country. She is a tall, slender brunette, with brilliant eyes and complexion and a sylph-like figure. Her husband worships her, and she is said to be the only person in the land to whom the Dictator’s iron will has ever yielded. She is quite as famous for her loveliness of disposition as for her personal attractions, and her charity and generosity are proverbial. Every artist in Venezuela has painted her portrait a number of times, and in the room which Guzman Blanco uses as an office there are seven pictures of her, in various costumes and attitudes, and two busts in marble. Mrs. Guzman Blanco is the leader in fashion as well as society, and all her dresses are made by Worth. Each spring and fall, when they are received from Paris, the ladies of Caracas are invited to examine them. In a room adjoining the chamber are a number of large glass-cases, like those in a modiste’s shop, in which her treasures always hang; and whenever a reception is given by the Dictator this wardrobe is open to visitors—a new and novel idea, but one which gives the ladies of Venezuela great pleasure. Mrs. Guzman Blanco was in New York with her husband a couple of years ago, where her beauty attracted much attention.

The Venezuelans are the most courteous people that can be imagined. Impoliteness is unpardonable. The clerk with whom you deal over his counter expresses his wish that you may live long and prosper, and thanks you gratefully for giving him the pleasure of showing his goods, whether you purchase anything or not. When a gentleman meets a lady, be she his sweetheart or his grandmother, he always says he “is lying at her feet,” and he would rather be shot than pass before her. They are not the semi-barbarians some people in the northern continent suppose. They have accomplishments which ought to make the rest of America ashamed. Usually they are able to speak three or four different languages, have refined tastes in art and music, and, while they lack ingenuity, and usually do things in the hardest way, are nevertheless possessed of the keenest perceptive faculties, and seem almost to read your thoughts. It is not difficult to make known your wants, even if you cannot understand a word of their language. They do not allow smoking in the street-cars and public places, as in Mexico and Havana, and although it is the privilege of the masculine gender to stare at the feminine with all the eyes they have, the men are never rude, and ask the pardon of a beggar when they refuse to give him alms.

But the people always put the locks upon the wrong door, and wrong side up. When they build a house, it seems as if they studied the most difficult mode of construction. They erect solid walls first, and then chisel out cavities for the timbers to rest in. There are no stoves or chimneys, and charcoal is the only fuel. Gas is produced at four dollars and a half per thousand feet, from American coal which costs twenty dollars a ton. There is no glass in the windows, but a grating of iron bars keeps out intruders, and heavy wooden shutters shut out the air and light. Such blinds as are common in North America would be the most admirable protection, but no one has ever introduced them, and the people will continue to swelter behind solid shutters until the end of time.

The rooms of houses are not plastered, but the joists are all exposed. The floors are of tile, and paper is pasted upon the walls, which are of cement and stone. In the court of every house are the most beautiful flowers. Tuberoses grow on great trees, and the oleander is as common as the lilac in New England. The parks look like the botanical gardens of the North, and in the evening are always thronged with gentlemen and ladies until a late hour.

Guzman Blanco, the uncrowned king of Venezuela, the man whose authority is more absolute in this republic than is that of any king in Europe in his own dominions, is a native of Caracas, where he was born fifty-five years ago. His father was the private secretary of Bolivar, and at one time a member of his cabinet. He died only a short time since, and his funeral was a pageant which was surpassed in the history of the country only by the demonstration at the removal of Bolivar’s remains. He was active in the affairs of State almost until his death; now an exile, now a minister, vibrating between the extremes of power and poverty, as the party to which he was attached was up or down; and under this confusion, in the atmosphere of revolution, young Guzman was educated. He added the name of Blanco—that of his mother—to his baptismal name, to distinguish him from his father, and became Guzman Blanco; but he is more often called General Guzman by the people nowadays. When a mere boy he became a soldier, and had his ups and downs until the year 1874, when he led a successful revolution against the existing authority and became President. Since that year several attempts have been made to overturn him, but none has succeeded, and being a man to win friends as well as to acquire power, his political strength has grown with years until his authority is now absolute.

There is, and always will be, a difference in opinion as to his personal character and motives. That he is vain and imperious is admitted, and that many of his acts would not be tolerated by such a people as those who live in the United States cannot be questioned; but, conceding everything his enemies may say as true, it is nevertheless a fact that since Guzman Blanco has been ruler over this republic it has prospered and had peace—something it never had before. There have been varied and extensive improvements; the people have made rapid strides in progress; they have been given free schools and released from the bondage of the Church; the credit of the Government has been improved, its debts reduced, and the interest to its creditors is for the first time in history paid promptly, in full and in advance. The moral as well as the mental and commercial improvement of the people has been the result of his acts, and as long as he lives their lives and property will be safe.

A man under whose influence such progress has been made can be pardoned for the delinquencies of which Guzman Blanco is accused; and while his vanity is amusing, it nevertheless, in the forms it takes, illustrates the pride he feels in his achievements, and the realization of the importance of his career in the history of his republic.

Upon the pedestal of one of the five statues he has erected to his own memory appear the words:

In these words the purpose and ambition of the man appear. To be the “Pacificator and Regenerator” where Bolivar was the Liberator is worthy the ambition of any man; and he who will erect a statue of Washington as the ideal his people should carry in their minds cannot be without a good motive somewhere in his consciousness. Future historians, when they look back upon the career of Guzman Blanco, will be more generous than contemporaneous critics, and will forget that he erected these statues to himself.

There are three statues to Guzman now standing in Caracas, but nobody would believe it if the number of tablets erected in his honor were told. You can scarcely look in any direction without being officially informed in letters carved in enduring marble that this, that, or the other thing was done by the order of, or under the administration of, that illustrious American, etc.

One night all these statues and many of the tablets were pulled down. It is a curious story, and the United States has what the play-bills call a contemporaneous human interest in the affair, for the casus belli was a Boston girl.

Guzman, when he was President, had a nephew of whom he was very fond, and who was made by him the commander-in-chief of the Venezuelan army. He was engaged to an American girl, whose parents lived in Caracas then, but now in Boston. For some reason the girl’s father and the President had a violent quarrel, and the former was notified that it would be to his welfare to leave the country. In these Spanish-American countries a man who values his life never awaits a second invitation of this sort, and the Boston gentleman, with his family, took the next steamer. They were accompanied to La Guayra by the young general, who made no secret of his sympathy with the father of his fiancée, and expressed his views of the President’s tyranny in a very emphatic manner. Guzman sent for the young man, and advised him to hold his tongue and let the girl go. The passionate lover gave his uncle some very plain words, which ended in his being offered a choice between his commission in the army and his North American sweetheart. He broke his sword over his knees, threw the severed blade at Guzman’s feet, and tore off his epaulettes. That night all the statues of Guzman fell down. It was discovered that the bronze had been sawed where the feet met the pedestals, and a rope used to tumble them over. Of course the young general was suspected, and he followed his girl to Boston to escape his uncle’s wrath. The romance ended in a marriage, as all good love stories do, and after residing in Boston the couple returned to Caracas, where they now live—she one of the most attractive and accomplished ladies in the city, and he an exporter of coffee and chocolate. Guzman has never forgiven him, and some of his friends think his life is not safe there, but he laughs at their timidity.

Guzman’s private residence is the finest in Venezuela, and a full-length portrait of James G. Blaine adorns his parlor. That apartment is very handsomely decorated and upholstered, the work having been done by artists imported from Paris; but there is such a vivid brilliancy in the frescoing, the fabrics, and the furniture that one wishes these tropical people who have so much money had a little more refinement of taste.

One of the most striking incidents in the career of this extraordinary man was his defiance of the Pope. To realize its full significance, it must be understood that Venezuela has always been a Catholic country; that there was not a Protestant church in the whole country; that Guzman was himself born and baptized a Catholic, and that under the Constitution the archbishop was a member of the National Council. Guzman first suppressed all the monasteries and nunneries of the country, and confiscated their property, which was converted into houses of useful education. Then, in 1876, he sent to Congress a message, in which he said:

To this the Congress replied:

This declaration of independence caused a great sensation in the Catholic Church, and excommunication was threatened to all who failed in their allegiance to the Vatican; but neither the Government nor the people were to be intimidated, and the Pope has since tried diplomatic measures to restore union with the Mother Church. There has been a nuncio there for several years, and he resides there still, but is making no progress.

Macuto is the Newport of Venezuela—the summer, or rather the winter resort of the wealthy and aristocratic, who find the temperature of Caracas trying upon their constitutions, and seek sea-air, sea-bathing, and flirtations under the palms. It is six miles from La Guayra, and is reached by a tramway, over which a little dummy engine goes shrieking every half hour, and by a broad boulevard which would furnish as delightful a drive as that upon the beach at Long Branch were it not for the dust, which is almost hub-deep, and nearly suffocates one. La Guayra, as I have stated, has the blissful reputation of being the hottest place on earth, shut in as it is by mountains on all sides but the west, and blistering not only in the direct heat but in that reflected from the rocks, which is a great deal more oppressive—a pocket which no air except the west wind, the hottest of all, can reach. But Macuto is around the corner, one might say—around a point of rocks, and upon a little peninsula that stretches out from the beach, where it can catch not only all the breezes that ruffle the sea, but the winds that come from the mountains, down a ravine through which flows a beautiful stream as cool as one in the Adirondacks.

It was Guzman Blanco, of course, who found out this little settlement of fishermen, built the seawall to protect the peninsula, made the boulevard from the city, built the railroad, brought plenty of fresh water from the mountains, and built bath-houses there; so that the people of La Guayra can in twelve minutes leave the hottest place on earth for one where the air is always fresh and cool, where yellow-fever never comes, and where a good salt-water bath can be had for the sum of six cents in Venezuela money.

The bathing arrangements are quite odd. The sharks are so numerous that it is dangerous to bathe in the surf, and nobody cares to have his legs bitten off; so a semicircular pen of piling has been erected, at government expense, reaching about a hundred feet into the sea. Through this piling the surf beats fiercely. The pen is divided in the centre by a high wall, one side being for the ladies and the other for the gentlemen. At the shore end is a miniature castle of stone, likewise divided into two rooms, with a row of benches around the wall, and hooks over them on which to hang clothes. Everybody bathes au naturel; bathing-dresses are unknown. You pay five cents for a ticket, and ten cents for a sheet, which is used as drapery and as a towel, and then undress. The attendant hands you the sheet when you are stripped, and, concealing your nakedness with that protection, you climb down the stone stair-way, hang your sheet over the railing, and plunge in. The water is glorious, warm and salty, so dense that it will almost bear you on the surface, and deep enough to swim and dive. When you have had enough of it, you climb up the stairs, seize your sheet and throw it around you, and sit on the bench until you are dry enough to resume your clothes. Some of the more modest ladies, or, they say, those who have no charms to display, wear in the water a sort of night-dress made of towelling, but the pretty ones wear nothing but smiles—not even a blush.

During the day everybody stays in-doors after the bathing-hour, which is about nine o’clock in the morning. The fashionable get up about eight o’clock, drink a cup of coffee, eat a roll, go to mass, saunter down to the bath, and return in time to dress for breakfast, the most elaborate meal of the day, which is served about eleven o’clock. The menu offers soup, fish, game, steaks, sweetmeats, and wine. Then the people loll around till dinner, which comes after five o’clock in the afternoon, and is a repetition of the breakfast, except that roasts are served instead of steaks. After dinner everybody goes to the grand promenade along the beach. The band plays, the ladies are gayly dressed, the gentlemen twirl their canes, admire their small feet in the moonlight, and chatter like a lot of magpies. The promenading and gossiping are kept up until midnight, except twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, when there is dancing at the hotel or at some one of the private residences. The season lasts from October, when the rainy period ends, until April, when it begins; but families from Caracas and other cities seldom remain at Macuto more than three or four weeks. The charge at the hotel is four dollars per day—about three dollars and a quarter in American money. If some one would build a first-class American hotel here, and provide the comforts that are found in the States, it would be a paying investment; and I would not wonder if a subsidy would be paid by the Government.

The coffee plantations, or quintas, as they are called, extend from the coast far up into the mountains, and are very prolific. The people here claim to raise the best coffee in the world; and it is a singular fact asserted by the exporters that only the poorer grades go to the United States, while all of the better quality is sent to France and Germany. Just why this is so no one explains, further than repeating the remark so often made that the Americans do not like good coffee.

Another curious fact is that chocolate costs more here than it does in New York—here where it is grown and manufactured, for very little of the genuine article is sold in our market. When the cocoa-beans are thoroughly dried in the sun they are shipped in gunny sacks to market, where the chocolate manufacturer gets hold of them. He grinds them into a fine powder of a gray color that looks like Graham flour, mixes it with the pure juice of the sugar-cane, called papillon, and flavors the mixture with the juice of the vanilla-bean. After being boiled for a certain length of time, this is poured into moulds and allowed to harden, when it becomes the chocolate of commerce. The Caracas chocolate, as all the product of Venezuela is termed, is considered the best in the world. It costs sixty-five cents per pound at the factories there, but can be purchased for forty-five or fifty cents a pound in New York. The best cocoa-beans are forty cents a pound here, but the Yankee manufacturer has a way of increasing their weight and reducing their value by adulteration. Pipe-clay is cheap and heavy, and it is supposed to be harmless. It weighs five times as much as cocoa, and as the profit in lager-beer is in the foam, so is the profit in chocolate in the pipe-clay, or whatever substance it may be mixed with.

Puerto Cabello and Maracaibo are the two great exporting markets of Venezuela, from which the greater part of the coffee and chocolate is shipped. The former place is famous for being one of the most unhealthful in the world, and the bay upon which it is situated is called Golfe Triste (the gulf of tears), because of the terrible scourges which are born in its miasmas. The bottom of the bay is said to be literally covered with the bones of those who have been heaved overboard for the lack of a better place to bury them. The ghost of that most famous of all freebooters, Sir Francis Drake, haunts the place, for he died here of yellow-fever, and his body lies in a leaden coffin thirty fathoms deep in the sea. The place is called Puerto Cabello (the port of the hair), on the pretence that ships are so safe in its harbors that they might be tied to their moorings with a single hair. This is something of an exaggeration, but nevertheless the harbor is the best on the Spanish Main, and has such abrupt banks that a vessel can be run up against the shore anywhere to take her cargo.

Off the coast of Puerto Cabello lies the island of Curaçoa, the quaintest, most novel, and altogether most interesting place on the Spanish Main. It is a fragment of Amsterdam, set upon a coral rock in the middle of the sea. It has always been a colony of Holland, with all the picturesque quaintness, stupidity, and wooden-shoe-oddity of the fatherland. Leaving the tropic scenes of Spanish America at bedtime and waking up in Holland in the morning makes you feel like one of Plato’s troglodytes, who were raised in a cavern and then suddenly dropped into the world. You cannot quite allay the feeling that something has been done to you; the appearance of things has changed so suddenly and completely that you do not feel quite right about it.

Curaçoa looks like a toy town built by a child of uncommonly incoherent mind, by taking blocks out of a box and setting them up in irregular rows regardless of size, shape, or color. The general effect is a nightmare of gable-ends and dormer-windows painted a bright yellow. Immense warehouses with great gaping doors and windows stand beside quaint little Dutch cottages surrounded by beautiful gardens, and stores several stories high, of the most elaborate architecture, rise beside low structures as flat fronted and as square cornered as a dry-goods box with a Dutch oven on top of it. Quaint dormer-windows stare at you from the most unexpected places; hideous yellow towers, like the legs of some petrified monster sticking up into the air, meet your view in all directions; and great prison-like fortresses, with port-holes like the eyes of needles, and ponderous doors lapping over like the covers of a banker’s ledger, appear with surprising frequency. The streets are narrow, crooked, and rough. They begin in the most unreasonable places and go nowhere. Some of them start broadly, but wind around like the track of a serpent, growing narrower and narrower until they suddenly end, like the edge of a wedge, against a stone wall.

Curaçoa is a great place for business, although it is so quiet and sleepy that one might think the whole town had taken a dose of laudanum. It is the distributing point of a large amount of commerce, a harbor of refuge for vessels in distress, the haven of political exiles from South America, and the hotbed of conspiracies and revolutions against neighboring republics.

South of Curaçoa is Maracaibo, with its curious lake, in which are towns built upon stilts, that give the name of Venezuela, or Little Venice, to this land. The explorers, like tourists of modern times, were given to tracing resemblances in America to what they were familiar with in Europe, and they imagined these huts rising on piles above the water looked like the city of canals and gondolas. But there is no more resemblance to Venice than to Chicago, and the name of Venezuela, like that of the continent, is a falsehood which the world has allowed to stand uncontradicted.

QUITO.

THE CAPITAL OF ECUADOR.

Those which ply along the west coast from Panama southward are built for fair weather and tropical seas, with open decks and airy state-rooms, through which the breezes bring refreshing coolness. Such vessels would not live long in the Atlantic nor in the Caribbean Sea, but find no heavy weather

on the Pacific, where the wind is “never strong enough to ruffle the fur on a cat’s back,” as the sailors say, and ships sail in a perpetual calm. The trip to Chili, however, is long and tiresome, lasting twenty-five days. Less than half the time is spent at sea, as there are thirty-eight ports at which the vessels, under the company’s contracts, are obliged to call. Guayaquil, the commercial metropolis of Ecuador, and next to Callao, Peru, and Valparaiso, Chili, the most important place on the coast, is the first stopping-place, four days from Panama. Although the westernmost city of South America, Guayaquil has about the same longitude as Washington, and is only two degrees south of the equator. It is sixty miles from the sea, on a river which looks like the Mississippi at New Orleans, and stretches along the low banks for more than two miles.

One’s first impression, if he arrives at night, is that the ship has anchored in front of a South American Paris, so brilliant are the terraces of gas-lamps, rising one after the other, as the town slopes up towards the mountains. When morning dawns the deception is renewed, and one has a picture of Venice before him, with long lines of white buildings, whose curtained balconies look down upon gayly clad men and women floating upon the river in quaint-looking, narrow gondolas and broad-bosomed rafts. Unless he is warned in time, the traveller meets with a sudden and disgusting surprise upon disembarking, for the gondolas are nothing but “dug-outs” bringing pineapples and bananas from up the river; the rafts are balsam-logs lashed together with vines, and the houses are dilapidated skeletons of bamboo, whitewashed, which look as if they had been erected by an architectural lunatic, and would tumble into the river with the first gust of wind. The streets are dirty and have a repulsive smell, and the half-naked Indians which throng them are continually scratching their bodies for fleas and their heads for lice. Half the filth that festers under the tropic sun in Guayaquil would breed a sudden pestilence in New York or Chicago, yet the inhabitants say it is a healthy city, where yellow-fever or cholera never comes.

A narrow-gauge street railway, or tramvia, as they call it, reaches from the docks a couple of miles to the edge of the city, and upon its cars the products of the plantations are brought to the docks and loaded by lighters upon outgoing vessels. Like all Spanish ports, this one has no wharfage, but ships of whatever tonnage have to anchor in the river a mile or so from shore, and release or receive freight upon barges, which are towed, not by tugs, for there is not such a thing in all that region, but by oarsmen in a row-boat. Passengers have to reach the steamers in a similar way.

When we arrived there we were immediately surrounded by a crowd of boatmen, who clambered up the sides of the vessel, screaming with all the strength of their lungs the merits of their boats. Their vociferousness and persistency would make the Niagara Falls hackmen green with jealousy; and the fact that most of them were bare up to their thighs, and entirely shirtless, made the scene picturesque, although somewhat alarming to a timid person. The costume of the Ecuador boatmen is equivalent to a pair of cotton bathing-trunks, and they are as much at home in the water as in their canoes.

With twenty-five or thirty of these naked black men surrounding him, shoving and pushing one another, screaming, gesticulating, and performing a war-dance of the most extraordinary description, a timid man is apt to be deceived by appearances, and imagine that he has fallen into the hands of a tribe of hungry cannibals, instead of a party of innocent Sambos who wish to promote his welfare. As soon as these maniacs discovered we were Americans, they were smart enough to introduce into the bedlam as much of our mother-tongue as they could command, making the scene all the more amusing. One big fellow, black as midnight, with only about half a yard of muslin and a dilapidated panama hat to protect his person from the elements, jumped up and down, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Me Americano! me Americano! Me been to Baltimoore!” Becoming interested in the fellow, we learned that he had been a sailor on a Spanish man-of-war which several years ago visited that city.

Among the crowd of howling dervises was a pleasant-looking fellow with a whole pair of pantaloons and a linen duster on. He was not so noisy as the rest, and could speak a little English. Taking him aside, I told him how large our party was, and where we wanted to go. He agreed to take us and our luggage ashore for two dollars, and was at once engaged; whereupon, instead of going off and minding their own business, the crowd began to abuse Pepe—for that, he said, was his name—and the rest of us in the most violent manner; and when the baggage was brought up they seized upon it, and each man attempted to carry a piece into his own boat. But the mate of the steamer was equal to the occasion, and laid about him with so much energy that the deck was soon cleared.

The street railway only extends to the limits of the city, but a short walk beyond it gives one a glimpse of the rural tropics. At one end of the main street, which runs along the river front, is a fortress-crowned hill, from the summit of which a charming view of the surrounding country can be obtained, but the better plan is to take a carriage and drive out a few miles. The road is rough and dusty, but passes among cocoa-nut groves and sugar plantations, through forests fairly blazing with the wondrous passion-flower, so scarlet as to make the trees look like living fire; with pineapple-plants and banana-trees bending under the enormous loads of fruit they carry. The rickety old carriage passed along until our senses were almost bewildered by visions none of us had ever seen. Nowhere can one find a more beautiful scene of tropical vegetation in its full glory, and no artist ever mingled colors that could convey an adequate idea of nature’s gorgeousness here.

The most beautiful thing in the tropics is a young palm-tree. The old ones are more graceful than any of our foliage plants, but they all show signs of decay. The young ones, so supple as to bend before the winds, are the ideal of grace and loveliness, as picturesque in repose as they are in motion. The long, spreading leaves, of a vivid green, bend and sway with the breeze, and nod in the sunlight with a beauty which cannot be described.

There is considerable business done in Guayaquil, and some of the merchants carry stocks of imported goods valued at half a million dollars, with an annual trade of double that amount. It is the only town in Ecuador worth speaking of in a commercial point of view, and its tradesmen do the entire wholesale business of that republic. The shipments of cocoa, rubber, hides, coffee, ivory, nuts, and cinchona (quinine) bark amount to about $6,000,000 a year, and the imports, the President of Ecuador told us, amount annually to $10,000,000. There is no way to ascertain the truth of his Excellency’s statements, as the Government keeps no statistics of its commerce, and he admitted that it was only an estimate based upon the amount of duties collected; but one may be allowed to doubt that a country like Ecuador, the most backward, ignorant, and impoverished in all America, can purchase for many years in succession twice as much as it sells.

Founded in 1535 by one of the lieutenants of Pizarro, Guayaquil has been the market for five hundred miles of coast ever since, but now it is almost destitute of native capital, nearly all the merchants being foreigners, mostly English and German, with one or two from the United States. It is the only place in Ecuador in which modern civilization exists; the rest of the country is a century behind the times. Since its foundation Guayaquil has been burned several times, and often plundered by pirates; now its commercial condition seems secure from all dangers except revolutions, which are epidemic in Ecuador. In fact, the country would feel queer without one. Earthquakes are frequent, but the elastic bamboo houses only shiver—they never fall. To the torch of the revolutionist, however, they are like tinder, and the blocks that have been burned over testify to its effectiveness as a weapon of destruction.

Over the entrances to the houses are tin signs, each of which represents the flag of the country of which the dweller within is a citizen; and upon these signs are painted warnings to revolutionary looters or incendiaries—“This is the property of a citizen of Great Britain;” or, “This is the property of a citizen of Germany;” or, “This is the property of a citizen of the United States”—and the robber and torch-bearer are expected to respect them as such, but seldom do.

Bolivar freed Ecuador from the Spanish yoke, as he did Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Peru, and it was one of the five States which formed the United States of Colombia under his presidency; but the priests had such a hold upon the people that liberty could not live in an atmosphere they polluted, and the country lapsed into a state of anarchy which has continued ever since. The struggle has been between the progressive element and the priests, and the latter have usually triumphed. It is the only country in America in which the Romish Church survives as the Spaniards left it. In other countries popish influence has been destroyed, and the rule which prevails everywhere—that the less a people are under the control of that Church the greater their prosperity, enlightenment, and progress—is illustrated in Ecuador with striking force.

One-fourth of all the property in Ecuador belongs to the bishop. There is a Catholic church for every one hundred and fifty inhabitants: of the population of the country ten per cent. are priests, monks, or nuns; and two hundred and seventy-two of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year are observed as feast or fast days.

The priests control the Government in all its branches, dictate its laws and govern their enforcement, and rule the country as absolutely as if the Pope were its king. As a result seventy-five per cent. of the children born are illegitimate. There is not a penitentiary, house of correction, reformatory, or benevolent institution outside of Quito and Guayaquil; there is not a railroad or stage-coach in the entire country, and until recently there was not a telegraph wire. Laborers get from two to ten dollars a month, and men are paid two dollars and a quarter for carrying one hundred pounds of merchandise on their backs two hundred and eighty-five miles. There is not a wagon in the republic outside of Guayaquil, and not a road over which a wagon could pass. The people know nothing but what the priests tell them; they have no amusements but cock-fights and bullfights; no literature; no mail-routes, except from Guayaquil to the capital (Quito), and nothing is common among the masses that was not in use by them two hundred years ago. If one-tenth of the money that has been expended in building monasteries had been devoted to the construction of cartroads, Ecuador, which is naturally rich, would be one of the most wealthy nations, in proportion to its area, on the globe.

There once was a steam railroad in Ecuador. During the time when Henry Meiggs was creating such an excitement by the improvements he was making in the transportation facilities of Peru, the contagion spread to Ecuador, and some ambitious English capitalists attempted to lay a road from Guayaquil to the interior. A track seventeen miles long was built, which represents the railway system of Ecuador in all the geographies, gazetteers, and books of statistics; but no wheels ever passed over this track, and the tropical vegetation has grown so luxuriantly about the place where it lies that it would now be difficult to find it. Last year a telegraph line was built connecting Guayaquil with Quito, the highest city in the world; but there is only one wire, and this is practically useless, as not more than seven days out of the month can a message be sent over it. The people chop down the poles for firewood, and cut out pieces of the wire to repair broken harness whenever they feel so disposed. Then it often takes a week for the line-man to find the break, and another week to repair it. In the Government telegraph office I saw an operator with a ball and chain attached to his leg—a convict who had been sent back to his post because no one else could be found to work the instrument. A young lady took the message and the money. There is a cable belonging to a New York company connecting Guayaquil with the outside world, but rates are extremely high, the tariff to the United States being three dollars a word, and to other places in proportion.

Although almost directly under the equator, the temperature of Guayaquil seldom rises above ninety, and after two o’clock in the day it is always as cool as a pleasant summer morning in New England. A fresh breeze called the chandny blows over the ice-capped mountains, and brings health to a city which would otherwise be uninhabitable. On clear afternoons Mount Chimborazo, or “Chimbo” as they call it for short, until recently supposed to be the highest in the hemisphere, can be seen—white, jagged, and silently impressive—against the clear sky.

The road to Quito is a mountain-path around the base of Chimbo, traversed only on foot or mule-back, and then only during six months of the year; for in the rainy season it is impassable, except to experienced mountaineers.

During the rainy seasons the recent President, Don Jesus

Maria Caamaño, resided in Guayaquil, in a barracks guarded by soldiers, where he could watch the collection of customs and see to the suppression of revolutions. He was the representative of the Church party, and the people of the interior were loyal to him; but the liberal element, which mostly exists on the coast, where a knowledge of the world has come, was in a perpetual state of revolt, and required constant attention. A fortress overlooking the town of Guayaquil, and a gun-boat in the harbor, keep the people in subjection. We called upon the President at his headquarters, and found him swinging in a hammock and smoking a cigarette. He is a man of slight frame, with noticeably small hands and feet, which he appeared quite anxious should not escape our observation. He has a pleasant and intelligent face, but seemed to be bewildered when we drew him into conversation about the commerce of his country. He was educated in Europe, and has the reputation of being a man of culture, although the abject tool of the priests.

Notwithstanding the rest of the country is still in the middle ages, Guayaquil shows symptoms of becoming a modern town. It has gas, street-cars, ice-factories, and other improvements, all introduced by citizens of the United States. The custom-house is built of pine from Maine and corrugated iron from Pennsylvania, and a citizen of New York erected it. An American company has a line of paddle-wheel steamers, constructed in Baltimore, on the river, and the only gun-boat the Government owns is a discarded merchant-ship which plied between New York and Norfolk. Some of the houses, although built of split bamboo and plaster, are very elegantly furnished, and the stores show fine stocks of goods. But the rear portion of the city is so filthy that one has to hold his nose as he passes through it. The people live in miserable dirt hovels, and the buzzard is the only industrious biped to be seen.