The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the south. In the background the church and monastery of Santo Domingo
The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the south. In the background the church and monastery of Santo Domingo
The street by which one leaves Quito on the tramp to the south. In the background the church and monastery of Santo Domingo
Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses, the Indians of the Andes were building their fences in a similar manner. In the regions where rain is frequent they are roofed with tiles or thatch; on the desert coast further south the tops afford a place of promenade sometimes miles in length
Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses, the Indians of the Andes were building their fences in a similar manner. In the regions where rain is frequent they are roofed with tiles or thatch; on the desert coast further south the tops afford a place of promenade sometimes miles in length
Long before Edison thought of his poured-cement houses, the Indians of the Andes were building their fences in a similar manner. In the regions where rain is frequent they are roofed with tiles or thatch; on the desert coast further south the tops afford a place of promenade sometimes miles in length
This has disturbances of its own. The game-cocks, which no self-respecting cholo would be without, challenge one another shrilly from their respective patios; that moment is rare when a child is not squalling at the top of its voice, the mother, after the passive way ofquiteños, making no effort to silence it; cholos whistle all day long at their labors or pastimes; men and boys habitually call one another by ear-splitting finger-whistles; ox-carts, mule-trains, or laden donkeys refuse to move unless several arrieros trot behind them incessantly screaming and whistling; droves of cattle are led through the streets by an Indian blowing abocina, a horn-like, six-foot length of bamboo;unoccupied youths like nothing better than to kick an empty tin can up or down the cobbled street; every school-boy on his way home or to school twice a day takes a big copper coin, or in lieu thereof an iron washer, and throws it at every cobblestone of his route in a local game of “hit it”; the barking of dogs never ends; every Indian who loses a distant relative, or who can concoct some other fancied cause for grief, sits on the sidewalk just out of reach of the contents of one’s slop-bucket, rocking back and forth, and burdening the air with a mournful wail that rises and falls in cadenced volume; for unbroken hours iron-tired coaches clatter over the uneven cobbles; every native on horseback must show off to his admiring friends and the fair sex in general by forcing his animal to canter and capriole up and down the line of flagstones in the middle of the narrow street; three blind newsboys, brothers indistinguishable one from another, appear in succession, pausing every few yards to bellow in deepest bass a complete summary of the day’s news, as if they were reading all the headlines of the papers they carry for sale; and to it all the church-bells add their never broken clanging. Apparently there is no law against disturbing the peace; without the power to silence the church-towers it would be useless, at best.
In those rare moments around midnight when the city threatens to fall silent, it is the police themselves that tide it over. An officer’s whistle screeches at a corner, to be answered down block after block, until it all but dies out in the distance; then back it comes, and continues unbrokenly until the church-bells drown it out. Not only that, but he is a rare policeman who does not while away the night and keep up his courage by playing discordant tunes on his whistle whenever it is not in official use.
To add to its discordance, Quito’s voices, due perhaps to some climatic condition, are often distressing, particularly the shrill, raspy ones of the women of the masses, who have somewhere picked up the habit of shrieking whenever they have anything to say—which is often. Unlike Bogotá, Quito has a very faulty pronunciation. The sound “sh,” for instance, is frequent in the Quichua dialect of the region, and though not allquiteñosspeak the aboriginal tongue, the sound has crept into their Spanish, and they tack it on at every opportunity—“A ver-sh, Nicanor-sh.” “Le voy á llamar-sh.” As in all South America, the town has the unpleasant habit of hissing at any one whose attention is desired, and the word “pues” has been cut down to a mere “pss” to be hooked on whenever possible:—“Si, pss! Va venir-shmañana, pss.” The “ll” has become a French “j,” as in Central America and Panama, so that a street is not acallebut a “caje,” a key is a “jave,” and the newcomer will have difficulty in recognizing the place mentioned as “Beja-Coja,” however familiar he may be with the Bella Colla. Many localisms and Quichua words have found place in the general speech. A baby is always a “guagua” (wawa), frequently corrupted with a Spanish diminutive to “guaguita”; a boy is more often a “huambra” than amuchacho; and the traveler who does not know the aboriginal term “huasi-cama” would have difficulty in referring to the Indian house-guard and general servant of the lower patio.
But when its noise grows overwhelming and its picturesqueness pales to mere uncleanliness, the stout-legged visitor has only to climb over the outer crust of Quito in almost any direction to revel in the stillness and feast his eyes on vistas of rolling valleys and mountains, fresh spring-green to the very snow-line. A path, for instance, zigzags up thefaldaof Pichincha, steeper than any Gothic roof, through the scattering of red-tiled Indian huts called Guarico, and climbs until all Quito in its Andean pocket sinks to a toy city far beneath. Another road mounts doggedly round and round mountain-spurs and headlands until it is lost in clouds, and only the immediate world underfoot remains visible. The air grows almost wintry; oxen and Indian women, and now and then a man of the same downcast race, come hobbling down out of the mist above, with bundles of cut brush on their backs. Far up, the road swings around on the brink of things, pauses a moment as if to gather courage, then pitches headlong down out of sight into a light-gray void, as through a curtain shutting off the “Oriente,” the hot lands and unbroken forests of eastern Ecuador, a totally different world, where the Amazon begins to weave its network, and “wild” Indians roam untrammeled.