put a question, the Alsatian explained:

“In these countries we must keep the boys locked in their own rooms at night, for morality’s sake.”

It is more than unusual in Latin-America, but at least one enterprising pupil found it possible to “work his way” through thecolegioof the Jesuit Fathers of Quito. His fame was still green among the gilded youths of the city. By the rules of the institution each student is required to go to confession once a week. The enterprising lad long relieved his comrades of the unpleasant formality by impersonating each in turn before the perforated disk—at the equivalent of fifty cents a head.

Merced, Corazon, Buen Pastor, San Augustín, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Carmen Antigua, Carmen Moderno, San Juan ... to name all the orders that occupy huge spaces within the city of Quito would be like writing an ecclesiastical directory. Down at the end of the calle Flores the Dominicans dwell in a monastery little less extensive than that of the Franciscans. Their wealth may be surmised from the fact that in colonial days they held the monopoly of supplying all liquor used in “divine worship” throughout the colony. In the center of the Plaza Santo Domingo is a statue of Sucre, companion of Bolívar in the wars of Spanish-American independence,—a splendid bronze of an imaginary Hercules that should be set up in some gymnasium as a model—concerning which there runs a tale suggestive of local conditions. Soon after its erection an Indian living far up the mountainside above the suburb of Guarico lost his pig. He tried every known means of recovering the animal,—prayed to every available saint with any reputation for miracles, squandered his meager substance in burning candles before every shrine in Quito, and purchased many a priestly prayer. All in vain; the pig was not to be found. At length aquiteño—whether a wag or a sincere believer is not reported—whispered to the distracted Indian that the most powerful saint of all was the new one in the Plaza Santo Domingo. The credulous fellow lost no time on his way to the square, where he knelt with a lighted candle on either side of him before the pedestal of the Hero of Ayacucho. When he looked up from his first invocation he noted that the statue was pointing to the battlefield on which its original defeated the Spaniards, far up the slope of Pichincha, which chanced also to be the location of the Indian’s hut. He hurried homeward and, sure enough, found the pig in a hollow not far from his dwelling. Since then “Saint Sucre” has had a great vogue with the Indian populace of Quito.

It would be out of place to enumerate the many proofs, from personal experiences to matters of common knowledge, from national literature to frequent notorious scandals, of the moral laxity of thequiteñopriesthood. Whatever they may be elsewhere, celibacy and theconfessional are undeniably ill-chosen institutions for a race of Ecuadorian caliber. The non-Catholic would not dream of berating the churchmen in any such terms as those which frequently fall from the lips of educated men of Quito. More than once I have heard a devoutquiteñamother bewail the fact that she dare not send her daughter to confession, though convinced that the ceremony was requisite to the saving of her soul. One looks in vain for any connection whatever between religion and morality in this typical Andean capital. The sanctimonious oldbeatas, wrapped in their black mantos, who haunt the churches and accompany every religious procession with tears of hysterical ecstasy coursing down their cheeks are not infrequently procurers and go-betweens of the human vultures that dwell in, as well as out of, the monasteries. The street-walkers of Quito are almost all fervent mass-goers. Scores of the same faces that peer invitingly out upon the passerby at night may be seen next morning kneeling on the pavement of the cathedral or walking on their knees around the entire circle of plaster saints, reciting a prayer formula before each. Nor is this hypocrisy. These victims see no incongruity between the evening’s doings and the morning’s occupation. To the masses, religion is a mixture of idol worship and the performance of fixed ceremonies, wholly divorced from their personal actions. The sins of daily life are wiped out by a quarter-hour in the confessional; absolution is granted for the payment of a fee and the performance of a set devotion. The brain cells where real morality might find a foothold are packed with absurd catechisms that leave no room for it; and of religion there remains nothing but unthinkingcostumbreand unreasoning fanaticism.

Quito has been called the most fanatical town of South America. Among a score like it, the present archbishop tells the following story in his “History of Ecuador.” About two hundred years ago some one broke into one of the churches and stole the sacred wafers, together with the gold ciborium in which they were kept. A few days later the stolen property was found lying in the refuse of a ditch. Amid great weeping, a procession of the entire population bore the sacred emblem back to its church. For weeks the whole town dressed in deepest mourning; theaudienciagave all its attention and the police force all its efforts to running down those “vile traitors, bestial swine, and venial sinners,” as the gentle archbishop calls them, leaving little misdemeanors like robbery and murder to look after themselves. Not a clue was uncovered. At length a famous Jesuit of the time preached asermon that lashed the populace into such fervor that the congregation poured forth into the streets beating themselves with chains and scourges, most of them, men and women, naked to the waist—I am quoting the archbishop—in a procession and religious fury that lasted from eight at night until two in the morning. A scapegoat was imperative. The officers of theaudiencia, in peril of being themselves forced to assume thatrôle, redoubled their efforts, and at length found, some distance south of the city, three Indians and a half-caste who were reputed to have confessed to the nefarious crime. The four miscreants were brought back to the city, kicked about the streets by the populace, trussed up in chains in the church while the priest preached a four-hour sermon on “the most atrocious crime in the history of Quito,” and were finally hanged, drawn, and quartered, and hung up, still dripping with blood, in sixteen parts of the town. The priests and their followers dug up a potful of earth where the holy wafers had been found, and deposited it in a heavy vase of solid gold that is still one of the precious relics of the cathedral. Then they caused to be erected over the spot the chapel of Jerusalem, where it stands to this day. “And,” adds the archbishop, “nofiel[faithful one] will deny that they met their just fate for so vile and unprecedented a sacrilege.”

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