Chapter 16

A corner of Quito—looking through a garbage-hole into one of the many ravines by which the city is broken up

Ah, but that was two centuries ago. True, but permit me to bring the fanaticism of Quito up to date. Less than a year before our arrival the perennial struggle between the Liberals and the Conservatives, the latter the church party, had broken out again in revolution. A queer-looking little man, with a white goatee sprouting from a mild-tempered chin, and wearing habitually a hat that would have been the envy of a slap-stick comedian, had for years been president of Ecuador. He had stolen unusually little for a Latin-American president, and had not allowed his friends to steal more than the average. Moreover, he had done the country much service, among other things having induced an American to complete the railroad from the coast to Quito. Also he had curtailed some of the unbridled graft of the church; and strangely enough the church had resented that species of reform and turned the power of the Conservatives against him. To be sure, the queer little man had objected to surrendering his office to a newly elected incumbent; but that is a common South American peccadillo. When the populace rose and drove him out, he went down to the coast and gathered an army of his fellow-costeños. But luck had deserted him. After a few battles he was captured, together withseveral sons, nephews, and henchmen. The Conservatives were triumphant. The Government ordered the captives to be sent up to Quito. The general in command at Guayaquil protested that such action was unsafe until the fury of the populace evaporated. The Government assured him the danger was visionary, and repeated the order. A special train was made up, and set out on the long climb to the plateau. That was on a Saturday. Next morning a priest, noted for his virulent eloquence, preached a sermon that lashed the church-going masses into fury. At noon word came that the train had arrived, and the prisoners hurried by automobile to the Panóptico, the wheel-shaped penitentiary up on the lower flanks of Pichincha. The populace quickly gathered. The bullet-holes through the false stone walls of the dismal little mud cells, in the narrow corners of which the prisoners crouched, were still fresh when we wandered through the place, months later. Among the most fanatical of the mob were the police and those whose duty it was to guard the prison. In the excitement some twoscore prisoners escaped, and joined the rioters. The little ex-president and his companions, dead or dying, were stripped naked, ropes were tied to their ankles, and they were dragged for hours through the cobbled streets of Quito, the frenzied populace raising the echoes of the surrounding ranges with shouts of, “Long Live the Church!” “Viva la Virgen María!”

I have two photographs taken by Don Jesús, nephew of my host, from the window of what was later my own room, as the bodies of the former president and his eldest son were passing. They show a throng made up exclusively of cholos, those of mixed blood, who constitute the bulk of Quito’s population. Not a white collar of thegente decenteor the broad felt hat of an Indian is to be seen. On through the entire length of the city the barbaric procession continued. Near the Plaza San Blas a swarm of the lowest women in town descended with knives from their hovels and carried off gruesome mementoes of the orgy. At length the mob reached the Ejido, the broad, green playground of Quito, where they hacked in pieces the bodies of the victims with machetes and whatever implement came to hand. Some carried to their huts as souvenirs the heads of the ex-president and his sons, from which they were recovered with difficulty only after the frenzy had died down and been slept off. The rest was piled in heaps and burned. Such werelos arrastres(“the draggings”), to which the educatedquiteñorefers, if at all, in shamed undertones.

Quito is not so light of complexion as Bogotá. Not merely is herpercentage of Indian blood higher, but even those of unmixed European ancestry have a sallow or olive tint, and little of the color in their cheeks frequent in the more rigorous capital of Colombia. Negroes are unknown as residents. There is a careful gradation in caste, yet chiefly a void in place of what, in other lands, would be a middle class. The population is divided rather sharply between those brutalized from carrying ox-loads on their backs, and those who remain soft and effeminate from careful avoidance of any muscular exertion. For even the cholo is economically either Indian or white, depending on his wealth or occupation. To carry even a small package through the streets is to jeopardize one’s standing as a member of the upper class. “Don’t hurry,” a frock-tailedquiteñotold me in all seriousness one day. “People will think you areocupado,” busy, that is, with vulgar work. It is customary to raise one’s hat to every male acquaintance “of your own class or above,” to pause and shake hands with every one considered your equal, to ask him how he hasamanecido(“dawned”), to inquire after his family individually, and to shake hands again before parting; and that as often as you meet him, though it be every half-hour during the day. Americans who have lived long in South America have the hand-shaking habit chronically. The greeting, or more exactly the acknowledgment of the greeting, of one’s inferior varies from a patronizing heartiness to the corner tailor to a half-audible grunt to an Indian. The latter is always addressed in the “tu” form, “because,” as one of my Beau Brummel acquaintances put it, “there is no reason whatever to show any respect to the Indian.” During several months’ acquaintance I found no great reason to show any to the speaker; but that, perhaps, is beside the point.

How wholly lacking the place is in genuine democracy is frequently illustrated. I was strolling in theplaza mayorone day, for instance, with the grandson of the “Washington of Ecuador,” a youth of American school training and of unusually high standards, when he stepped on the flagging surrounding the central monument. The cholo policeman on guard hesitated, but finally screwed up unusual courage and informed the youth in a courteous, not to say humble, manner that he had been ordered not to let any one walk on the flagging. The descendant of Ecuador’s founder turned a brilliant red, as if his noble house had been vilely insulted, then so white that his blond hair seemed to become dark brown. He strode across to the officer, who was considerably larger than he, caught him by the coat, and all but jerkedhim off his feet. The policeman abjectly apologized. The “best people” of Quito do not realize that it is not the individual policeman, their “inferior,” giving them orders, but lawful and orderly society speaking through him.

As in the days of Stevenson’s travels, a century ago, “the principal occupation of persons of rank is visiting their estates, particularly at harvest-time.” By far the greater portion of the year they spend in town, however, leaving their haciendas in charge ofmayordomoslittle acquainted with modern agricultural methods. The city has so few recreative attractions that it is hard for a man of education to avoid a more or less studious life, be it only as a pastime. Yet Quito does not even aspire to rival Bogotá as the “Athens of South America.” Ecuador is not without her literature, but it has come from other towns more frequently than from the capital. The game of politics, not without its perils, engrosses the attention of many. Then, as in most Latin-American countries, not a few dissipate their energies in the “pursuit of pleasure” of a rather specific kind. So assiduously does the averagequiteñodevote himself to this from early youth that it is not strange that an old man of thedecenteclass is rarely seen. There is a considerable provincialism, even among the best educated classes. I heard often such questions as “What is a sleigh?” “When is summer?” The story is well vouched for that a congressman asked a colleague just back from abroad, “Can a man get to Europe in three weeks on a good mule?”

The women of the well-dressed class in Quito are less given to the display of mustaches than those of Bogotá. Not a few are distinctly attractive, particularly in early youth. In later life too many suggest in their features some years of a rather harrowing existence. Outspokenquiteñoslay this condition at the door of the priests and friars, but mere economic pressure probably plays at least as considerable a part. The up-keep of so many enormous ecclesiastical institutions cannot but drain the resources of so stagnant a city. Wealth does not abound, and feminine opportunity to earn a livelihood is narrowly restricted. It is not strange, then, if more than one family still rated in the gentle decente class remains with no other barrier against starvation than the youthful freshness of its daughters. In most parts of the world a glance suffices to distinguish a woman of public life from her respected sisters. In Quito it is not so easy. Indeed, there seems to be no hard and fast line between the two classes. Certain undercurrents suggest a tacit admission that some families have only one means oftiding over their existence until a lucky turn of politics, or of the lottery wheel, sets them on their feet again. Then, if the girl’s career has not been too public, she may be bestowed on a husband of a somewhat lower social level.

Let me not leave the impression of a general laxity among the women of Quito. The sheltered daughters of the most responsible classes are models of modesty and domesticity. But he who dwells any length of time in the city would be blind to overlook certain facts, be they the result of an impoverished society or more directly fostered by those ecclesiastical elements to whom the embittered men of higher rank charge them.

Thus far I have said little of the, if not most numerous, at least most conspicuous class in Quito,—the Indians. Ignoring the very considerable number in whose veins runs a greater or less percentage of aboriginal blood, those in whom it is still without admixture make up perhaps forty per cent. of the population, and give the city most of its color. There is not a house in town, from the bright-yellow, three-story adobe dwelling of the president down, without its Indians,—family servants and burden-bearers huddled in the mud cells about the cobbled patio of the lower story, or homeless wretches who lie by night in any unoccupied corner and pick up a precarious existence by day in competition with donkeys and pack-animals. Their earth-floored kennels form the tassel-ends of almost every street; they scatter out along all the highways, and dot the flanks of every range and mountain spur in the vicinity.

If they have changed since the Conquest, it is for the worse. In habits and condition they vary scarcely at all from those of the dreary Andean villages through which we had passed. Theirs is a purely animal existence. They have not the faintest notion of any line between filth and cleanliness, avoiding only that which is obviously poison, by an instinct common to the lower animals. I have seen them drink water I am sure a thirsty horse would not touch, and that despite the fact that fresh water was to be had a few yards away. They literally never wash so much as a finger, except on some such occasion as a church fiesta, when they may pause at a pool or mud-hole on the edge of town to scrub their feet with a stone. They speak a debauched dialect of Quichua, the tongue of the Incas, mixed with some words of the conquered Caras, though all understand Spanish, or at least the Indian-Spanish spoken in Quito.

After the bullfight a yearling is often turned into the ring for the amusement of the youthful male population of Quito

A group of the Indians that form so large a percentage of Quito’s population. The hats are light gray, the ponchos, skirts, and shawls each some crude, brilliant color

Many consider the Andean Indian a debased Mongolian type, atheory not without its basis in his features. In a curious old book of the National Library of Ecuador—the “History of the Kingdom of Quito,” written in 1789, the Jesuit Padre Velasco takes up the question of the origin of the Indian and settles it—at least to his own satisfaction. To begin with, the Church has declared the inhabitants of the New World “rational,” that is, descended from Adam and Eve. That point being disposed of, it follows that “the men and animals who were found in America must be descendants of those who emerged from Noah’s ark; for does not the Bible say thatallthe world was covered with water? Even granted, for the sake of argument,” continues the razor-minded padre, “that the mountains of South America protruded a bit above the surface of those waters, is it conceivable that man could live for months on the highest peaks, eating snow, drinking snow, and sleeping in snow? Could he even have stood up for nearly a year on those pyramids of snow and ice?” I give it up. Ask some polar explorer. What then remains of the argument of those who still cling to the authoctonomous heresy? Obviously there is no other recourse then to admit that the ancestors of the race found their way to America by the Behring Strait, or across the Pacific from the shores of Asia.

Whatever his origin, the Indian of the Andes is a distinct reality, distinct, indeed, to all the five senses, and he varies little throughout the length of the continent. In build he is stocky and short, very muscular, with the strength of a mule for carrying loads on his back, indefatigable on foot, but weak for other labor. His color is between a tarnished copper and a more or less intense bronze. His head is large; his neck thick and long, his eyes small, black, and penetrating, yet at times strangely suggesting those of a dead fish; his nose is bulky, and somewhat flattened and spread; his teeth are white, even, and always in splendid condition; his long hair, worn sometimes flying loose, sometimes in a single braid wound with red tape, is jet-black, without luster, abundant, perfectly straight, strong and coarse as that of a horse’s mane, without even a tendency to baldness. His lips are thick and heavy, the lower one somewhat hanging, giving him a suggestion of sulkiness. His forehead is low, his mouth large, and his prominent cheek-bones and large ears give his face an appearance of great width. He is broad-shouldered, with a chest like a barrel, but slender of leg and small of foot. He grows no beard, and has almost no hair on the body.

Men and women alike, except a rare male with a sole of home-tannedleather secured by thongs, are bare-legged at least halfway to the knees, their feet, like calloused hoofs, marked by stony trails and years of barnyard wallowing. The male wears a broad, round, light-gray hat of thick felt, a kind of pajama shirt or blouse of fancily colored calico, orlienzo, a very roomy pair of “panties” of thinnest white cotton that reach anywhere from his knees to halfway to his undomesticated feet. Besides these garments, he is never seen without his ruana, or poncho, which serves him as a cloak and carry-all by day, and as a bed and covering by night. This is always of some startling, crude color, deep red predominating, with such screaming combinations as magenta and purple, carmine and yellow, though when sufficiently soiled and sun-bleached, the old rose and velvety brown, the brick red or turquoise blue, take on all the soft richness of Oriental rugs. It is this commonly homespun garment, and the corresponding one of the women, that make Quito such a color-splashed city.

The woman, too, copies the dress of her ancestors to remote generations. She wears the same hat as the male—hat-pins are unknown to her, all down the Andes—a beltless waist of coarse cloth, either open, or thin and ragged; several strips of coloredbayeta(a woolish shoddy) wrapped tightly around her draft-horse hips from waist to calves in guise of skirt, always slit open on one side, showing an inner petticoat—once white—though sometimes in striking solid colors, in marked contrast to the outer skirt; and a blanket, smaller, but as audible in hue as the poncho of the male, thrown round her shoulders like a shawl. She is fond of gaudy earrings of colored glass or similar rubbish, ranging in size from large to colossal; from one to a dozen strings of cheap red beads, often the bean of a wild plant indigenous to the region, hang around her neck; generally brass rings adorn every finger; and often many beads are wound round and round her bare arms. She is completely devoid of feminine charm. She needs none, for she is amply worth her keep as a beast of burden.

As far as I know, there is no law in Quito requiring an Indian woman not to be seen without a babe in arms, or, rather, in shawl; but if one exists, it is seldom violated. In an hour I have seen, by actual count, more than three hundred female aborigines pass my window in the calle Flores, and not a score of them but bore on her back a child of from two weeks to two years of age, to say nothing of several other bundles and her whirling spindle. When the infant is tiny, it is carried lengthwise at the bottom of the blanket-shawl knotted across the mother’s chest. When it is older, it is tossed or climbs astride her broad back,lying face down, with legs spread, while she throws her outer garment about it, ties the knot on her chest—or on her forehead if the child is heavy—and trots along at her work the day through, without the least apparent notice of the offspring. The babe falls asleep, or gazes with curious, yet rather dull, eyes at the world as it speeds by, peering over the mother’s shoulder like an engineer from his cab, eats such food or refuse as falls into its hands, or plays with the mother’s tape-wound braid. The Indian woman never carries her offspring in any other manner unless, in herrôleas a common carrier, she picks up a load too bulky or heavy to place the infant atop, such as a bedstead, a bureau, or two full-sized sacks of wheat—these are not exaggerations, but frequent cargoes—when she hangs the child in front, in the concave of her figure, like a baby kangaroo in the maternal pouch, knotting the supporting garment across her shoulders.

The youngest baby is already inconceivably dirty, yet almost always robustly healthy in appearance, though the infant mortality of the class is appalling. It is an unusual experience to hear an Indian baby cry. From its earliest years it seems to adopt that uncomplaining attitude toward life that is so marked a characteristic of the adults. Though she treats her offspring with no active unkindness—in all the years I spent in South America I have never seen an Indian mother strike a child—the aboriginal woman seems to endure it passively, like any other burden thrust upon her from which there is no escape, carrying it where it will be least troublesome, and never, at least openly, showing any caressing fondness for it. The child old enough to toddle about the streets often remains on the mother’s back, as if to hold the place for the next comer. It is a common experience to hear an Indian child ask in a perfectly fluent tongue for a serving at the maternal source of supply.

There is scant difference in appearance between the two sexes, and none whatever in their labor, except that, if there is only one load, the woman carries it, and the baby in addition. In both the half-breed and Indian classes the women are more uncleanly than the men. Like the latter, they work at all the coarser unskilled tasks, shoveling earth, mixing and carrying mortar, cobbling streets; while in the matters of loads there is nothing under two hundred pounds in weight which, once on their backs, they cannot jog along under at a kind of limping gait that seems tireless. Almost any day the furniture and entire possessions of some moving household is displayed to public gaze as it jogs through town on the backs of an Indian family.The chief water-supply of Quito is a constant string of Indians from the fountain opposite the government palace, with huge, red earthen jars sitting on their hips and supported by a thong across the forehead. It is a commonplace to meet an Indian carrying the gaudy image of some saint larger than himself. Cheap coffins of half-rotten boards, painted sky-blue or pink and decorated with strips of gilded paper, frequently mince past, secured by the brilliant poncho of the carrier, knotted across his chest. I had occasion one day to transport a typewriter a few blocks. The Indian prepared to sling it on his back with a rope. When I objected to this method, I found that the fellow not only could not carry it in his hands, but that he could not lift it to his head. When I placed it there, however, he ambled away as if he had nothing on his mind but his hat.

Frequently an entire family takes a large job, such as carrying a building from one end of town to another, adobe brick by brick. Such a one passed my window for weeks. All day long they dog-trotted back and forth in single file along the line of smooth-worn flagstones in the middle of the street, their bare feet making absolutely no sound, never a word or a sign of complaint finding outward expression. The man and woman each bore the same number of mud bricks piled on their backs, and the latter always carried the baby in her pouch, though they made a hundred trips a day. Why the infant could not have been left at one end or the other of the journey it was hard to guess. Two children, one a little fellow of five with one brick on his back, his brother of seven or eight with two, toiled all day long between father and mother, as if they were being systematically trained for the only life before them.

The Andean Indian is even less like the tall and haughty redskin of our country in manner than in appearance. Compared with him, the Mexican Indian is self-assertive, bold, and ferocious. Silent and abstracted, he takes no apparent heed of what goes on about him. Of phlegmatic temperament, a truly wooden equanimity of temper, melancholy, taciturn, and reserved, he is noted above all for a distrust that is perhaps natural, but is more likely the result of centuries of privations since the coming of the Spaniards. He has a blind submission to authority, great attachment to the house in which he lives, and is so cowardly that he lets himself be dominated by the most despicable members of other races. A complete outsider in government and public affairs, he is treated by the rest of the population like a domestic animal. The merchant of Quito who requires a carrier to deliversome bundle does not wait for one to offer himself. He steps into the street and snatches the first Indian who passes, though he be on his way to a dying parent, or preparing his child’s funeral; and the Indian performs the task as uncomplainingly as some mechanical device, and returns to wait perhaps an hour or two for the few cents the merchant chooses to give him. Only when he is drunk does the aboriginal’s manner change. Then he is garrulous and mildly disorderly. But even on a Saturday afternoon, when the highways are lined with Indians of both sexes reeling homeward, the gringo passes unnoticed, in marked contrast with the gantlet of insolence, if not, indeed, of actual danger, which he must run under like circumstances in the highlands of Mexico.

The newcomer’s sympathy for the Indian of Quito gradually evaporates with the discovery that he is utterly devoid of ambition, as completely indifferent to his own betterment as any four-footed animal. Pad out this fact with all its details and ramifications, discarding entirely the American’s ingrown tendency to imbue every human being with a striving character, and the hopelessness of the Indian’s condition will be more clearly realized. The Government of Ecuador gives scant attention to the education of the aboriginals; even if it provided schools and forced attendance, there would still remain the problem of arousing in these people any interest in, or effort for, self-improvement.

A simple episode will go far toward visualizing the temperament of the Indian of Quito, and perhaps make a bit clearer the ease with which Pizarro and his handful of tramps overthrew the Empire of the Incas. I had gone out for a stroll one afternoon along the road to Guallabamba. Some three miles from town a light rain turned me back. There were no houses near, but numbers of Indians were going and coming. A short distance ahead was a group engaged in noisy contention. Suddenly a handsome, muscular young Indian broke away and ran toward me, his long, black hair streaming out behind him. At his heels, cursing, came three cholos, in the dark hats, more sober blankets and trousers of their caste, with shorn hair and straggling suggestions of mustaches. I was not armed—one does not trouble to carry weapons about Quito—and in my bespattered road garb I had certainly no appearance of protective authority. When he reached me, however, the frightened Indian, instead of running on, turned as sharply as about a corner, and pattered along close at my heels, breathing quickly. I continued my stroll, while the drunkenhalf-breeds, far more muscular than I, hovered about ten steps in the rear, crying:

“Ah, coward! You run to theseñorfor protection!”

Yet not a step nearer did they approach during the furlong or more that the procession lasted. Then, as we passed the entrance to an hacienda, the Indian suddenly sprinted away up its avenue of eucalyptus-trees faster than the cholos could follow. When they overtook me again, one protested in plaintive tones:

“Ah,señor,ese sinvergüenza de Indiodid not deserve your protection.”

Then they fell behind, while I, who had been an entirely passive actor in all the scene, strolled on into the city. It would be hard to imagine a similar incident in Mexico.

This Indian’s older daughter knocked at my door one day to say that, as it was “Don Panchito’s” birthday, the celebration in thesalanext my own room would probably keep me awake all night anyway, and had I not better join the party. By eight the beating of the piano had begun. When I appeared, “Don Panchito” took me on a tour of the guests, seated in solemn quadrangle around the four walls of the room, the sexes segregated. The South American has a custom which might well be imported into our own land, to the relief of frequent embarrassment. As he was introduced, each man rose, bowed profoundly, and announced his own name in clear-cut tones,—“Enrique Burgos de Perez y Silva, servidor de usted.” The women remained seated, but made their names similarly known. A professional pianist, a patched, dishevelled, and hungry-looking young man of some Indian blood, had already begun a very nearly continuous performance at fast time, with barely two-minute intervals between the half-hour dances. In a corner sat motionless all the evening two professional chaperons—for “Don Panchito” was a widow—sour-faced, sleepy-looking old women of none too immaculate habits, wrapped in black mantos from which only nose and eyes protruded.

There were no dance cards. Each pair started in or stopped when they saw fit, quite irrespective of the others. A man stepped across the room, held out his gloved right hand to a girl, without a word, and she rose to accept an invitation that apparently could not be refused—at least, not one failed to accept it, though some of the more attractive were led out upon the floor at least fifty times in the course of the evening. Evidently it was “bad form” to carry on a conversation out of hearing of the chaperon. Neither dancer visibly spoke a word untilthe girl wished to stop, when she murmured “gracias” and was at once returned in silence to her seat. As the evening wore on, several young fops dropped in, alleging conflicting engagements as an excuse for their tardiness, and joined the celebration without removing their lavender gloves, which, indeed, the chilliness of the room pardoned. One of the newcomers, in particular, stirred up the ladies to almost human expressions of interest. He was son of the Minister of the Interior, just back from Paris, and lost no opportunity to display the wisdom he had gleaned in the “Capital of the World,”—a rather sharp-cornered French and an authoritative knowledge of new and more complicated manners of hopping about the floor to music. At frequent intervals our eight-year-old Indian slavey, Mercedes, familiarly known as “Meech,” arrived with fiery drinks in which we toasted “Don Panchito,” even the young girls tossing it off without a tear. At midnight the festival raged at its height. At one o’clock we sat down to dinner in a temperature far from agreeable to those of us who did not dance. Then the celebration broke out anew, though the chaperons and pianist, and even “Don Panchito,” had disappeared. The young fops removed their gloves and took turns on the stool. The clock was striking four when I retired, and little “Meech” was still serving liquid gladness as uncomplainingly and expressionlessly as ever. When I awoke at eight, she had just finished tidying up thesala, and was beginning her regular daily labors.

Gradually we made the acquaintance of various celebrities. There was “Chispa,” for instance, the little Spanish bull-fighter who gave a benefit and “last final performance” in the plaza de toros each Sunday. The royal sport of Spain is, at best, a gloomy pastime in Spanish-America. Even when skilled toreadors from across the Atlantic are to be had, the bulls raised in the Andean highlands are somansothat the game degenerates into little more than public butchery. The killing of horses is forbidden in the bull-ring of Quito, both by law and because of the high price of those rare animals, and the toreador is not permitted to stir up a sluggish bull by explodingbanderillos de fuegoon his flanks. “Chispa,” however, who was just such a “spark” as hisapodosuggested, would have enlivened the most dreary entertainment, though his companions were local amateurs, so clumsy that he was called upon to save the life of each a dozen times during each corrida. Each succeeding “despedida” had some new feature to draw recreation-hungry Quito within the circular mud walls. One Sunday the program announced the engagement of “Hombres deYerba” and “Hombres Gordos” (“Men of Hay” and “Fat Men”), and the inventive Spaniard was all but forced to lock the gates against the tailend of the throng. One of his amateurs was bound round and round with green alfalfa and set in the center of the ring. The bull, however, either was not hungry or in no mood for jests, and tossed the helpless fellow scornfully from his path. The “Hombres Gordos” were made up with clown faces topped by silk hats, their bodies padded to enormous size with excelsior. Still the protection was not sufficient. One was thrown so savagely that the audience agreed he had been killed—until the evening paper announced he had merely broken a leg and several ribs. The fat man is no more beloved in Quito than elsewhere, and the merriment went on unabated. It isquiteñocustom for the matador tobrindar(dedicate the death of each bull) to some celebrity or person of means in the audience, tossing the favored one his cap to hold during the killing, and expecting it to be thrown back with a roll of bills in proportion to the skill of thecoup de grace. Toward the end of the “last final performances” the supply of local “personages” grew so low that the eye of “Chispa,” roving around the circle, fell upon Hays; but even as he opened his mouth for the speech of dedication, the ex-corporal faded from public view.

Then there was Umberto Peyrounel, our first really and truly, flesh and blood “andarín.” Derived from the Spanish wordandar(to walk), the term is used in the Andes to designate a foreigner who travels on foot, without any particular excuse for traveling at all; a peculiarly Latin type of tramp, loving to attract attention and making his living by so doing. We ourselves had often been styled “andarines” on the journey from Bogotá, though this genuine article scornfully rated us “excursionistas.” The distinction seems to be, not whether a man “andars” on foot, but whether he makes his way without using his own money, if such he possesses.

Probably not his own in spite of the circumstantial evidence against him

The undertaker’s delivery wagon. The coffin is sky-blue with gilt trimmings

We saw Umberto first at a Sunday night concert, where he was inconspicuously amusing himself by running races with several hundred newsboys and bootblacks around the plaza mayor. A stocky fellow, tall as Hays, of middle age, he was modestly dressed in a suit of sky-blue corduroy, leather leggings, and a velvet cap of the Dutch fisherman or Quartier Latin style. Across his chest hung a row of large medals; a flaring, wax-ended mustache all but touched his ears, and his luxurious black hair hung loose almost to his waist. When he called on us next morning his coiffure was done up in a simple maidenlyknot at the back of his head. On closer examination the gleaming brass medals seemed to be glorified tobacco tags. He announced himself the son of Italian parents, born in the Argentine, of a sect corresponding to the Huguenots of France, known as the “martyrs of Piedmont.” Leaving home three years before, he had walked across his native land to Chile, thence to Quito, where he was preparing to push on to Bogotá. To the people along the way—and even to us, until he caught the gleam in our eyes—he announced that two great dailies of Buenos Aires and New York had offered him a prize of $100,000 to make the journey on foot from the door of one to that of the other. On the road he was accompanied by a dog, wore silver-plated spurs as a sign of his rank as acaballero, and carried, in addition to a revolver and rifle, some forty pounds of baggage, most of which consisted of bulky ledgers filled with hand-written statements of his arrival and departure on foot, signed by every corregidor,alcalde, or native official of whatever species, by merchants, lawyers, and editors of every place, large or small, he had visited, each adorned with its official seal. This collecting of signatures was no mere whim; it was the customary excuse of his fellows for surreptitiously appealing to charity. At every hamlet he opened the ledgers—ostensibly to give the residents the pleasure of adding their names to the roll of honor—and at the psychological moment slipped into their hands a printed card bearing a subtle plea for assistance in winning his great “prize.” All genuine “andarines,” Umberto assured us, did the same, and he berated us soundly for not having adopted the custom.

“How can you prove to the public that you have made the journey on foot, if you do not have the testimonials of distinguished persons along the way?” he cried, scornfully.

“The public has its choice of believing it or jumping off the end of the dock,” Hays answered for both of us.

In plain English, Peyrounel was a beggar, though he would have been shocked beyond words to hear us say so. He called himself a “Champion of God,” a bitter enemy of the priesthood, and in each town of importance gave a lecture on his journey and, later on, “if the population showed enough intelligence,” a sermon. The religious fanatic so often proves, sooner or later, to be in a sexually neurotic state that we were not surprised when, several days later, Peyrounel burst out, apropos of nothing:

“Why do girls always become enamored of strange travelers? No sooner do I enter a town than several maidens fall desperately in lovewith me. I can’t be expected to satisfy them all, can I? One has one’s work to do.”

“Wooden-headed ass that I am!” growled Hays. “If I’d only thought to grow curls!”

“Between you and me, as men of the same profession,” went on the collector of signatures, “I don’t mind telling you that I ride now and then by train through a bad piece of country. What’s the use of walking hundreds of hot desert miles, when the people will never know the difference? For instance; here, under the seal of ——, it says that I walked all the four hundred miles from ——. Well, I did—on a steamer most of the way.”

In short the argentino’s mental equipment was somewhat out of repair. One could not exactly put one’s finger on the loose screw, but it could frequently be heard rattling. The following Sunday we attended his first “lecture.” On the dismal daytime stage of Quito’s hitherto lifeless Teatro Sucre sat Peyrounel, utterly alone but for the faithful dog at his feet, thrown into silhouette by an uncurtained window at the back, his sky-blue uniform looking more absurd than ever, his hair hanging in long, wet, careful curls about his broad shoulders. Quito has so few entertainments that it will endure almost anything particularly if no admission is charged; and some three hundred men were scattered about in the painfully upright seats, when the “andarín” rose. He read first some incomprehensible rodomontade on the power of the will, then drew forth a manuscript purporting to give an account of his journey, in reality strictly confined to a list of the towns he had visited, with the height of each above sea-level. The “lecture” was doubly unsuccessful, for when the speaker ended with an appeal for funds to continue his statistical journey, the gathering stampeded so effectively that all but a few had escaped when he reached the door, and the reward of his labors was a bare six dollars.

“Next Sunday,” he announced, when we met him in the plaza that evening, “I am going to give the public of Quito the benefit of my conclusions on suicide. Suicide, I shall prove, is always a prompting of the devil. Therefore it cannot be the prompting of God. Ergo, a man should not commit suicide, because he should never yield to the promptings of the devil.”

Truly a Solomon of pure reason had come to Quito. Yet somehow the authorities, always backward in such matters, failed to take advantageof this splendid opportunity to give the Teatro Sucre another free airing.

Never since those days in Quito have I heard the oft-repeated word “andarín,” than the picture of Peyrounel and his curls has not come to mind. However, he had undoubtedly covered long distances on foot, and we exchanged many a practical hint of roadway information. He planned to visit all the important cities of the United States, and to reach New York within three years. His letters of introduction already included many to American officials; he carried, for instance, one to the mayor of Seattle. Being an experienced traveler, all may have gone well with him south of the Rio Grande. But beyond it lay dangers he did not suspect; for some unromantic justice of the peace, unable to distinguish between an “andarín” and a common “vag,” between the honorable profession of gathering seals and signatures, and mere begging, may have the cruelty to reward him with the notorious “year and a day.”

On October tenth there was an eclipse of the sun, total at the Ecuador-Colombia boundary, and visible in all the southern hemisphere. In the days of the Scyri and Incas such a phenomenon was taken as a threat that the end of the world was at hand; a sign that an angry god was abandoning his erring people. On this occasion many of the less-educated classes remained in the streets all night, for an earthquake had been prophesied. The local observatory had assigned a scientist to “note the peculiar actions of the populace and the lower animals during the eclipse.” It came toward seven in the morning. Gradually the brilliant sun disappeared, until only the slightest thread, of crescent shape, remained visible; the world grew dark as at early dusk on a heavily clouded evening, then slowly lighted up again in all its equatorial magnificence. Observers reported that a few fowls returned to roost; the curs slinking about the plaza seemed for a time undecided whether to seek their nightly lairs. But the actions of the populace were confined to the incessant smoking of cigarettes and to making the most of an excuse to put off their day’s task as long as possible—neither of which was unusual enough to be worthy of note. The majority, unsupplied with smoked glasses, found this no handicap, for the reflected eclipse in the plaza pool served the same purpose. World scientists had been sent to many of the larger South American cities with elaborate photographic equipment, only to find their long journeys wasted because of clouds. They would havedone better to have come to Quito, where two unscientific vagabonds caught excellent pictures of the phenomenon in mere kodak snapshots.

It was on the morning of November eighteenth, five months from the day we had sailed together from the Canal Zone, that Hays and I set out along the muddy, cobbled highway to the railway station, carrying in turn a bundle of the size of a suitcase. By 7:30 the former corporal of police had taken his wooden seat in the dingy little second-class car, and had stowed his belongings under it well out of sight of the collector; for extravagant as are its fares, the Guayaquil-Quito Railway allows a second-class passenger only fifteen pounds of baggage. At eight the tri-weekly train let pass unnoticed its scheduled hour of departure. Several stocky Americans of the type easily recognized as “railroad men,” and as many English-speaking negroes could be seen shouldering their way in and out of the motley throng. The engineers were leathery-skinned Americans; the conductors fat, burly Americans; the collectors gaunt, stringy, dense-looking young Englishmen, and the brakemen West Indian negroes who spoke a more fluent Spanish that their superiors, and were better “mixers” among the native passengers. After a time they decided to repair the last coach, and lay for some time under it, tinkering at a brake-shoe. Rumor had it that this was only a ruse; that the engineer assigned to the run had been arrested the evening before, and that the train could not leave until his trial was over.

Whatever the cause for delay, it ended at last, and with a great snorting and straining and blowing of steam the little old “Baldwin” began to drag its fourwagonesout of the station compound. First came a box-car, crowded inside and on top with gente del pueblo; then, behind the baggage and mail car, the densely-packed second-class; and finally the coach-de-luxe with a dozen passengers, most of whom would hasten to take their lawful place in the car ahead as soon as they could escape the eyes of their fellow-townsmen thronging the station platform. The Indian of Ecuador still commonly walks, a fact easily explained by a glance at the exorbitant rate-sheet. It was only by dint of much struggle that the railroad, reaching Quito four years before, had finally settled the point that even “prominent persons” shall pay fare; now it has taken the offensive, and collects cartage even on the bundles and fruit the passengers are accustomed to stack in the car about them. The engine panted asthmatically to surmount a two-foot rise, scores of Indians and cholos running alongside, screaming farewells to their outward-bound friends, some visibly weeping for thequiteñoof the masses considers death itself little less dreadful than departure. Then at length the train swung round the sandbank cutting and, catching a down-grade, was off in earnest, and reluctantly I saw “SeñorLay-O-Ice” disappear from my South American adventures.

Almost everything that moves in Quito rides on the backs of Indians

An Indian family driving away dull care—and watching me take the picture of a dog down the street

The attack of roaditis had seized him the day before. With no task to hold him in Quito, he had been for a time content to spend his days at his favorite occupation of sitting on a plaza bench. He had even paid his rent well in advance, that he might have an anchor to windward. But it had proved a rope of sand when the road lure came upon him, and he had feverishly tossed together his indispensable junk and turned his face toward other climes. From Guayaquil, “unless Yellow Jack or Bubonic beat him to it,” he planned to push on to Cajamarca and Lima, chiefly by sea, then to strike overland to Cuzco. Beyond South America lay various nebulous projects,—a year around the Mediterranean, a journey through Spain, or perhaps a return to the Zone to earn another “stake” with which to journey to the Far East, there to adopt the yellow robe and settle down to the tranquil life of studious inactivity he loved so well.

Thus life moved on, even in Quito. “Chispa” of the bullring had taken the same train, feigning a first-class wealth until out of sight of hisquiteñoadmirers. Peyrounel, the “andarín,” too, was gone, dog, gun, hair, medals, spurs and ledgers, to carry back to Bogotá the map that had piloted us southward. Only one lone gringo descended to the city in the folds of Pichincha, to renew the task that still forbade him to listen to the siren that beckoned him on over the encircling horizon.

To pass over in silence its uncleanliness would be to give a false picture of Quito. Only its altitude saves the city from sudden death. Its personal habits are indescribable; I do not use the adjective to avoid the labor of finding one less trite, but because no other could be more exact. If I described in detail one fourth its daily insults to the senses, no reputable publisher would print, and no self-respecting reader would read it. The city is surrounded by an iron ring of smells which the susceptible stranger, accustomed to the moderate decencies of life, can pass only in haste and trepidation. The condition of the best kitchen in Quito would arouse a vigorous protest from an American “hobo.” However foppish aquiteñofamily may be outwardly, anybody is considered fitted to the task of washing its dishes or waiting on its tables. Among all the tramps of the United StatesI have never seen one so filthy as the human creatures that hang around hotel dining-rooms, or, in the one or two higher-priced establishments, are at least to be found just behind the scenes, kicking about the earth floor the rolls which the waiter a moment later religiously lays before the guest with silver-plated pincers. Yet clients in frock-coats and outwardly immaculate garb are never known to raise a voice in protest. There is exactly one way to escape these conditions in Ecuador, and that is to keep out of the country. A modern Crœsus would be forced to endure the same, for though he brought his own servants and even his food-supplies with him, the Ecuadorian would find some means of reducing him to an equality of condition, if only by opening the supplies in customs and running his unwashed hands through them.

Among our table companions were lawyers, university professors, newspaper editors, commonly with several rings on their fingers; yet rare was the man whose finger-nails were not in deepest mourning, or whose manners were not befitting a trough. On the street the passing of the women was usually marked by an all but overwhelming scent of the cheap and pungent perfumes to which all the “decente” class, male or female, is addicted, and though their faces were daubed a rosy alabaster, it was rare to see one with clean hands, or without a distinct dead-line showing at the neck. The city is gashed by several deep gullies with trickling streams at their bottoms, which serve as general dumping-grounds. Not even the carrion-crow mounts to these heights, and the city is denied the doubtful services of this tropical scavenger. Though the world hears little of it, the death-rate from typhoid alone in the capital rivals that of “Yellow Jacket” in Guayaquil; and no precautions whatever are taken against it. When he has noted these customs and worse, the visitor will be startled into shrieks of sardonic laughter when he runs across a large two-story building bearing an elaborately painted shield announcing it the “Oficina de Sanidad.”

Yet thequiteñois extremely jealous of any offer of other races to do for him that which he gives no evidence of being able to do for himself. Once out of Colombia, we had hoped for relief from the perpetual growling at Americans, chiefly in fiery and ill-reasoned newspaper editorials. Barely had we crossed the frontier, however, than we found Ecuador raging with a new grievance. The Government had recently invited the doctor in charge of the sanitation of Panama to inspect Guayaquil and bring his recommendations to the capital.A strict censorship on cable messages keeps the outside world largely in ignorance of the real conditions in the “Pearl of the Pacific.” Inside the country, however, the real state of affairs is more nearly common knowledge. One could pick almost at random from the local newspapers such items as:

Guayaquil, 22d. Yesterday forty cases of bubonic plague broke out in Public School No. 5. There are seven survivors.

The resident, too, soon learns the real motives that hamper the sanitation of that pest-hole. Once it is “cleaned up,” argue its short-sighted merchants, foreign competitors will flock in upon them. As to themselves, they are, with rare exceptions, immune to the two plagues for which the port is famous, having recovered from them at some earlier period of life. Those who have not recovered have no voice in the matter. There are even foreign residents who bend their energies to upholding this barrier to competition.

These interests now, abetted by unseen European elements fostering the discontent, and the eagerness of the opposing party to make political capital out of any cloth, whole or otherwise, had stirred the noisy little native papers into a furor, genuine or financed, against the Government. The people, in their turn, had worked themselves into the conviction that the invitation was only an opening wedge of the “Colossus of the North” to gain a hand in the rule of the country, which it is always the part of the opposition papers to paint as imminent. We had not been long in Quito when the attitude of the populace grew so serious that a joint meeting of both houses of congress was called to explain the government view of the transaction. The diplomatic corps was present in force, and as much of the public as could find standing-room after the two houses had been seated in the largest chamber available in the government palace. The diminutive old Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had lived abroad long enough to acquire a point of view, explained the exact truth of the situation as clearly as a disinterested foreigner might have done. But neither congress nor the populace would hear his reasoning. The latter hooted him vociferously, calling him “Yanqui!” and accusing him of being in the pay of the United States. The congressmen rose one after another to charge him with fostering a conspiracy to surrender Ecuador to the Yankees, with many references to the “beegee steekee,” and the meeting ended with the roar of a bull-necked senator:

“Undoubtedly,Señor, we want Guayaquil sanitated; but we want it sanitated by Latin Americans.”

Thepesuñaand other evidences of sanitary notions of the crowd that hemmed us in gave the speech a ludicrousness that none but an enraged partizan could have missed. But that night the little Minister of Foreign Affairs resigned, and when morning broke he had disappeared.

For all the handicap of the complete absence of factories and street-cars, Quito might easily lay claim to the world’s championship in noise. The din from its church-towers alone would bring it one of the first prizes. It is pleasant to sit out on a sunny hillside listening to the music of ringing church-bells as it is borne by on the Sunday morning breeze; but in Quito they are neither bells nor are they rung. In tone they suggest suspended masses of scrap-iron, and there is not a bell-rope, as we understand the word, in the length and breadth of the Andes. Barely has midnight passed, when Indians, hired for the nefarious purpose, and mobs of street urchins eager for the opportunity, climb into the church-towers and, catching the enormous clappers by a rope-end, beat and pound as if each was vying with the others in an attempt to reproduce the primeval chaos of sound, ceasing only when they drop from exhaustion. No corner of the city is free from the metallic uproar. Santa Catalina tower was a bare hundred yards above my pillow, and I know scarcely a block of the town over which does not rise at least one such source of torture, hung with at least half a dozen bells—to use the word loosely—of varying sizes and degrees of discordance. Once awakened, the city is never permitted to fall asleep again. By the time it has begun to doze off once more, the ringers have recovered, and, taking up their joyful task with renewed vigor, repeat the performance at five-minute intervals until sunrise, and often far into the day.

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