Panama to Patagonia

A GLIMPSE OF ECUADOR

Tranquil Ship Life—Dissolving View of Panama Bay—The Comforting Antarctic Current—Seeking Cotopaxi and Chimborazo—Up the Guayas River—Activity in Guayaquil Harbor—Old and New Town—Shipping via The Isthmus and Cape Horn—Chocolate and Rubber Exports—Railway toward Quito—A Charming Capital—Cuenca’s Industries—Cereals in the Inter-Andine Region—Forest District—Minerals in the South—Population—Galapagos Islands—Political Equilibrium—National Finances.

SHIP life along coast from Panama south is dreamful, placid, nerve-soothing.

“This South Sea,” wrote the Augustine Friar Calancha, in his chronicle of the early Spanish voyagers, “is called the Pacific because, in comparison with the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, its storms are less violent and fewer and its calm is more tranquil. It is also called the sea of drunkards because a drunken man might navigate in it. Both oceans and ships are ruled over by five beautiful stars in the form of a cross, in a happy prognostic of holy domination over sea and land—at the sight of which the devil even when most enraged retreats and leaves all in tranquillity.” This is surely a happy description of the quiet ocean and a devout poet’s image of the Southern Cross.

The steamers are commodious floating Summer homes. The smooth waters of the Pacific make it possible to have a type of vessel that would be impracticable for transatlantic voyages. Deck cabins, a dining-saloon on the upper deck, and ample room are properties of them all. Some of the steamers are twin screw, though such enterprise hardly was demanded by the traffic and this type is not so comfortable as the single screw. From Panama to Valparaiso, 3,100 miles by the stops, there is rarely enough of a ripple to send the most sensitive traveller below with symptoms of sea-sickness.

The voyage is a marine trip along a great winding Continental street, with stops at many corners and turns up many lanes. Up and down the coast means putting into innumerable wayports. This makes them more or less acquainted with one another, and one coast community feels an interest in what is happening in a neighbor port a thousand miles away. The vessels bring the gossip,—usually of trade, of the value of the last cargo, of quarantine, of troubles with the native longshoremen, of disputes with the minor officials, and of political events or the latest revolution. The through freight is not yet sufficient for the big steamers to omit the minor landings and make quick time, which could be done if Guayaquil, Callao, and Valparaiso were the only ports touched. This should be a matter of eight or ten days from Panama to Valparaiso, whereas now it takes from twenty-one to twenty-three days. The time will be shorter when the through traffic developed by the Panama Canal has had a chance to grow.

As the steamer threads its way out into the ocean through Panama Bay, the vista is of cone-shaped, vivid green-clad volcanic mountains rising sheer out of the water. On a disappearing view they look like gopher mounds on the prairies. At sunset the sky is of indigo-blue and the waters are a maroon expanse, but the next night the great copper disk in the west burnishes the liquid plain, which seethes at its embrace.

For two days the voyage is apt to be disagreeably hot, though the air rarely becomes so stifling that the deck cabins have to be abandoned. The weather is decently comfortable in the daytime. The nights may be choking, but this does not last long. The third day the equatorial line is crossed, not very far out at sea yet out of sight of land. The Humboldt, or Antarctic, current is met as it sweeps up from Cape Horn, and its refreshing coolness is enjoyed for the remainder of the voyage. The only unpleasant feature is that during the season from April to August the fogs which hang over the mainland charge the atmosphere with too much moisture, and there is no relief by their precipitation into rain; yet the discomfort from this cause is not serious.

Only the small coasting-vessels put into the minor Colombian and Ecuadorian ports. On the Pacific side Colombia has but one shipping-point of consequence—Buenaventura, where the bay bends in a deep inlet. It is the gateway to the immensely rich country of the Cauca and of the overland route by Cali and the mountain passes through the Cordilleras to Bogota.

“It is a strange thing,” says my Lord Francis Bacon, “that in sea voyages where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries.” But down the West Coast, after crossing the equatorial line, much more than sky and sea is to be seen and the diary-maker need not be furtive in his occupation. On the larger steamers one is always straining the eyes for Ecuador’s famous volcanoes, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo. They are not often visible from the sea, though Cotopaxi is sometimes to be discerned. One evening I thought I caught a glimpse of one of these giant summits. It was towards sunset. Off shore was a seeming range of peaked clouds, then through a pink mist a sloping green and brown profile disclosed itself; after that bolder conical elevations, a dim fringe of them, and finally an unmistakable crown. “It is Monte Cristo,” the ship’s mate told me. “We are in the Bay of Caracas.” The chalk-like surface was of sheer cliffs sliced as by a knife and with a fleece spreading alongside half-way up to the summit. “Snow?” “Oh, no; only the surf.”

We are not more than ten miles off shore, but Monte Cristo dominates as though it were one of the colossal volcanoes. The vapors close in, the ribbons of gold in the western sky unroll themselves and are lost. It is night, and our last chance of seeing Cotopaxi is gone.

The voyage up the Gulf of Guayaquil and the Guayas River gives a vista of conical and pinnacled hills of living green, sparkling in their verdure like raindrops on the leaves when the sun comes out after a thunder shower. The gulf narrows, and the point is rounded at the island of Puna, which is the Ecuadorian customs and quarantine port. There are bathing-houses and pretty Summer or Winter homes,—we do not know which, for we realize that under the Equator there are no seasons. Beyond Puna the river is hardly more than half a mile across from one low bank to the opposite low bank. These are bordered with algaroba trees and cocoanut palms. There are open pastures and some neat houses, with ridges of mountains in the background, brown and green. The borders of the river are pleasant, but the miasma seems to hang over the land like a steaming blanket, and one gets the impression of malaria,—which impression is a correct one.

Lower Guayaquil is first seen, then the sloping part of the city proper. The big rectangular building in the saddle of the hills, the most prominent of all the structures, is the famous hospital,—a comforting reflection for strangers who have heard of Guayaquil’s yellow fever record and are told grewsome tales of the epidemics. Fewer than eight cases in the hospital count as a cipher, and ships get a clean bill of health. The profile of peaks back of the town apparently is not very high, and the valleys open gently between them. A closer view of the city from the ship’s deck shows that it is not such a bad sort of tropical port. Church spires and domes are many, and some very handsome buildings are discernible.

The harbor is full of maritime life. Pointed shoe-like canoes and sail-boats are constantly shooting around, while farther down the river are the balsas, or house rafts, with their tenants, including men and women, children, poultry, pigs, and other accessories. The timbers of these house rafts are from a native wood of the cork variety, said to be unsinkable. Apparently the living occupants of the rafts also are of cork, tumbling off into the water and bobbing about just as easily. I did not hear of any of them, even the smallest, being drowned. I noted the old American river-boat patterns, and could imagine myself on the Mississippi or the Ohio, except that this craft is even more blunt as to outline and more tub-like than anything that ever floated down from Pittsburg or St. Paul.

The crooked old part of the city is attractive in its picturesqueness, and is inviting at a distance. The newer section is so regular as to be uninteresting. The Guayaquil climate is trying to foreigners, though many of them manage to acclimate themselves. The mean temperature is 81° Fahrenheit. The extremes in the shade are 90° and 65°. During two or three days in the harbor it seemed to me that there was but one extreme and that the maximum.

The city, in addition to its commerce, has a number of local industries which include sugar-mills, breweries and distilleries, tanneries, foundries, saw-mills, and shipbuilding and repair shops. Besides the balsas small vessels built of the native timber are constructed in Guayaquil.

Guayaquil is a city of 60,000 inhabitants, the most populous port south of San Francisco, with the exception of Valparaiso. About 300 foreign vessels, with a tonnage varying from 360,000 to 375,000, enter and clear the port every year. The coasting commerce employs a considerable number of small vessels,—2,000, whose tonnage aggregates from 22,000 to 23,000. The relation of the port to a waterway across the Isthmus appears very clearly from the statement of the distances, which may be repeated. From Guayaquil to New York around Cape Horn is 11,470 miles, and the time required for the steam cargo vessels varies from 60 to 74 days. From Guayaquil to Panama is 835 miles, and to New York by this route it will be 2,864 miles, or to New Orleans 2,263 miles. The time now required, allowing for transshipment by the railway and the consequent unloading and reloading of the freight, varies from 14 to 20 days. With through water communication and the advantages which will justify supplying coal for faster trips, the time need not exceed eight or nine days. From Guayaquil to Liverpool via Cape Horn is 10,795 miles; to Havre, 10,577 miles; to Hamburg, 11,203 miles. The difference in maritime advantage is exhibited by the subtraction of the distance from Panama or Colon to those ports.

In years when no long-continued quarantine interrupts the commercial movement, the imports vary from $7,000,000 to $7,500,000, and the exports are $9,000,000 to $9,300,000. In 1904 the imports were $7,670,000, and the exports $11,642,000. Relatively, 90 per cent of the foreign commerce of Ecuador passes through Guayaquil. It is the entrepôt for the interior region and also for much of the coast. Esmeraldas in the north has a little foreign trade, and also Machala in the south. But their imports and exports hardly affect the volume of commerce that is concentrated in Guayaquil.

One-third of the world’s supply of cacao, or chocolate, is had from Ecuador, and this is measured by shipments through Guayaquil of 450,000 to 550,000 quintals, or 45,450,000 pounds to 55,550,000 pounds. In one year, of a total crop of 499,000 quintals, 456,000 were exported through this port. In a later year the value of the cacao exported was $7,624,000. A large section of the cacao-producing region is directly tributary to the city. The exportations of vegetable ivory—the tagua or ivory nut of commerce—vary from 39,000,000 pounds to 44,000,000 pounds annually, valued at from $600,000 to $750,000, according to the market price. In one very successful year the value was $1,100,000. For the last year given the exports of crude rubber reached 1,100,000 pounds, valued at $600,000. The United States takes 75 per cent and upwards of the rubber product. The coffee shipments were worth $500,000. There is also a considerable export trade in the various kinds of straw and felt hats which are manufactured in the interior. Hides are also an article of export.

The statistics of production and of the foreign trade are compiled by the Guayaquil Chamber of Commerce, a very progressive institution in a country that is not excessively enterprising in exhibiting the natural resources. From the figures supplied me by the Chamber, I found that the United States enjoyed a fair proportion of the Ecuador commerce. France takes the larger portion of the chocolate and coffee, but the United States furnishes Ecuador a market to the amount of $2,250,000 to $2,600,000 annually, and ships goods in about the same proportion. Germany received in one year about $2,150,000; Great Britain, $2,000,000. In the imports England has the advantage over all others in cottons and woollens. The heaviest item in the exports from the United States to Ecuador is provisions, which amount to $500,000 yearly. Petroleum, lumber, machinery, and hardware also find a market.

This United States trade and all the foreign commerce of Guayaquil are so essentially a Panama Canal traffic that their details do not call for analysis. In the increase of the future the largest proportion belongs to the United States.

The ambitious project of a railway to connect Guayaquil with Quito, the capital, was many years in assuming form, but the narrow-gauge line is creeping to Quito. The railway starts at Duran, on the bay across from Guayaquil, and runs eastward through a very rich agricultural plateau to Alausi, 80 miles distant, where it bends to the north. The tropical vegetation of foliage and weeds along the roadbed is so very luxuriant that the railway company has found it necessary to erect a plant midway in the hothouse belt for preparing and distributing, by a process of spraying, a solution composed of arsenic and nitre. By means of vats and steam-pipes the ingredients are boiled and dissolved into a strong solution, which is drawn off into a large tank, similar in construction to a regular railway water-tank, from which the spraying-car is filled. When the rainy season opens, the weed-killing plant begins its operations, spraying the roadbed at regular intervals. This is a very interesting feature of tropical railway operation.

The road surmounted the greatest engineering difficulties when it reached Guamote, 115 miles from Guayaquil; and the mountain section was completed so that trains could be hoisted from the coast level to the Andine plateau, a sheer vertical distance of almost two miles. The railway will cheapen the traffic both for imported merchandise and for exports.

The corporation had an up-and-down financial history. The railway construction was begun, or rather a local line was continued, by Americans who secured the concession from the government of Ecuador, the money being furnished mainly by Glasgow and London capitalists. The Americans who held the concession had frequent difficulties, not only with the bondholders but with the contractors and the laborers. The work of excavation and grading was done by Jamaica negroes. The nation guaranteed the bonds of the railway, and by a somewhat subtle process the government debt was funded into these railway bonds which are a second mortgage on the customs duties. The obligations were issued as the respective sections of the railway were completed. Notwithstanding the frequent financial difficulties of the contractors and of the English bondholders, the government paid the interest, 6 per cent, regularly.

Quito is accounted by all travellers, in what relates to climate and picturesqueness, one of the most charming capitals in South America. It lies in the central plateau, at an elevation of 9,371 feet. Though an ancient and historic capital, it has been modernized by electricity. The city has a population of 80,000, and supports a variety of local industries, including flour-mills, woollen mills, potteries, sugar refineries, and small manufactories of Indian felt hats; yet it is chiefly interesting as the seat of government. Forty years ago a German-American, Frederick Hassaurek, who had represented the United States as Minister and Consul-General, wrote his impressions of Quito and its people,[6] and there has been little to add since then.

One leaf from the Quito municipal records may be worth extracting. The Cabildo, or Council, under date of August 16, 1538, adopted this resolution:

Cuenca, in southern Ecuador, is an important industrial and commercial centre. It has between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by a rich agricultural and stock-raising district. It is seeking a railway outlet to Machala on the coast; but in the course of years it will have railway communication with Quito, for the route is a natural one for commerce along the central plateau. This location is a link in the ultimate Pan-American Railway trunk line. From Cuenca to a junction with the railway already built from Duran beyond Guamote is less than 100 miles.

Misunderstanding of the topography of Ecuador causes the country’s resources to be underestimated. By many persons no account is taken of any section except the humid and productive coast lands. But there is the vastly productive inter-Andine region between the two chains of the Cordilleras. The transverse ranges between these two Cordilleras have the appearance of knots, and are generally described as the nudos. They do not offer insuperable obstacles to railway construction and other interior development, though ordinary roads are lacking.

All the cereals are grown in this central plateau lying under the torrid zone at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It is the growing of corn, wheat, and other grains at these heights which causes the Spanish writers, with their warm imaginations, to write so enthusiastically of cultivation in the clouds. The region offers great opportunities for stock-raising, and generally it may be said to be the field for future immigration and colonization. Public officials of Ecuador glow with enthusiasm over this section of their country. A cabinet minister, in his official report, thus poetically and prophetically voiced the national aspiration:

The Montaña, or forest region lying on the eastern slope of the Andes and with its network of river basins stretching to the Amazon, is less exploited in the Ecuadorian than in the Peruvian territory. The rubber in these tropical forests will be secured in the process of time. The development of this region on the part of Ecuador is not remote. But there must be means of communication. The government, realizing this, decided to build a railway from Ambato, on the Guayaquil and Quito Railroad, 100 miles to the Curarey River, a branch of the Amazon with head-waters near Iquitos in Peru. This line will enable that district to export its rubber through Guayaquil instead of out through the Atlantic Ocean. The railway route lies east of the Andes.

Tobacco is grown in the north near the coast for home consumption. Sugar-cane is cultivated successfully on the nearer border of the Montaña and also nearer the coast, but it will be a long time before Ecuador exports sugar in appreciable quantities. This may be less true of cotton, which is becoming a national industry. A fine quality is grown in the northern districts, of which Ibarra is the centre, and the cotton tree thrives in other sections. The mills, which employ the cheap labor of the native Indian women, have proven successful, and they find a profitable home market, though it will be many years before Manchester is seriously hurt by their output.

The minerals of the country are principally in the southern zone, though there are rich placers in the rivers of the north. The southern province, of which Zaruma is the centre, in the last century was famous for its gold-mines, and it is still known as El Oro, or the gold country. In late years little has been done, though the quartz veins have been worked intermittently and in some of the streams gold-washing has been carried on. Minerals are abundant farther south in the district of which Loja is the centre. Some copper is found, and there are deposits of iron and anthracite coal, silver, and lead. The engineers who made the Intercontinental Railway survey were impressed with the richness of this district, but its development awaits the building of the links in the Pan-American railroad, for the lack of transport facilities under present conditions renders exploitation of the mines too costly to be attempted except with large capital.

In proportion to its size Ecuador, though sparsely populated, is as well inhabited as other South American countries. The population is very largely Indian, with the usual Spanish intermixture. The total number of inhabitants is 1,275,000. The whites and the mestizos, or mixed bloods, comprise about 25 per cent of the population. The central plateau easily could sustain an agricultural population of twice that number.

The volcanic Galapagos Islands, lying 600 to 700 miles west of the mainland, on the equatorial line, usually are considered an Ecuadorian asset. They are not, however, a source of revenue, and the 300 or 400 people who inhabit them are not likely to increase to a larger number. At different times the government has been willing to dispose of the islands under the form of a perpetual lease for coaling or naval stations. Tentative offers have been made in Europe, but European governments hardly would seek to lease them for naval purposes without ascertaining the wishes of the United States. Since the Monroe Doctrine as interpreted under President Roosevelt’s administration forbids military establishments of foreign Powers to be set up in the Southern Hemisphere, no European country is likely to come into their possession. Naval officers on various occasions have urged the purchase of the Galapagos group by the United States, but the high price at which they are held by Ecuador, or opposition in Washington, prevented a bargain. The last negotiation was by Secretary Blaine during the Harrison administration. With the authority of the United States established on the Canal Zone and with the Pearl Islands in Panama Bay under the same authority, the necessary naval base in the Pacific is secured, and no further suggestions for purchasing the Galapagos group are likely to be favored by public sentiment. The only ground would be that, through the control by the United States, European intrigues and, possibly, complications would be avoided.

Chile at different times has been credited with wanting to control the Galapagos Islands and establish a naval base at the Equator. Since the Chilean national policy is no longer one of unlimited naval expansion, it may be doubted whether that country now would care to undertake the expense of establishing and maintaining a station off Ecuador. But should Chile take this course, probably there would be no objection on the part of the United States, which, in the broad sense, as related to Europe, is a party in interest with Ecuador.

Of recent years Ecuador has maintained political equilibrium, if not absolute political stability. President Alfaro during his term was compelled to combat the reactionaries and the Church party, but his programme of Liberal measures was sustained. The greatest progress that has been made is toward financial stability. The money of the country was put on the gold basis, and that having been maintained for several years, the promise of its continuance is encouraging. The standard of coinage is the gold condor, equal to the English sovereign in weight and fineness. The common circulating medium is the silver sucre, ten of which constitute the condor, or the pound sterling. The sucre is equal to 48.66 cents. Paper money is circulated, but the outstanding issue is not very large. There are two banks of emission, each of which has a capital of 3,000,000 sucres. By the last report the total amount of bills emitted was 6,356,000 sucres.

The Ecuador banks do a profitable business in international exchange. The Guayaquil institutions regularly pay 14 and 15 per cent dividends. Their deposits in the period from 1898 to 1904 rose from 20,688,000 to 31,492,000 sucres.