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 versify of C <i 1 i f o r n i a . Los Angeles 
 
 
 The 
 
 Fritz L. Hoffmann Collection 
 
 A Gift of 
 
 Olga Mingo Hoffmann 
 
 1994
 
 SIX WEEKS 
 
 IN 
 
 SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 B Y E. H. S. 
 
 PRINTED FOR I'RIV'ATi: <: I lie: U J. A. T I < > \
 
 
 
 LONDON: 
 T. AND "\V. BOONE, DOND STREET.
 
 3 
 
 I 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 , To the few friends for whom alone these paoea 
 are destined, I need not apologize for the many 
 literary imperfections which they doubtless contain. 
 My object lias been to record plainly and briefly the 
 sights which I have seen, and the impressions which 
 naturally suggested themselves to my mind, during" 
 a visit to a part of the world whose beauties are as 
 yet unhackneyed by tourists, and where adventure 
 and novelty may still be found in travel. 
 
 The importance of the isthmus of Panama in 
 every point of view can hardly be over-estimated : 
 and the present rush of emigrants westward, and 
 the daily increasing prospect of its continuance, 
 have given to that locality, both commercially and 
 politically, an interest such as no other country at 
 this moment can boast. 
 
 I have abstained from dwelling at length on the 
 3ocial or political condition of the South American 
 republics in which 1 travelled : partly because any
 
 IV 
 
 deductions drawn from so rapid a survey as mine 
 must necessarily have been hasty and imperfect : 
 and partly also because I believe that the state of 
 transition inseparable from their recent emancipation 
 and present ignorance of the art of self-government, 
 must long* render it impossible even for those best 
 acquainted with their history, either to decide fairly 
 on their actual position, or justly to predict their 
 future destinies. 
 
 London, June \.Qth, 1850. 

 
 SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 Ox the morning' of the 18th of December, 1849, 
 after a residence of some weeks in Jamaica, I left 
 that island by the Royal Mail Steamer, accompanied 
 by a single friend, and intending to proceed first 
 across the Isthmus of Panama, and then as much 
 farther to the southward as fortune and time miffht 
 allow. 
 
 The Medwav had on board a most heterogeneous 
 collection of South American merchants, bound for 
 Lima and Valparaiso, Californian emigrants, settlers 
 on their way to Oreg*on, and a party from the 
 United States en route for the Sandwich Islands, 
 where they contemplated the introduction of sundry 
 branches of business unheard of in the Pacific until 
 now. From these last I learnt that Anglo-Saxon 
 colonies were regularly, though not rapidly forming 
 in the country which they had chosen as their home, 
 — a movement to which the organization of new 
 states beyond the Rocky Mountains will probably 
 give an extraordinary impetus— and among other 
 evidences of civilization, that a weekly journal made 
 its appearance, and circulated <wt<'iisi\rl\ in Hono- 
 lolu. Of this addition to the periodical literature of 
 the world, I afterwards obtained a Bight, and round 
 
 it
 
 it to be intended for natives as well as settlers, since 
 it contained many advertisements in the Polynesian 
 language, contrasting- singularly with the European 
 " leaders" and other notices. It is, of course, in the 
 hands of North Americans, and with the exception 
 I have named, and the important deficiency of having 
 no rival with whom to keep up a paper war, differs 
 but little from the common run of journals in the 
 Western States. The latter want was in part sup- 
 plied by a continual and truly John-Bullish quarrel 
 with the French, whose vague and visionary projects 
 of founding* an empire in Oceania have impressed 
 the present inhabitants with a deep and perhaps 
 well founded alarm for their threatened independence. 
 The load of unpopularity seems to be pretty equally 
 divided between them and the missionaries, who if 
 they have said less, have done more : and whose 
 spiritual influence, extended over temporal matters, 
 has often been a subject of complaint among their 
 own less docile countrymen. That a present desire 
 exists for the annexation to the great North American 
 republic of any of these isolated spots, important as 
 they are now, and more important as they will 
 hereafter become for the purposes of commerce, I 
 do not believe : but that, both there and throughout a 
 great part of the southern continent, especially along 
 its western coast, the dominant race will be ulti- 
 mately composed of United States emigrants, I for 
 one do not entertain a doubt : and the conversations 
 which I held, both here and afterwards on the
 
 Isthmus, with parties well acquainted with the 
 subject, seemed to confirm me in tins preconceived 
 opinion. 
 
 Two days rolling* and pitching- in a sea by no 
 means of the smoothest, brought us in sight of Santa 
 Martha, where H. M. S. Vixen was lying" at anchor, 
 surrounded by a shoal of the little vessels of the 
 country, whose appearance, rough, unpainted, and 
 thatched rather than covered with dry palm leaves 
 in place of an awning - , indicated no very profound 
 acquaintance on the part of the natives with the art 
 of ship-building". They are said, however, to be 
 much safer than they seem, and make long* trips 
 down the coast at all seasons of the year, though 
 harbours are few and squalls frequent. 
 
 It was still night when we entered the bay, and 
 the first dawn of day shewed a long* white line, 
 seeming'ly of clouds, which appeared to overhang 
 the little town and its surrounding* valley. Their 
 immense heig'ht precluded the idea of their being* 
 mountains : and it was not until the sun rose above 
 the horizon, lighting up the white peaks until they 
 sparkled and glistened like diamonds, that I could 
 really believe them what they proved to be, the Sierra 
 Nevada of Santa Martha. They form a branch 
 or spur of the great Cordillera elm in, and their 
 height is something" more than 17,000 feet above 
 the sea. The distance of their summits from the 
 coast is not exactly known : but it certainly exceeds 
 150 miles, and only during very fine and dear 
 
 u 2
 
 weather do they present the appearance which we 
 saw. Indeed within an hour from the time when 
 we first made them out, they had begun to draw the 
 clouds round their summits, and by mid-day were 
 blocked altogether from the scene. 
 
 With this exception, the bay presents no remark- 
 able feature. Low rocky hills, thinly covered with 
 a kind of dwarf cactus, and presenting- none of the 
 usual luxuriant appearance of tropical vegetation, 
 form a wide amphitheatre round the valley, which 
 is in itself neither rich nor well cultivated, though 
 dotted here and there with the white walls and red 
 roofs of haciendas belonging- to the citizens, few of 
 whom choose to reside within the dusty precincts of 
 the town. There is a castle, of no great strength 
 or importance, perched on a seemingly inaccessible 
 point of rock, but calculated rather to overawe than 
 protect the citizens, being overlooked by all the 
 neighbouring hills, on any of which a battery might 
 be planted so as completely to sweep the ramparts. 
 Entering the streets, a stranger is struck by the 
 evidences of utter neglect and disorder visible in all 
 that belongs, or ought to belong, to the municipal 
 department, the unpaved roads, the holes not filled 
 up, the accumulated dirt swept into the centre of 
 the thoroughfares and left there : and above all, the 
 general air of indolent indifference stamped on the 
 faces, and even the manners of the people. Towards 
 mid-day not a soul is stirring : the shop-keepers are 
 asleep at their doors, or perhaps swinging in their
 
 hammocks : many of the houses are closed : and 
 the very vultures,, tame as sparrows in London, and 
 perched on the roofs and windowsills, with a confi- 
 dence in the security of their position which their 
 usefulness as scavengers justifies, are basking- with 
 wings outspread in the sun, while the g-lare from 
 the hot sand beneath, unrelieved by shade or wind, 
 burns with a furnace-like heat which no northern 
 imagination can realize. I rode over to the hacienda 
 of San Pedro, celebrated in South American annals 
 as the residence of Bolivar, and the place in which 
 he died. The proprietor was absent, but his fore- 
 man, an American from the States, very civilly 
 shewed us everything' that was to be seen, and par- 
 ticularly insisted on our admiring- a clumsy and ill- 
 constructed sugar-mill, which, worked by eig-ht oxen, 
 screamed and groaned as thoug-h its ung-reased joints 
 were suffering- torture in the process. Sugar is 
 made throughout New Granada, but the canes are 
 very inferior to those of the islands, and two-thirds 
 of the produce is wasted by the exceeding- awkward- 
 ness of the manufacturing process. When I ex- 
 plained to my conductor the manner in which the 
 work was done in Louisiana, and told him that he 
 ought to bring- over some of the improvements 
 introduced of late years among* his countrymen, he 
 admitted their superiority at once, but said that 
 neither his employer, nor any of his neighbours, 
 would sanction a deviation from the old mode of 
 proceeding-. We went into the house, and were
 
 6 
 
 shewn the place where the Washington of South 
 America drew his last breath. It is a bare unfur- 
 nished room, with walls plastered and roughly 
 painted, a mud floor, and one small window. A bust 
 of Bolivar stood in one corner, evidently " made to 
 order," for instead of the irregular, but singularly 
 intellectual features of the conqueror, the marble 
 displayed the head and shoulders of a grenadier, 
 devoid of a single particle of expression, and re- 
 sembling 1 nothing* so much as a large figure intended 
 to set off the uniform in which it was dressed. 
 Above the place once occupied by his camp-bed, a 
 rude scrawl informed us that " aqui muria Bolivar," 
 a simpler, and therefore much better inscription than 
 one in a neighbouring* church, where his remains 
 were for a time deposited, which latter is conceived 
 in all that spirit of pompous and unmeaning* brag- 
 gadocio which appears to be the mother-tongue of a 
 Spaniard of the New World. 
 
 The private history of Bolivar is less known to 
 us than that of any great man so near our own 
 time. His early years were passed chiefly in wan- 
 dering over the continent of Europe, then under the 
 undisputed dominion of Buonaparte. The story 
 of his vowing* to achieve the freedom of his country 
 on the Mons Sacer at Borne, is amusingly charac- 
 teristic of his countrymen's propensity to invest 
 even the most common event with an air of romance. 
 Married, widowed, again a traveller, and settled 
 down at last as a haciendado on his native estates
 
 of Aragua, in New Barcelona, he seems to have taken 
 part unwillingly in the revolutionary outbreaks of 
 1808 : and it is not the least singular part of his 
 career, that the man who at five-and-twenty refused 
 from motives of prudence to join the patriotic 
 forces, — in modern phrase a " republicain du lende- 
 main," and not a de la veille,"— should within five 
 years have found himself at the head of the move- 
 ment, without rival or second in his authority. An 
 unsuccessful mission to London filled up a part of 
 this short interval : and his surrender of Puerto- 
 Cabello to the Spaniards in 1811, after a brief and 
 feeble defence, gave no promise of future success. 
 The results of that failure are well known. Fair 
 words and promises were lavished on the insurgents, 
 whose cause had now become hopeless ; an amnesty 
 was guaranteed, and a redress of grievances hinted 
 at : the Colonists trusted and submitted : a military 
 despotism succeeded : the streets of the towns ran 
 with blood : and the leader Miranda died in the 
 dungeons of Cadiz. Bolivar escaped to Cartha- 
 gena : and nothing more was heard of his indiffer- 
 ence to the cause of freedom. Victory succeeded 
 victor v ; at thirty he was Commander-in-chief, with 
 a colleag'ue almost as nominal as Buonaparte's 
 fellow-consuls : his Indian cavalry defied the utmost 
 efforts of the Spaniards to keep pace with their 
 marches, whether in retreat or pursuit : tents, lug- 
 gage, camp-followers, were prohibited : and Napo- 
 leon's system of warfare was carried out under a
 
 tropical sun, and in campaigns conducted among' 
 unexplored and all but impenetrable forests. A 
 genuine and life-like history of these expeditions 
 would be among 1 the most interesting 1 works ever 
 written. 
 
 A great deal of good indignation has been wasted 
 on the subject of Bolivar's supposed despotic inten- 
 tions : while in truth no man, except himself, could 
 have held together, with so limited an exercise of 
 authority, the feeble and unformed governments of 
 the new republic : and whatever portion of freedom 
 they may have lost during* his administration, was 
 sacrificed to the preservation of the rest. A fortune 
 ruined, and a constitution, like Pitt's, worn out at 
 forty-seven, were his rewards for eighteen years of 
 exertions : and the best informed and wisest of his 
 countrymen reluctantly acknowledge, that in the 
 twenty } r ears succeeding his death, South America 
 has produced no other like him. 
 
 The tradition of his illness having been shortened 
 by poison is current in Carthagena, and very ge- 
 nerally believed. I am not aware that there is any 
 ground more definite than common report for 
 crediting a story, to which the single fact of his 
 dying* at the moment when the fate of a party hung 
 upon his return to power, was sufficient to give an air 
 of plausibility. There was however no one living at 
 the hacienda who remembered his residence there. 
 
 The dusty plain which we had to traverse in re- 
 turning was intersected by some twenty different
 
 9 
 
 horsepaths — carriage-road there is none — and con- 
 triving to miss one of the innumerable turns in that 
 which led hack to the town, my companion and I 
 found ourselves seven miles distant from the steamer, 
 with about half an hour to make our way back ; and 
 it cost us a hot and hurried ride to reach the shore, 
 which we did just as the last boats were putting* off. 
 In the night we passed the mouths of the Mag- 
 dalena, which are wider and deeper than those of 
 the Mississippi, and during* and after the rainy 
 season, pour down a volume of water which dis- 
 colours the sea for many miles round. It is the 
 great interior road of New Granada, and furnishes 
 the only communication with Bog*ota, the land 
 journey thither from the point of disembarkation 
 being* only of two days, while eight or ten are 
 usually occupied in the tedious business of " poling*" 
 up against the stream. A line of steamers has been 
 often proposed, and I am informed might easily be 
 established ; but the Government will not, and indi- 
 viduals cannot, take upon themselves the risk and 
 expense of the enterprise ; while the usual fate of 
 creditors having money invested in South American 
 loans may well deter European capitalists from 
 hazarding- an experiment of whose success they are 
 so unlikely to reap the fruits. The present mode of 
 travelling is by the boats of the country, which are 
 little more than trees scooped out to form ;i bed, 
 while additional height and breadth are given l>\ a 
 
 few planks roughly nailed on to the sides.
 
 10 
 
 By noon of the next day we were in Carthagena 
 harbour, one of the most remarkable in the world. 
 The coast is g'enerally low, flat, and uninteresting', 
 althoug'h one bold promontory, surmounted by an 
 old monastic building', and very much resembling' 
 Arthur's Seat in its shape, commands the town, 
 from which it stands distant about a mile. But the 
 peculiarity of the place lies in the manner in which 
 it is approached from the sea. Passing* within a 
 mile of the walls, and going- up the river, a vessel 
 making' Carthag-ena, appears at first sig'ht to be leav- 
 ing" the city altogether behind her ; the object of 
 which circuitous route is to avoid a reef of rocks 
 which blocks up the direct approach. Four or five 
 miles up the channel the river divides into two 
 branches, separated from each other by low green 
 islands covered with mangrove bushes and forming- 
 a nursery for mosquitos, young- allig'ators, and fever. 
 
 The nearer and broader passage called the Boca 
 Grande, was formerly taken by all vessels standing" 
 into the harbour ; but ships were sunk in it during- 
 the war with Venezuela, and as it is proverbially 
 easier to make mischief than to mend it, the approach 
 is impassable to this day ; thus adding" about six miles 
 to the distance g'one over, and materially increasing- 
 the difficulties of the navigation. The present 
 entrance is through a narrow mouth about 100 yards 
 across, and completely commanded by a heavy 
 battery, called the castle of San Joseph, while 
 another equally formidable is placed so as to rake
 
 11 
 
 the channel. Both are " a fleur d'eau," and how- 
 ever dangerous at a distance, might easily be carried 
 by boarding-, as the water is deep up to the very 
 muzzles of the guns. From this point to the land- 
 ing- place, the harbour is a wide and deep lagoon, 
 above three miles in length, and studded at several 
 points by detached outworks, heavily armed and said 
 to be well garrisoned. We passed the greater part 
 of the morning* in walking- through the streets, and 
 along- the old ramparts, which were formerly, 
 next to Havana, the strongest in the New World, 
 but are now much dilapidated. Not the slightest 
 trouble is taken to keep them in repair, and the 
 Brims are most of them dismounted and rusty. 
 There is a show made of guarding the gates, at one 
 of which stood a bare-footed sentry, very composedly 
 lighting his cigar at that of a passenger, while his 
 musket, devoid of bayonet, leaned against the oppo- 
 site wall. We had an opportunity of seeing the 
 guard turn out, and no Irish beggars ever exceeded 
 them in wretchedness of appearance. Two-thirds 
 were negroes, and most of the rest appeared to have 
 Indian blood in their veins. By dint of swearing 
 and thrashing, the officer in command contrived to 
 get them into line, when they stood pal iently enough*, 
 but this show of discipline vanished when they began 
 to march, no two keeping step for more than a 
 minute, and their firelocks pointing in all directions. 
 Except one or two large churches, with the usual 
 amount of tinsel decoration inside, there are no pub-
 
 12 
 
 lie building's of importance, and the private houses, 
 which are in the Spanish style, and built round 
 court-yards, with fountains in the centre, have all 
 the appearance of having* seen better days. Drains 
 or glitters there are none, and the unwary passer-by 
 receives no friendly warning 1 of u gardez-l'eau" to 
 announce the approach of the unsavoury shower 
 which ever and anon comes down from the upper 
 windows, or rather from the latticed opening's which 
 do duty for such. Glass is unknown, and indeed 
 hardly required, but at noon-day the heavy Avooden 
 shutters are closed, the shops are deserted, and the 
 population in general indulge in a siesta, from which 
 they seldom rouse themselves until the approach of 
 evening* brings with it the fresh sea-breeze, and 
 tempers the oven-like heat of the stone-paved 
 streets. 
 
 Priests and jolm-crows seemed equally abundant : 
 the former receiving* most respectful salutations from 
 the inhabitants, who doffed their sombreros, and stood 
 aside as the reverend gentlemen swept by in all the 
 dignity of shovel hats and full canonicals. Besides 
 the full-grown clergy, there was a perfect swarm of 
 lads from ten to fifteen years of age, apparently 
 students destined for the church, but who being' 
 dressed out in a costume which seemed modelled, 
 with little difference, on that of their clerical elders, 
 presented a most ludicrous appearance. These 
 a makings of priests" as they would be called in 
 Ireland, appeared to entertain no particular sense of
 
 13 
 
 their own dignity, but scampered about the streets 
 and through the dust, with quite as much alacrity as 
 their bare-legged and poncho-clad companions. 
 
 Of trade there is little or none, the only articles 
 sold in the shops being" provisions, brought from the 
 interior by the Indians, and the strong*, raw spirit 
 of the country, of which, to judge by the number of 
 shops in which it stood exposed for sale, an enor- 
 mous quantity must be consumed. I inquired for 
 the celebrated " pulque" the universal drink of 
 Mexico, which is also made here, but was told that 
 it was of very inferior quality, an assurance, which 
 after tasting- the compound, I did not feel inclined 
 to dispute. 
 
 A few North Americans have set up shops, and 
 with the characteristic enterprise of their country, 
 attempted to introduce some of the comforts of civi- 
 lized life ; but the invincible indolence of the people 
 has up to the present time baffled all their endeavours, 
 and with the single exception of " American drinks" 
 and ice from Boston, both of which hove found 
 great favour in the eyes of the Carthagenians, I could 
 not learn that they had succeeded in creating a de- 
 mand for any article of United States manufacture. 
 
 Of late even the little business which used to be 
 done in Carthagena has been all but put a stop to 
 by the cholera, whose ravages have been fearful 
 beyond anything that could be conceived in a tem- 
 perate climate. Intense heat, dirt, want of precau- 
 tion, and crowded dwellings, produced (heir natural
 
 14 
 
 effect : and though no official returns were taken, 
 (nor could they have been trusted to if they had), and 
 the popular account is probably much exaggerated, 
 it is no small proof of the violence of the disease, 
 that out of a population of 10,000 souls not less 
 than one-third should be commonly reported to have 
 perished. 
 
 Carthagena has no historical association, but the 
 extraordinary feat of Captain de Courcy, performed 
 in the harbour, when with one small vessel he 
 engaged and captured in succession, the whole New 
 Granadian fleet, consisting of six sail, inflicting on 
 the enemy a loss in killed and wounded exceeding 
 the whole number of his own crew, will long be 
 remembered through the Spanish main. 
 
 On returning' to the steamer I found her sur- 
 rounded with a flotilla of native boats, loaded with 
 fresh vegetables, fruit, hides, live monkeys and par- 
 rots, straw-hats, and grass hammocks — the two 
 latter being regular articles of export among the 
 natives of the interior, who often come down from 
 great distances to wait for the arrival of the British 
 mail-steamers. It struck me as a sig'n of the times, 
 that three or four of these men, — some of whom 
 had probably never left their homes except for their 
 periodical journey to the capital, — came on board 
 with an earnest request to the captain to be per- 
 mitted to work their way to California. The offer 
 was of course declined, as we could have taken them 
 no farther than Chagres, from which point they
 
 15 
 
 would have found it difficult to continue their jour- 
 ney. We ran past Portobello in the night, and 
 had an indistinct view of a place, celebrated in the 
 annals of the Buccaneers, whose exploits form al- 
 most the only history of this part of the South 
 American coast. 
 
 During" all the succeeding 1 morning* the coast 
 
 © © o 
 
 was plainly in sight: high, rocky, indented with 
 caves and hollows, and fringed by a long" white line 
 of surf, which sufficiently indicated the danger of 
 too near an approach. Above the rocks, and up to 
 the summits of the sloping hills which rose in their 
 rear, one dense mass of wood overspread the whole 
 face of the country. Many of the trees were co- 
 vered with flowers, and the general appearance was 
 indescribably luxuriant : but the climate is deadly, 
 the malaria almost certainly fatal to an European 
 exposed to it during the falling" of the dews, and 
 Scott's description of 
 
 " Darien's deserts pale, 
 Where death bestrides the evening gale," 
 is no poetical exaggeration, but an often-proved and 
 melancholy truth. Chagres, where Ave dropped an- 
 chor on the evening of the 22nd, has so often been 
 described as a kind of earthly Hades, that bad as it is, 
 every one who sees it for the first time is agreeably 
 surprised to find it no worse. A very few hours, 
 however, suffice to undeceive them, and prove that 
 report in this case has been more than usually 
 faithful. There is no bay, nor shelter of any kind
 
 10 
 
 for ships, which lie pitching 1 in the surf about a mile 
 from the shore, exposed to the full sweep of the sea 
 on their sides, and to a gTound-swell of a descrip- 
 tion particularly unpleasant to unpractised sailors. 
 In rough weather, as I had afterwards occasion to 
 ascertain by experience, the communication with the 
 shore is both difficult and dangerous ; and at all 
 times the want of a secure and sheltered basin is an 
 inconvenience severely felt, as every article of the 
 cargo must be landed piecemeal in boats, which 
 together with their exhausted crews, are kept in 
 constant requisition during the short sta} T of the 
 steamers off the river. There is a dangerous bar, 
 with shifting sands, and a very inconsiderable depth 
 of water : Avhile the landing' place, destitute of pier 
 or jetty, is divided from terra firma by some dozen 
 yards of deep alluvial mud, over which the only 
 means of transit is on the backs of the crew, or of 
 native boatmen, who for a consideration (not a small 
 one), are always ready to undertake the office. 
 The place too is miserable beyond the misery of a 
 Highland village, or West-of- Ireland " town." 
 Four long straggling streets, professedly parallel to 
 each other, but laid out with no very exact attention 
 to rule and line, backed by an irregular scattering* 
 of huts, dotted over the hill-side as if it had rained 
 houses, and facing to all points of the compass, ex- 
 tend along the eastern bank of the river, on whose 
 shores, half buried in the ooze, some hundreds of 
 clumsily-fashioned canoes are fastened to pegs op-
 
 17 
 
 posite the dwelling's of the respective owners. On 
 one side the settlement is bounded by an impassable 
 swamp, which literally abuts upon the houses : while 
 rows of stepping-stones laid across and down the 
 principal roads, suggest ideas of Avet underfoot not 
 altogether favourable to the healthiness of the loca- 
 lity. When I say that wheeled carriages of any 
 description are unknown : that during six months 
 out of the twelve the lower part of the village is 
 under water, while the rainy season extends over nine 
 months, and the dry weather, which begins with 
 the new year, ends about the middle of March : that 
 the population, wholly composed of negroes and In- 
 dians, enjoy an unrivalled reputation for proficiency 
 in the art of fleecing their visitors : and that for 
 some time past, a perpetual stream of Californian 
 emigrants has poured through in numbers which 
 defy the native police to restrain them, doing 
 exactly what they please, and committing murders 
 in open daylight, of which there has been more than 
 one instance during- the last few weeks \ I believe 
 that I shall have conveyed to the reader a tolerably 
 fair impression of the pleasures and advantages of a 
 residence in Chagres. The first view of the river, 
 however, is certainly striking. A noble old castle, 
 built by the Spaniards, and stormed by the bucca- 
 neer Morgan, whose performances on the isthmus 
 rank among: the most extraordinary instances re- 
 corded of undisciplined courage prevailing over the 
 efforts of trained and regular troops, aided l»\ man} 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 natural advantages, redeems the place from its 
 otherwise uncivilized aspect ; and the thickly- 
 wooded banks, overhanging a stream which lite- 
 rally swarms with the quaint and picturesque boats 
 of the country, would in themselves be a study for a 
 painter : if indeed it were possible for any pencil, 
 however practised the hand that wielded it, to con- 
 vey an adequate idea of the glorious beauty of a 
 tropical forest, chilled by no northern blast, never 
 stripped of its leaves by the approach of winter, 
 but nourished and forced into hothouse-like luxu- 
 riance by the continued and unvarying* succession 
 of sun and shower. 
 
 Five steamers, including" our own, were lying" 
 off the coast at the same time, carrying 1 in all 
 not much less than a thousand passengers : and 
 when, after a rough and wet pull through the 
 surf, I landed at the place where boatmen usually 
 congregate, I found it no easy matter to secure 
 a carriage for myself and companion ; the owners 
 perfectly understanding* the principle of competi- 
 tion, and aware moreover, that as the applicants 
 were in all probability bound for one or other of the 
 packets which were about to start from Panama in 
 the course of a few days, they would prefer submit- 
 ting to almost any extortion in preference to under- 
 going a month's detention on the isthmus. Every- 
 body expostulated, swore, and paid : and when I 
 struck a bargain, by which I engaged to give fifty- 
 dollars for a canoe and two men to ascend the river 
 to Gorgona, I had reason to congratulate myself
 
 19 
 
 on beino* more fortunate than many of my neiffh- 
 hours, some of whom having waited until nearly 
 every boat was taken, Mere glad to oiler from 
 eighty to one hundred dollars for the same accom- 
 modation. 
 
 The contract, however, was not completed until 
 it had been put in writing*, and signed in presence 
 of the alcalde of the town : and to the office of this 
 worthy I proceeded accordingly, followed by my 
 crew, who evidently had no intention of hurrying 
 themselves, and kept perpetually slipping- away, 
 under pretence of buying provisions, but in reality 
 to lounge, g'ossip, and drink with their friends. 
 
 The judge's residence was a large barn-like 
 building*, half full of sacks, casks, and lumber, with 
 a small space partitioned off at one end for the female 
 part of the establishment, a fire on the clay floor, 
 and no furniture whatever except two hammocks, a 
 waterjar, and a sailor's chest, very much the worse 
 for wear. The walls were of bamboo, and the thatch 
 of palm-leaves, here the usual material. The first 
 object that caught my eye was the judge's lady 
 squatted on the ground by the open doorway, in a 
 dress more remarkable for simplicity than cleanli- 
 ness, with a cia*ar stuck behind her ear like a clerk's 
 pen, ready for use, and performing on the woolly 
 head of an infant which she held on her lap an 
 operation, which, to judge by appearances, musl have 
 been very much required. 1 found the legal digni- 
 tary himself lounging on one of the hammocks inside, 
 
 r Q
 
 20 
 
 bare-footed^ and in his shirt-sleeves, and seemingly 
 pursuing- what somebody calls the occupation of a 
 gentleman, in other words, doing- nothing*. The 
 opposite receptacle was filled by a lady similarly en- 
 gaged, while pig's grunted, dogs barked, and ducks 
 and hens quacked and cackled from every corner of 
 the apartment. 
 
 Rousing* the old man — a full-blooded African, 
 and whose colour had more than once provoked 
 squabbles with the Americans, these last having no 
 idea of treating a "nigger" with the respect which 
 he considered clue to his office — I went through the 
 requisite formalities, the only difficulty which we 
 encountered having arisen from the absence of any 
 one who could read or write — these accomplishments 
 forming*, it would seem, no part of a legal education 
 in New Granada. A clerk, however, was soon 
 found in an adjoining store, and it was with sincere 
 satisfaction that after four tedious hours of detention, 
 I took leave of Chagres and its inhabitants. By 
 the time that we were ready to embark, the river side 
 was crowded with newly arrived emigrants : and I 
 doubt much if such a scene as I then saw could have 
 been paralleled in any other quarter of the globe. 
 Rough, dirty, bearded, and stripped for the most 
 part to the thick flannel shirts, which in defiance of 
 the tropical sun they persisted in wearing : heavily 
 armed with knives and pistols, which if there be any 
 truth in physiognomy, some at least of those present 
 were both able and willing on occasion to use with
 
 21 
 
 effect : generally strong-built, and athletic, and 
 contrasting- singularly in their boisterous manner, 
 and the restless activity with which they continued 
 to pace the narrow street, with the indolent timidity 
 of the native population : they seemed just the men 
 to be fit for California, and for no other place : 
 worthy successors of the old Kentuckian and Texan 
 pioneers, to whom America owes the peaceable pos- 
 session of her magnificent dominions of the West. 
 The people of the town evidently stood in awe of 
 them, and gave them the wall with edifying* humi- 
 lity ; while the few among* their number who 
 belonged to a different class, and still retained about 
 them some appearance of civilization, seemed, as well 
 they might, even less satisfied with the society into 
 which they found themselves unexpectedly thrown. 
 For the first few miles above its mouth, the 
 Chag-res river runs through a level country, swampy 
 and covered with marsh-plants, while, as on the 
 Essequibo, the brush overhang's the water, and 
 altogether conceals the unsightly mud-banks on 
 either side. Flowers grew in profusion, of every 
 colour in the rainbow, and the general appearance 
 was not unlike that of one of the larger creeks of 
 Demerara. In about an hour we came to a range 
 of hills, none high, nor very steep, but apparently 
 ranging from one to three hundred feet above the 
 river. There was some monotony in the view, for 
 every reach exactly resembled the last, and the 
 miserable bamboo huts of the Indians, man} of them
 
 22 
 
 open at the sides, and consisting- merely of a roof — 
 a sort of parasol on a larg*e scale — made little variety 
 in the scene. Gatun and Miraflores, the first settle- 
 ments on the ChagTes above the town, are wretched 
 in the extreme, and certainly inferior to a collection 
 of neg'ro huts on a West Indian estate. A little 
 above the latter we stopped for the first time, to let 
 the men rest • and in doing* so nearly ran into a 
 hug-e alligator, who with nothing- except the top of 
 his back appearing- above the mud, and bearing- a 
 strong- likeness to a piece of rotten wood, was 
 enjoying" a very comfortable siesta. He scrambled 
 up the bank, shaking- his tail ang-rily, and vanished 
 for a moment in the bush ; but changed his mind . 
 and floundering- ag-ain over the oozy shore, plung-ed 
 into the river and disappeared. At this point the 
 stream g-rew narrower, and abandoning- their paddles, 
 the men set to work with poles, which they handled 
 awkwardly enoug-h, crossing- from side to side every 
 five minutes, and like a drunken man on his road 
 home, measuring- the breadth as well as the length 
 of the way. They were stark naked, with the 
 sing-le exception of a piece of cloth round their loins, 
 and even this they frequently stripped off, alleging- 
 that it encumbered their movements. Notwith- 
 standing- the intense heat and glare of the sun, they 
 were bareheaded, and in reply to my question 
 assured me that they never suffered from the ex- 
 posure. It was the first time that I had ever en- 
 joyed so ample an opportunity of studying", for
 
 23 
 
 hours tog-ether, the anatomy of the human figure ; 
 and I could not help thinking- of the peculiarly 
 awkward predicament in which two lady fellow- 
 passengers in the steamer must have been placed on 
 embarking- in one of these same canoes— the boat 
 being- perfectly open, except the awning 1 above, and 
 the crew, from their elevated position in the bow , 
 remarkably conspicuous. 
 
 Nothing- could be more lubberly than the way in 
 which they handled their craft: a party of the 
 Hudson's Bay Company voyageurs, with their beau- 
 tifully modelled canoes, and quick regular stroke, 
 would have cleared the distance in six or seven 
 hours, which it took us two weary days to crawl 
 over. 
 
 By nig-ht we had reached " las dos hermanas," a 
 settlement so called, and which takes rank as a 
 village, as villages go on the isthmus. The situation 
 is rather fine, and wants only better accompani- 
 ments to make it picturesque : but nothing can be 
 more disenchanting than the aspect of the half dozen 
 straggling huts perched on the summit of the pro- 
 jecting headland, round which the river takes a 
 wide sweep. It is a common stopping-place for 
 canoes, and accommodations are provided for tra- 
 vellers, in the shape of large upper rooms, to which 
 the entrance is by a notched pole placed upright in 
 the corner, after the fashion sometimes to be seen in 
 B Tipperary cabin. The one into which, with some 
 difficulty, I made my way, was crowded with Cali-
 
 24 
 
 fornian emigrants, many drunk, all dirty, and alto- 
 g'ether as villanons company as could well have been 
 brought together in any part of the world — Norfolk 
 Island not excepted. Moreover, the loose bamboo 
 rods, which served as a floor, were bending visibly 
 with the weight laid upon them, and as I looked up 
 at them from the ground where I stood, the very 
 unpleasant possibility of their giving" way entirely, 
 more than once suggested itself to my mind. But 
 outside the rain poured down incessantly \ peals of 
 thunder succeeded one another without the inter- 
 mission of a moment, and the open shed, which in 
 most of the cottag*es of the country, forms the whole 
 of the lower story, was rendered untenable b}^ the 
 torrents that poured over its clay floor. There was 
 no help for it : and scrambling up the rude ladder, 
 and tumbling- in succession over half-a-dozen pros- 
 trate figures, I took possession of a vacant space on 
 the bamboos, and there, rolled in a great coat, slept 
 soundly till the first appearance of daylight, shining* 
 through the cracks in the ill-constructed roof (win- 
 dows or opening's to admit the air there were none), 
 roused up the more watchful of the party. My 
 immediate neighbour, a genuine down-easter from 
 Maine, was the first in the movement; shouting* 
 lustily to his crew through a hole in the floor, and 
 apologizing* to the disturbed sleepers, by an assu- 
 rance that it was "nigh upon sun-up, and most 
 time to quit." Our lodgings were not so tempting 
 as to induce us to make any unnecessary delay •
 
 25 
 
 and leaving' " the sisters/' with no particular desire 
 ever to see them again, we resinned our voyage, 
 which throughout this day was of a most tedious 
 description. The stream was too strong- to allow 
 of oars or paddles being used, at least in the lazy 
 hands of South American boatmen * though in 
 Canada I have frequently seen a stronger current 
 stemmed by heavier canoes than ours, without the 
 poles being* used. Here, however, they were con- 
 stantly going : and as this rendered it indispensably 
 necessary to keep in shallow water, we crossed the 
 river about once in every quarter of a mile. The 
 heat of the sun towards midday exceeded anything 
 in my tropical experience, either before or since : a 
 thermometer which I carried with me, on two suc- 
 cessive trials, rose to 128° and 131° • while the 
 glare of refracted light from the water was most 
 trying to the eyes. The muddy banks actually 
 steamed like a kettle set to boil, giving no very 
 favourable idea of the salubrity of the climate: bull- 
 frog's croaked in thousands from the bush, cay men, 
 half buried in ooze, slid lazily into the river as we 
 approached ; while myriads of rainbow-coloured 
 birds and insects hovered among* the overhanging* 
 branches, or perched on clusters of equally brilliant 
 flowers. I especially noticed a gigantic butterfly, 
 of which one specimen which we secured measured 
 five inches from wing to wing, and whose dec]) blue 
 colour would have defied all the artificial dyes of the 
 painter's pallet to imitate its brightness. The under
 
 26 
 
 part of the insect being- a light dusky grey, almost 
 devoid of colour, and quite undistinguishable at the 
 distance of a few paces from the bough on which it 
 lighted, the sudden way in which the creature 
 appeared and vanished again, added not a little to 
 its picturesque effect. The country now grew hilly, 
 several of the peaks before us rising to a height of 
 two or three hundred feet, but all, high or low, 
 remained covered with the same eternal mantle of 
 green, broken only by the gaudy yellow blossom of 
 some flowering tree, which grows profusely on the 
 isthmus. No one who has not seen, can possibly 
 conceive the impenetrable thickness of the bush 
 in tropical climates. Creepers hang from every 
 tree, their long festoons lighting on the young 
 shoots of the underwood below, and interlacing 
 with them so firmly as to defy the powers of the 
 strongest arm, unassisted by a cutlass, to penetrate 
 their tangles. Fallen trees in every stage of decay, 
 arrest the progress of the adventurer who deviates 
 from the beaten path : a network of rank luxuriant 
 grasses, twisted into innumerable snares for the 
 feet, covers and conceals a soil, which eight months 
 of rain have turned into something very much 
 resembling a quagmire, but which at the same time 
 affords shelter to snakes of all sizes and descriptions ; 
 while the neighbourhood of a " creek" or deep canal 
 of nearly stagnant water, is often so effectually 
 masked by the screen of overhanging brushwood, 
 that the first warning which the unlucky traveller
 
 27 
 
 receives, is the plunge of his foot, and his own 
 subsequent immersion, in the deep and alligator- 
 haunted pool. Into these silent forests no ray of 
 sun, even at brightest noonday, is known to pene- 
 trate : the pelting- of the tropical shoAver is heard 
 faintlv, as it falls on the over-arching branches 
 above : the lightning, Avhose scathing' power is 
 attested by the bare and blasted trunks scattered 
 here and there in strano-e contrast with the vivid 
 green which surrounds and has already half covered 
 their decaying" fragments, never pierces through 
 the living* screen which intercepts its stroke : and 
 the rustling- sound, and refreshing- coolness of the 
 occasional sea breeze, — rare, but welcome visitant — 
 here gives place to an oppressive heat, and a dead 
 unnatural calm. Everything- is so still, that the 
 lighting' of a bird on the bough, or the rustle of a 
 snake through the grass, are often distinctly audible : 
 and the silence is only broken by the hoarse chat- 
 tering- of a flock of parrots far overhead, or the deep 
 loud call of the toucan at night. Snakes are abun- 
 dant; and Mr. Lloyd, who, according* to his own 
 statement, only saw one or two in the course of a 
 protracted survey, must have been either more for- 
 tunate, or less observant, than the generality of 
 those who have followed or preceded him ', for I 
 myself fell in with five or six in the course of a 
 very few days, and while generally keeping to the 
 beaten track. The natives express grout fear of 
 them, and are said to wear charms to preserve them
 
 28 
 
 from being* bitten ; but of this I saw no instance. 
 Tiger- cats of several kinds, wild hog's, a few deer, 
 and an abundance of monkeys, make up the princi- 
 pal varieties of game on the isthmus. Waterbirds 
 there are in plenty, and the residents talk of going 
 duck-shooting ; but their sport has been spoiled, at 
 least on the Chagres, by the multitude of canoes 
 passing up and down, and I do not remember to 
 have heard a single quack. 
 
 As to entomology, if it is any comfort to the 
 traveller, when suffering under the persecutions of 
 his winged tormentors, to know that he is being* 
 eaten at one and the same time by half a dozen un- 
 described species of insects, he may easily satisfy 
 himself that his consolation is well founded ; dimi- 
 nutive red fleas, ticks, and countless mosquitos, he 
 will probably recognize as familiar friends,, and bear 
 with accordingly. Notwithstanding these draw- 
 backs from the pleasures of savage life, and the 
 more serious annoyance of centipedes, tarantulas, 
 and venomous spiders of Brobdignag dimensions, I 
 often attempted to make my way into the recesses 
 of the woods ; but the difficulties of the undertaking 
 always drove me back after proceeding a few hun- 
 dred yards ; and when panting with heat and hard 
 work, and with clothes torn in a hundred places by 
 the strong hooked thorns of the underwood, I 
 succeeded in regaining the path, it was impossible 
 not to think, with astonishment and admiration, of 
 the powers of endurance displayed by those early 

 
 29 
 
 explorers, who, without guides, ignorant of the road, 
 scantily provided with food and water, and continually 
 exposed to the attacks of Indian tribes, then more 
 numerous and fierce than now, struggled on throu<>-li 
 all difficulties to that unknown ocean, on whose 
 shores they vainly expected to found an empire as 
 enduring- as their names. 
 
 In the course of the day it rained and cleared 
 again nearly every half hour ; and our canoe being 
 none of the newest, and the awning* far from water- 
 proof, m}^ companion and I enjoyed the full benefit 
 of sun and shower during" seven or eight hours of 
 exposure — probably as good a receipt as could be 
 devised for catching* the intermittent fever of the 
 country. Towards evening- we halted, with the 
 double object of drying' our dripping" clothes, and 
 laying- in a fresh stock of such provisions as might 
 be obtainable, at the house of a German emigrant, 
 who, with a singular taste, had pitched his tent for 
 life on the banks of the Chagres. He had set out, 
 he said, meaning- to g'o on to California, but had been 
 deterred by the reports of the returning- gold-hunters, 
 who had told him, very truly, that the diggings were 
 no place to take a wife and family to. He had lived 
 in his present abode during- more than a year — had 
 no fault to find with the climate — had neither caug-ht 
 the fever himself, nor had any of his family, and 
 certainly a very pretty wife, and several fine healthy- 
 looking children, bore living witness to tin' truth of 
 his report. He still wished, he said, to go to San
 
 30 
 
 Francisco, but did not like to leave them behind in a 
 country where they would be wholly unprotected, 
 especially when so many people of all kinds were 
 passing- and repassing' every day. The behaviour of 
 the emigrants was a sore subject with him : they 
 took possession of his house, walked in and out at 
 all hours of the day or night, called for what they 
 wanted, as if they had been in a tavern, or more 
 frequently helped themselves without asking', and 
 after all sometimes went away without paying* their 
 score. Against this last-named delinquency, I 
 afterwards saw a strongly worded protest, sigmed 
 by a long list of American names, which was con- 
 spicuously posted up both in Gorgona and Cruces, 
 and reminded their thievish countrymen that they 
 were dishonouring the g*reat country to which they 
 belonged in the eyes of strangers, — a characteristic 
 argument. My German friend had learned to in- 
 demnify himself at the expense of more honest 
 customers ; for the charge upon everything which 
 he would sell, was, at a moderate computation, about 
 ten times its value at home : but in this he was not 
 singular : for throughout the isthmus the prices are 
 regulated by the standard of California, and a few 
 dollars more or less make little difference even to an 
 American when retiring loaded with a fortune 
 gathered within the space of a few months, and 
 exceeding all that he could have hoped to make at 
 home by the accumulated savings of a life of labour ; 
 while the out-going* emigrant, with all his hopes
 
 31 
 
 before him, is even less likely to draw his purse- 
 strings tight. Two shilling's (English) a piece for 
 eggs ; the same for a cup of milk ; a dollar for a 
 night's lodgings or in other words, for leave to look 
 out for the softest plank on the floor, or the driest 
 corner on its clay substitute ; the same for a meal 
 consisting of well watered coffee, bacon, and hard 
 biscuit : formed a fair sample of the average charges 
 between Chaa'res and Panama : and these were 
 modest when compared with the exorbitant demands 
 of the boatmen and owners of mules. These latter 
 have benefited more than any one else b} T the rush 
 of population westward : and realize a California of 
 their own, without chano-ino- either their residences 
 or their manner of living'. But the most unreason- 
 able charge was that which I afterwards witnessed 
 at the chief inn of Gorgona, where a half-naturalized 
 American, who had forgotten about as much of his 
 own language, as he had learnt of Spanish, offered 
 his services as interpreter, on condition of receiving* 
 2\ per cent on every bargain made. Now, as these 
 bargains were almost invariably for horses, mules, 
 or canoes, any one of the three costing' from $50 
 to $00 when engaged for a two days' journey, the 
 linguist must, on a fair averag'e, have netted about 
 five shilling's for a five minutes conversation, even 
 supposing him to keep strictly to his legitimate gains, 
 and not to be in league with the rascally owners. 
 
 We continued our course by moonlight, for \\ hich 
 we had been waiting, the rain still continuing,
 
 32 
 
 though with somewhat abated violence. The natives 
 prepared for it in a primitive, but certainly effective 
 manner, deliberately stripping* themselves of the 
 little clothing- they wore, which they stowed away 
 in a dry corner of the cayuca, and enduring" the 
 pelting- of the shower on their naked bodies with all 
 the indifference of an alligator similarly exposed. 
 
 The isthmus enjoys, I believe deservedly, the re- 
 putation of being* the wettest spot on the globe. 
 January, February, and March, are the only dry 
 months of the year : and at Chagres and Porto- 
 bello, even these are by no means free from rain. 
 But from April to December the showers are inces- 
 sant, and a day without one is a phenomenon. The 
 inhabitants of Panama talk much of an interval of 
 comparative drought, generally occurring towards 
 the end of June, when the weather suddenly clears 
 up, and remains fine for about a week, in special 
 honour, it is said, of the feast of St. John, which 
 falls exactly at that period. Generally the Pacific 
 coast is both cooler and drier than the Atlantic : 
 and Panama is reckoned an exception to the extreme 
 unhealthiness of the surrounding country. 
 
 San Pablo, our next halting"-place, came in sight 
 about midnight, and proved as small and poor an 
 assemblage of huts as any of its predecessors. It 
 stands on a sloping grassy bank, picturesque enough 
 as seen by moonlight, and cleared of timber to some 
 distance inland. The river makes a bend round it, 
 and a few r tall and spreading trees, judiciously
 
 .33 
 
 spared to afford slicker to the cattle, present a park- 
 like appearance not often seen in a country where 
 all is either bare savannah, or dense jungle. The 
 cottage where we took up our lodging', was, like all 
 the rest, crowded, and it was with some difficulty 
 that we succeeded in finding a corner to ourselves. 
 Supper there was none : but we ^had provisions of 
 our own, being more fortunate in this respect than 
 most of the assembled multitude, who offered to 
 trade with us for bacon and biscuits, and seemed not 
 a little perplexed at our refusal to accept of payment 
 for the portion which we bestowed upon them out 
 of our abundance. I could not help thinking, dur- 
 ing this, and one or two similar scenes of our 
 journey, how much good it would have done to 
 certain travellers of the Smelfungus class, quite as 
 frequent now as ever they could have been in the 
 days of Sterne, to have done penance for all their 
 sins of discontent, by a few weeks of wanderings 
 such as ours. The grumbling tourist, who, like a 
 genuine son of John Bull, has proclaimed far and 
 wide the discomforts of transatlantic travelling, 
 because in some little roadside inn, his entertainers 
 did not choose to dislodge two or three wayfarers in 
 order to give to one the enjoyments of a room to 
 himself, or turned up his nose at the substantial fare 
 of ;i western hotel, because compelled to share it 
 with some dozen individuals of a somewhal lower 
 rank in society than his own, would have learned in 
 the hovels of San Pablo,a lesson of patience, and if 
 
 i>
 
 34 
 
 possible of content, which might subsequently have 
 saved the people among* whom he travelled from 
 many unjust and peevish complaints, and himself 
 from the well founded charge of a predetermination 
 to find fault with everything*. 
 
 The people of the house, to whom we naturally 
 addressed ourselves for leave to take up our quarters 
 till morning*, seemed to have very little to say in 
 the matter : squatted together in a corner, they had 
 relinquished possession to their g'uests, who, to do 
 them justice, seemed to find no difficulty in making* 
 themselves at home, and not only called for whatever 
 they wanted, but turned every thing* upside down 
 in search of imaginary stores, the last of which had 
 long* since disappeared before the ravenous appetites 
 of their predecessors. A little civility, which the 
 host and hostess had been unaccustomed of late to 
 receive from their visitors, induced them to exert 
 themselves in our behalf: and from some still un- 
 explored corner they dragged out two hammocks, 
 of one of which I was glad to take possession in pre- 
 ference to sleeping* on the filthy floor, long since 
 trampled into most adhesive mud by the feet of 
 many strangers. M — who protested against 
 sleeping* in a bag, was accommodated with a hide 
 by way of mattress : and it was amusing to hear 
 the torrent of invective and complaint, with which, 
 having ascertained that we were not Americans, 
 and that we could speak their language, they vented 
 their long suppressed indignation against the self-
 
 35 
 
 invited guests. Even the lowest class of Spaniards, 
 ■whether in the old world or the new, are very sen- 
 sitive on points of decorum, and attend scrupulously 
 to at least the outward forms of politeness • and it 
 may well be supposed that they felt a little out of 
 their element when almost crowded out of their 
 own houses by the irruption of wild-looking- beings 
 whom every monthly steamer now lets loose upon 
 them. Sleep was out of the question in such a 
 scene : more especially as fresh arrivals continued 
 to stream in all through the night, and regardless 
 of the execrations showered upon them by those 
 over whom they trampled in the dark, persisted in 
 endeavouring* to find for themselves a resting*- 
 place among the dense mass of bodies which strewed 
 the floor of the hut. 
 
 On the next morning- — Christmas-day — five hours 
 of the poles brought us up to Gorgona, six miles 
 below Cruces, and, next to this latter, the most 
 usual place of disembarkation. It lies in an angle 
 made by the river, and extends in three long strag- 
 gling rows of houses for about a quarter of a mile 
 along the bank. Until lately, every building in the 
 town wns alike in architecture — square, bamboo- 
 walled, mud-floored, and thatched with the leaves 
 of a palm, which grows abundantly in the woods. 
 
 American enterprise, however, lias worked a 
 change: and oik; huge shed roofed with shingles, 
 and provided with the unwonted luxuries of glass 
 window- and boarded walls, is announced l»\ a 
 
 i» -J
 
 86 
 
 conspicuous lettering" along* its front as the " United 
 States Hotel :" while humbler imitations of this 
 architectural model are springing- up on all sides, 
 and already the bare stumps, and trees girdled by 
 the axes of the settlers, are encroaching- on the 
 limits of the primeval forests. 
 
 It was, of course, a " fiesta," a high-holiday in 
 Gorg-ona : fiddles were squeaking-, extempore dances 
 getting" up (generally in the streets, for few of the 
 native houses are of sufficient dimensions to allow 
 of a ball being given in them), and as we had anti- 
 cipated, it was after much trouble and delay that 
 we succeeded in obtaining, at Californian prices, a 
 couple of mules and a guide for the land-journey 
 to Panama. During the dry season the road which 
 we had selected is considered the best, being com- 
 paratively free from rocks, and passing* chiefly 
 through the lowland : but the periodical rains trans- 
 form it into a swamp, and as these had not yet 
 ceased, we had some reason to apprehend a rough 
 and troublesome journey. Our object in selecting the 
 least promising of the two routes open to our choice, 
 was in order to avoid the delay which would other- 
 wise have been created by the number of passengers 
 who had preceded us to Cruces, and many of 
 whom, as we afterwards learnt, had passed two, and 
 even three days there before they succeeded in find- 
 in o* animals. On the line by which we proposed to 
 travel, one party had already passed : and though 
 they gave lamentable accounts of hardships and
 
 37 
 
 difficulties, we set this down to the usual inclination 
 of travellers to magnify the troubles they had o-one 
 throug'h ; and confidently expecting' to eat our 
 Christmas dinner at Panama, mounted our uncouth- 
 looking- beasts, and bade adieu to Gorgona. 
 
 A little to the west of the town, and visible from 
 the road at some distance from it, is the Cerro 
 Grande, the chief of the low hills that form the di- 
 viding- rido-e of the Isthmus, and one of the few 
 points from which both oceans can be seen. Its 
 heig-ht, however, as given by Garella, is inferior to 
 that of several of the peaks which overlook the Bay 
 of Panama, one of which rises to an elevation of 
 500 feet. 
 
 Leaving* the little mound on which the settlement 
 stands, we wound our way down a valley partially 
 cleared, with groups of trees scattered here and 
 there, and streams of water intersecting- it at every 
 quarter of a mile, the approach to which latter was 
 invariably guarded by about twenty yards of deep 
 and most retentive mud, through which our caval- 
 cade floundered desperately on, occasionally sticking- 
 fast altogether, and compelling the unfortunate 
 riders to dismount as best they could in the middle 
 of the g-lue-like substance, which appeared to make 
 advance and retreat equally hopeless. I certainly 
 never before experienced so lively a fellow-feeling- 
 from the suffering's of a fly entrap) >< ■<! in a honey-pot, 
 though the want of wings made our case the worse 
 of the two. It was painful to witness ili«' struggles
 
 38 
 
 of the poor mules, buried at times up to their necks, 
 and only emerging' from one mud-hole to plunge yet 
 deeper into another, where they would stand, pant- 
 ing" and resigned to their fate, until a shower of blows 
 and abuse from the native driver sent them forward 
 again on their almost hopeless progress. As we 
 advanced, which we did on an average at the rate 
 of a mile in the hour, the forest became thicker, sur- 
 rounding* and overshadowing - the track completely, 
 and thus screening; us from the direct ra} r s of the 
 sun • an advantage, however, in some degree coun- 
 terbalanced by the intolerable closeness produced by 
 the exclusion of the air. Mosquitos hummed round 
 us in myriads, though the coating* of mud with 
 which we were both plastered from head to foot, 
 rendered our bodies almost impenetrable to their 
 attacks ; ants of large size, a species unknown in 
 the islands, made their nests in the branches above, 
 and dropped b}^ dozens upon us, biting- and stinging" 
 in reveng-e for the disturbance \ a deep wet ditch, 
 with slippery sides, hemmed in by brushwood and 
 prickly shrubs, presented the only visible appearance 
 of a road 5 and far from improving- on acquaintance, 
 each successive quag-mire detained us long-er, and 
 left our wearied beasts more exhausted than before. 
 The g-uide had enough to do : for besides carrying- 
 his own load, no inconsiderable weight, but under 
 which he scrambled through the bush and waded 
 the swamps with all the activity of a cat, not a single 
 difficulty could be surmounted without his assist-
 
 39 
 
 ance. For myself, gTOwinfir tired of being- carried 
 into the middle of a bog* every five minutes, and left 
 to find my way out, I had abandoned my mule alto- 
 gether to his care ; and like the Highland postman, 
 who apologised for unusual delay by saying that he 
 had been encumbered with a horse, I thought that 
 we should have got on much better from the first if 
 allowed to take care of ourselves. The distance to 
 Panama is only 25 miles, and I should certainly 
 advise any one accustomed to travel on foot, and 
 who should attempt the journey before the dry 
 season sets in, to avoid the expense and delay of 
 such a ride as ours, by trusting to his own legs to 
 carry him over. The activity of the Indians, and 
 the loads they carry are almost beyond belief. I 
 myself saw one man burdened with two heavy port- 
 manteaus, both of the size and solidity peculiar to 
 those articles as manufactured in the United States, 
 and tog*ether making- a weig'ht under which no rail- 
 road porter would stand for more than a few mi- 
 nutes; yet when I met him he had made good 
 two-thirds of his journey, and intended to accom- 
 plish the whole distance before night. Of a party 
 of Californian emigrants, whose notice this man 
 attracted at a hut where he stopped to rest, and 
 among whom were several of great size and strength, 
 not one could carry his load without visibly stagger- 
 ing in his gait, while the Indian, who bad walked 
 eighteen miles so encumbered, seemed very little i'a- 
 tigued, and expected, as he told me, to return troth
 
 40 
 
 such another puck next day. They are generally 
 slender, and not above the average height ; few are 
 of pure race, and on many the African features and 
 hair are plainly discernible. Like all natives of the 
 tropics, they subsist chiefly on vegetable food, and 
 have the reputation of temperate habits, though to 
 this I certainly saw many exceptions. 
 
 During the whole of this day's journey we passed 
 only three huts, at the last of which, as it was then 
 growing dark, we decided on halting for the night. 
 We were then about eight miles from Panama, and 
 the dense forest through which we had been jour- 
 neying nearly all the day had given place to a more 
 open, though still partially wooded country, where 
 clusters of tropical trees, including several varieties 
 of palm, alternated with a wide savannah of most 
 luxuriant grass. The surrounding hills, though of 
 no great height, and wooded to the summit, added 
 to the picturesque beauty of the scene j and while 
 resting from our labours, and watching the sun set 
 behind the only remaining range which interposed 
 between us and the still unseen Pacific, we almost 
 forgot the distance which separated us from the end 
 of our journey, and the even less agreeable prospect 
 of a return by the same road, in struggling through 
 which we had already passed so mairy weary hours. 
 
 Our Christmas dinner was not of the most sump- 
 tuous nature : for the inhabitants seldom trouble 
 themselves to grow any produce beyond what they 
 require for their own immediate consumption ; and
 
 41 
 
 two roast bananas, a calabash of boiled rice, and 
 a few biscuits out of our own nearly exhausted 
 stores, made an indifferent substitute for the roast 
 beef and plumpudding- of home. Two shells were 
 supplied us as spoons, and squatted on a log- in 
 front of our entertainer's abode, with the single 
 bowl between us, and mutually exhorting one ano- 
 ther to feed fair, we contrived to make a heart v, 
 if not a very luxurious meal. A river which ran 
 below supplied the means of cleanliness ; and if 
 there were any caymen about, either their appetites 
 or their courage failed them, for I bathed unmo- 
 lested, though I must plead g'uilty to having* cast 
 suspicious glances on every dark-looking* log* at the 
 bottom. Formidable-looking* animal as the alligator 
 is, I believe the mischief he does to be very small. 
 Both on the Isthmus and in every South American 
 river that I have seen, the natives, old and young", 
 bathe fearlessly among' them, nor did I even hear of 
 any accidents arising* from the practice. The condition 
 of the settlers in these remote districts is to them one 
 of perfect happiness. Their plantain-walk, and the 
 neighbouring* cocoa-trees, supply all their wants, 
 without imposing* upon them more than a few da\ s' 
 labour in the year ; what remains over and above the 
 quantity which they require for their own use is sold in 
 the nearest village, and now commands exorbitant 
 prices, keeping* the sellers in brandy and tobacco, t heir 
 chief luxuries ; clothing* is almost a superfluity: and 
 thus easily and certainly provided for, the squatter
 
 42 
 
 passes an existence of which one-half is consumed in 
 sleep, while the rest, equally monotonous and profitless, 
 might for all purposes almost as well be so. Except 
 in not going- altogether naked, I could see little dif- 
 ference between the manners of these men and those 
 which are described as existing in the South Sea 
 Islands. Of their laws, government, or country, 
 they know, and care to know, nothing; freedom 
 they doubtless enjoy, but it is the freedom of the 
 savage ; and the first element of improvement seems 
 wanting, where there is no perceptible feeling of 
 dissatisfaction with their actual state. 
 
 Daylight found us once more on the road, and 
 that road, if possible, a little worse than the one 
 along which we had been plodding during the 
 whole of the preceding day. I walked on in ad- 
 vance, leaving the mules to follow as they could, 
 and though a tropical sun and swamp under foot 
 are not favourable to pedestrian exploits, so slow 
 was the pace of the four-footed portion of our party 
 that after two hours' travel I found myself obliged 
 to wait nearly half that time before they joined me 
 again. We now beg'an to meet parties of Americans 
 lately arrived from California, and on their way 
 home. One and all inquired anxiously as to the 
 state of the track, and on this head we could give 
 them information more authentic than agreeable ; 
 while they comforted us in return by an assurance 
 that what they had just traversed was u considera- 
 ble juicy" — an assertion which their mud-stained
 
 43 
 
 appearance fully bore out. All were in high spirits, 
 and said they had made fortunes in the mines ; and 
 several handed out lumps of ore which they carried 
 about with them to show, and which must have 
 averaged from £10. to £o0. each. 
 
 With hardly an exception, the}- were on foot, and 
 walking- during- the heat of the da}-, heavily clothed 
 and carrying- arms and knapsacks. The larger num- 
 ber.came from the Western States, as indeed their ap- 
 pearance shewed at a glance ; and several had crossed 
 the prairies of the Missouri, and supporting- them- 
 selves by buffalo-hunting* as they went, had traversed 
 the chain of the Rocky Mountains, and descended 
 thence into the valleys of the gold region, making 
 in all an overland journey of nearly three thousand 
 miles from their homes in the States. Notwith- 
 standing these men's predictions, we found the road 
 near Panama in very tolerable order, part having 
 been mended, after a primitive fashion indeed, with 
 huge stones intended to supply the place of pave- 
 ment, but which had been merely carted to the spot 
 where they were destined to be left, and there thrown 
 into the mud. Even this, however, was better than 
 no pavement at all ; although our beasts, purposely 
 left unshod in order to enable them to scramble more 
 easily through the dirt, avoided the rough causes ay, 
 and obstinately continued to wade through the slimy 
 pools which bordered it on cither side. We had one 
 last struggle to make our way through a low savan- 
 nah half overflowed ; and passing this, and turning
 
 44 
 
 a sharp angle in the road, we found ourselves almost 
 in the town, of which we had not until then caught 
 a glance. The approach is through a suburb inha- 
 bited chiefly by Indians and negroes, and composed 
 of dilapidated huts, with here and there a provision- 
 ground intended for the supply of the citizens, and 
 one or two half-ruined remains of old haciendas. 
 Passing through this, the Pacific for the first time 
 came in sight, and in five minutes more we were 
 crossing the line of the ricketty and grass-grown 
 fortifications which still surrounds, without guarding, 
 the city, and which on two sides abuts on the sea. 
 
 The site of Panama has been compared, not un- 
 aptly, to a lance-head. Connected by a narrow 
 neck with the main-land, and widening towards the 
 middle, it again tapers off to a point, trending far 
 out into the sea, and in part covered at high water. 
 Upon part of this promontory a bastion had been 
 built, intended at one time to serve as the principal 
 defence of the town. Detached from other build- 
 ings, it once formed a little fort in itself, and the 
 massive stone walls, the rampart wide enough to 
 admit the play of the heaviest guns, and the enclo- 
 sure once surrounded with casern ated buildings, 
 containing every requisite for a garrison in time of 
 siege, sufficiently bespeak the importance once at- 
 tached to this military post. But like every thing 
 else in the republic of New Granada, these works 
 have been suffered to go to decay ; and the gradual 
 encroachments of the tide have so far undermined
 
 4o 
 
 the foundations of the walls, that breaches are already 
 visible, and the whole appearance is that of a place 
 which has recently undero-one a sieo*e. About a 
 dozen grins are still mounted, all of brass, appa- 
 rent!}' ranging- from 24 to 42-pounders, and beauti- 
 fully ornamented in the old Spanish style. Except 
 as a show, they are worthless, every carriage with- 
 out exception being* either broken or decayed, while 
 the cannon themselves are covered with rust and dirt. 
 I was told that a liberal offer had been made for the 
 purchase of these neglected pieces, by an American 
 captain from a New England port, but with true 
 Spanish pride, the proposal was indignantly rejected, 
 although it would puzzle wiser heads than any 
 assembled at Bogota, to name one useful pur- 
 pose to which these articles of national property 
 could be applied, or a single association connected 
 with their history. 
 
 Although surrounded with high stone walls, the 
 town can never have been strong*, as it is completely 
 overlooked by the rising ground behind it ; but a 
 land attack never appears to have been contemplated 
 by the Spanish settlers on these coasts. The streets 
 are straighter and less ruinous than those of Cartha- 
 gena ; and being laid out at right-angles, admit the 
 sea-breeze j nor did I observe quite so much dirt 
 about the houses and in the foot\va} r s. 
 
 Nearly till the old residences are of stone, Btrong 
 and massive, enclosing court-yards ; and with their 
 heavy iron-barred windows, and ponderous gates,
 
 40 
 
 must have formed very respectable domestic fortifi- 
 cations ; but grass grows on their walls and in their 
 courts, the ornamented fountains which cooled their 
 inmates through the long* summer are dried up, or 
 used as watering places for cattle, and their desolate 
 aspect is only increased by the solidity of construc- 
 tion which has saved them from falling into absolute 
 decay. 
 
 Of the existing public buildings, the old cathedral 
 is by far the finest \ and its facade, covered from the 
 foundation to the battlements with quaint and fantas- 
 tic carving, wears about it an old-world look which 
 well befits the deserted and decked condition of the 
 city to which it belongs. The unfinished college of the 
 Jesuits, two stories high, and enclosing an immense 
 area, is undoubtedly the finest building of the place j 
 simple, purer in style than the generality of Spanish 
 architecture, and almost as perfect now as when the 
 last stone was laid on the unroofed walls, it deserved 
 a better fate than to be turned, as I saw it, into a 
 theatre for a company lately imported from Lima. 
 I was present at a performance which took place 
 there, and a more singular scene I never witnessed. 
 No covering had been attempted j indeed the extent 
 of the enclosure made it impossible, and our theatre, 
 after the classical model, was al fresco. There was 
 a blaze of lamps, which flared and smoked dimly 
 enough, being fairly put out of countenance by the 
 brightness of the tropical moon overhead, and as the 
 flickering light shone over rows of the dark unbon-
 
 47 
 
 neted heads of the Panamenas, and the rouffh fienres 
 of a motley audience, in which no restrictions as to cos- 
 tume prevailed, the effect would have been one for a 
 painter to study. The stage was a blaze of torches, 
 and the hastily run-up decorations and profusion of 
 tinsel, contrasted oddly with the sombre grey of the 
 walls which surrounded us, and the bushes which 
 waved from every crack and crevice in the stone- 
 work above. Then the strange yells and shouts of 
 a highly amused party of emigrants ; the weakness 
 of the performers' voices, unassisted by the reverbe- 
 ration of an enclosed building' 5 and in every pause 
 the lono- measured roll of the Pacific coming* in as 
 an accompaniment, raised a curious confusion of 
 ideas in one's mind. The whole was a type of the 
 present condition of Panama — a jumble of the old 
 and the new • modern improvement treading- on the 
 heels of ancient greatness. Besides the Jesuits' 
 college, the convents of the Aujrustan and Francis- 
 can monks are still in partial preservation, although 
 far too larg'e for the present wants of their occupiers. 
 Indeed they are only rescued from absolute dilapi- 
 dation by the courts and disused apartments having" 
 been turned into stables ; a desecration which is 
 naturally enough connived at, or rather openly per- 
 mitted, by the authorities. In one of these a sin- 
 gular arch is shewn, of altogether unique construc- 
 tion, flattened out and elongated until at first Bight 
 it rather sufirgrests the idea of a Hat stone lintel acci* 
 dentally cracked in an upward direction. It once
 
 48 
 
 attracted considerable attention from the curious, 
 but is now said to have been differently shaped at 
 first, and to have gradually subsided into its present 
 form. 
 
 A ruin in the tropics is in one respect a far 
 more picturesque object than with us. The ivy, 
 long- grass, and scanty bushes which in England 
 gather round an old tower as if charitably trying' 
 to conceal its nakedness, are here replaced by a thou- 
 sand creeping and climbing plants, various in hue, 
 graceful in form, and leaving only a corner of the 
 building which they cover to peep out here and 
 there in evidence of its existence. 
 
 Decayed as it is, the present town dates no fur- 
 ther back than the year 1070, when Old Panama, 
 of which the ruins are still to be seen on the oppo- 
 site side of the bay, was plundered and burnt by the 
 Buccaneer Morgan, after an existence of nearly a 
 century and a half, during* which it had risen to be 
 second only to Lima among the settlements of the 
 Pacific coast. 
 
 It is not, however, to plunder or war that the 
 city owes its present dilapidated aspect. When the 
 whole of South America was one great Spanish 
 colony, the Council of the Indies at the same time 
 excluded all foreign vessels from their ports, and 
 took upon themselves to regulate the commerce of 
 every town on the Pacific coast. Partly on account 
 of the dangers incurred in passing Cape Horn, in 
 those days of unskilful navigation, and partly from the
 
 greater .security in time of war of a route which at 
 once shortened the sea-vovaffe, and enabled the 
 
 merchant to keep his goods until required in the 
 guarded depots of the isthmus, the route via Cha- 
 gres and Panama was that preferred : and notwith- 
 standing- the expense of transhipment, and the in- 
 convenience of a land-journey, the latter became 
 the only port of transit, and flourished accordingly. 
 To this monopoly there is of course an end : and 
 during- the earlier part of the present century, 
 deprived of one source of prosperity, and not yet 
 become the great commercial emporium to which 
 the discovery of the California mines is rapidly 
 raising- it, Panama has been dying- daily. The 
 cfl'ect of the present rush westward has been to 
 pour into the city a continued flood of emigrants, 
 of whom more than 1000 at all times, and frequently 
 nearly twice that number, are temporary residents. 
 It might be expected that the natives would hail 
 such a change with pleasure, and overlook the cha- 
 racter of their visitors in consideration of the trea- 
 sure which they brought with them: but this has 
 not been the case, and several of the old residents, 
 startled out of their propriety by the sudden irrup- 
 tion of a barbarian horde, and seeing no prospeel of 
 ;i mitigation of the evil by time, have actually quitted 
 their homes in search of some more tranquil resi- 
 dence. They had good cause for their annoyance, 
 -inec, independently of the very unconciliatorj 
 manner of the new comers, and the frequent dis- 
 
 i:
 
 50 
 
 turbances wliich break out among* them, and which 
 the miserable police of the republic is wholly in- 
 adequate to repress, their arrival has raised the 
 price of every article of consumption to from four 
 to five times its former value. The sale of these, 
 moreover, has been in great part monopolized by 
 merchants from the States : and thus deprived 
 of all benefit except what they derive from the 
 increased value of landed property within the town, 
 and even this being fully counterbalanced by the 
 augmented expenses of living, the unfortunate Pa- 
 namenos are by no means reconciled to the change 
 which has transformed their hitherto quiet resi- 
 dence into one of the great commercial highways 
 of the world. 
 
 As we rode down the main street — two years 
 ago a foot deep in grass, now a busy and bustling 
 thoroughfare — we were continually hailed by par- 
 ties of Americans, eager for the last news from 
 Chngres. The national inquisitiveness, strongly 
 developed at home, did not seem to have diminished 
 in any degree by change of place ; and I do not 
 think it was ever before my fortune to be called 
 upon to furnish, in the space of one hour, such a 
 variety of miscellaneous information concerning* 
 myself, my destination, objects in travelling, &c. 
 In return I ascertained that many of the querists 
 had already been detained two months, and expected 
 to be kept still longer : while the contractors who 
 had supplied them with through-tickets (from New
 
 51 
 
 York to Snn Francisco), and promised them an im- 
 mediate passage, came in for sundry expressions of 
 goodwill, which fortunately for their peace of mind 
 they were never likely to hear. Destitute of means, 
 unable to find employment, and equally prevented 
 from going- forward or back, they were supported 
 at the expense of their wealthier companions, on 
 whose own stock such benevolence made serious 
 inroads : but California in prospect atoned for all : 
 they had no complaint to make of the climate : 
 and as they sat in long rows outside their lodg- 
 ings, almost lining* the street from end to end, I 
 thought I had never seen men who bore a dis- 
 agreeable delay with a more thorough spirit of 
 philosophy. 
 
 After some trouble we found the residence of the 
 British Consul, W. Perry, Esq. to whose hospitality 
 I am indebted for an escape from the manifold dis- 
 comforts of the Panama hotels, all of which being 
 intended exclusively for emigrants, and furnished 
 and provided accordingly, stand in much the same 
 relation to a roadside tavern in Missouri as this 
 latter might bear to the Clarendon : and when fairly 
 quartered in his house, and seated in the broad wooden 
 balconj \\ hich commands a view of the Pacific, then 
 lighted up brilliantly by the setting sun, I could 
 hardly, in transatlantic phrase, realize the idea, thai 
 u quarter of the earth's circumference already 
 divided me from England, and thai eight thousand 
 miles of ocean, unbroken excepl here and there by 
 
 r 0,
 
 an island^ formed the only barrier between myself 
 and the western coasts of China. 
 
 The bay of Panama is exquisitely beautiful, and 
 is said to resemble that of Rio Janeiro, though on 
 a smaller scale. The fishery is unrivalled, and 
 indeed, according- to Indian report, gave the town 
 the name which it now bears. Pearls are found in 
 gTeat abundance round the neighbouring* islands, 
 and give constant occupation to a large number of 
 divers, who ply their vocation in defiance of equally 
 numerous sharks, taking with them only a large 
 knife, which serves at once to defend them if 
 attacked, and to detach the oysters from their rocky 
 beds. Some years ago an attempt was made to 
 supersede native industry b} r the use of a diving 
 bell ; but this proved altogether a failure, the rocks 
 making it impossible to rest the machine safely on 
 the bottom, while a heavy ground-swell kept it in 
 constant peril of upsetting'. So the fishery remains 
 as before ; and the Panamenos content themselves 
 with a handful of good pearls in the year, and 
 triumph in the failure of a scheme set on foot by 
 foreigners and heretics. 
 
 The society of Panama has not a high reputation; 
 the foreig*n residents are few, and the native inhabi- 
 tants in general keep aloof. Priests are numerous, 
 and said to possess great influence ; but their 
 appearance, and that of the churches in which they 
 officiated, contradicted this latter belief. Shop- 
 keeping is nominally the business of the great mass
 
 53 
 
 of the people ; and their goldsmiths' work is cele- 
 brated throughout the New World. I could not 
 discover that any other branch of manufactures was 
 carried on : and to judge by outward signs, industry 
 is not among the prevailing virtues of the towns- 
 people. There is an educational establishment, 
 calling- itself a college but very much neglected ; 
 and little is taught or required beyond reading- and 
 writing. Several newspapers have lately been 
 established, one in Spanish j this, however, is little 
 more than a translation of the American journals 
 for the benefit of those, who, unacquainted with 
 English, may chance to be interested in the success 
 of Californian speculations. It has been more than 
 once suggested — and the plan seems to hold out 
 good hopes of success — to establish in Panama a 
 paper intended for general circulation over the 
 Pacific coast, which issued from so central a point, 
 and one through which all news, whether from 
 Europe or the United States, must necessarily pass, 
 could hardly fail to anticipate in point of time, and 
 to surpass in merit, the few and very inferior 
 journals which have as yet made their appearance 
 in the far west. 
 
 We had hardly passed an hour in examining- the 
 old buildings of Panama, when we were treated i<> 
 one of the scenes of disturbance which not unfre- 
 quently take place there. A quarrel arose between 
 two Americans, in which the disputants from words 
 betook themselves to blows. A crowd gathered
 
 54 
 
 round the combatants, the street was blocked up, and 
 the row in a few seconds became general. Knives 
 were in plenty, but I did not see one drawn ; and 
 considering* the utter absence of police, and the evident 
 excitement of the parties, I thought the termination 
 of the affray in less than ten minutes, without any 
 injury more serious than one or two broken heads 
 and bloody noses given and received, very creditable 
 to the moderation of all concerned. Not a native 
 was visible from the beginning- to the end of the 
 contest ; and this has generally been the case on 
 such occasions ; but instances have not been wanting 
 in which national jealousy has vented itself in 
 private quarrels ; and then the townsmen, although 
 comparatively unarmed, have shewn themselves far 
 from deficient in courage. Of their military force 
 they themselves speak with contempt, and tell a story 
 of a detachment, fifteen strong, who were recently 
 sent to capture two sailors, deserters from a British 
 merchantman, on the island of Taboga. Alarm 
 magnified the pair into a superior force ; the heroes 
 beat a hasty retreat ; and though no resistance was 
 offered or attempted, they did not return unhurt ; 
 the last of the party, in his hurry to withdraw, 
 contriving seriously to wound his companion in 
 front with the bayonet which he carried advanced. 
 The whole force posted on the isthmus does not 
 amount to more than loO men; and the rest being* 
 quartered at Bogota, — three weeks journey in the 
 most favourable season, — are not much more useful
 
 55 
 
 than it* they had been stationed in the Sandwich 
 Islands. 
 
 Very different was the state of a Hairs in the old 
 colonial days. No place suffered so little from the 
 exclusive system pursued by Spain towards her 
 colonies ; in none, therefore, was so warm an 
 attachment exhibited towards the mother country : 
 the regiment stationed in the town mixed freely 
 with the inhabitants, then more numerous and 
 wealthier than now ; the establishments, civil and 
 military, were well kept up, and regularly paid ; 
 and when the revolutions of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, 
 had evidently put an end for ever to the Spanish 
 dominion, and a corresponding- change was deter- 
 mined upon by the Panamenos, even the officials 
 were not displaced, but the flag- of Bolivar a\;is 
 hoisted, allegiance sworn to the new government, 
 and the revolution was over. Not a drop of blood 
 flowed ; the garrison was absent on service live 
 hundred miles off; no ragged band of ruffians 
 paraded about the streets, as usual in South Anie- 
 rican eineutes, calling- themselves a patriot army, 
 and plundering peaceable inhabitants; nor, if the 
 testimony of eye-witnesses may be trusted, did one 
 act of violence, or violation of law, distinguish the 
 day thai i:;i\<' the Columbian republic a province, 
 and dispossessed Spain of a colony.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A short stay in Panama was sufficient to satisfy 
 my curiosity : and finding 1 the South Pacific mail on 
 the point of going- out, I at once decided to transfer 
 myself and baggage to the " Peru " steamer, one of 
 the monthly line of packets now plying between the 
 Isthmus, Lima, and Valparaiso. For her accom- 
 modations I cannot say much : the waiters and 
 stewards, all South Americans, carried more real 
 estate on their persons than they could have afforded 
 to purchase : the cabins were not less dirt} T , and in 
 justice to the officers and the company I am bound 
 to say, that three-fourths of the passengers could 
 boast of no superiority in this respect. When on a 
 journey, it is the custom among the Creole Spa- 
 niards to go unshaved, the beard thus cultivated 
 being* supposed to protect the face from wind and 
 sun : whether washing' is eschewed on the same 
 principle, I cannot absolutely say, but from what I 
 saw I should be inclined to think that it was. The 
 late comers, of whom I Avas one, found all the ca- 
 bins engaged, and slept on the sofas : but by this 
 we rather gained in point of cleanliness and fresh 
 air. 
 
 The construction of these boats bears witness to 
 the o-eueral calmness of the seas through which thev
 
 57 
 
 are intended to run. Though only of 700 to 800 
 tons burthen,, they carry a high poopdeck, rising* 
 eight feet above the waist : and on the top of this 
 again is a flat roof, light certainly, and easily cut 
 away in case of a gale, but still raising- the whole 
 mass to an enormous heig'ht from the water, and 
 very inconvenient in head-winds, as the officers 
 themselves admitted. 
 
 An hour's steaming' brought us to the port of 
 
 Panama, situated on the opposite side the bay, and 
 
 called Taboga. The island is high, green, and 
 
 partially wooded, covered with low brushwood, 
 
 which is said to be full of game. Wild-hog", deer, 
 
 goats, rabbits, and every description of land and 
 
 water birds, are abundant : and the dense cover and 
 
 the rou$>-h ground make it very unlikely that the 
 
 stock will be largely diminished, notwithstanding 
 
 the persevering efforts of the shippers and crews 
 
 who touch here. In shape, Taboga is said to be 
 
 almost a facsimile of the island of Fernando No- 
 
 ronha, on the Atlantic coast. The harbour is good, 
 
 with deep water, and shelter on all sides but one. 
 
 The confluence of strangers at Panama has set an 
 
 American company at work to turn to account this 
 
 quiet and fertile spot : and if a flaming paragraph, 
 
 which I have lately read in the New Orleans Pi- 
 
 caguna, be correct, Taboga is soon destined to 
 
 figure as the i( Saratoga of the South/' In Ian- 
 
 g-uage more intelligible on this side the water, a 
 
 piece of ground will be cleared, a long row «»1 little
 
 58 
 
 white-washed cabins set up, a table d'hote, a bowl- 
 ing- alley, and a bar established : mintjuleps will be 
 dispensed, balls given, and the habits of Spain su- 
 perseded by those of New York. 
 
 Continuing" our course, we passed the " Island of 
 Serpents/' which owes its name to a report, for 
 whose truth every inhabitant of the neighbourhood 
 will vouch : although it certainly carries with it a 
 most singular air of romance. A single hill, from 
 summit to base a mass of verdure, rises abruptly 
 out of the water. Clouds rest perpetually on its 
 top : streams rich in golden sands as those of Cali- 
 fornia, furrow its sides, and uncounted treasures 
 are lodged in the cliffs above : but on those cliffs no 
 human foot has been set : the mines are unworked, 
 the very sands unsearched, for serpents, whose bite 
 is death, swarm throughout the green thickets ; 
 and of the few adventurers who have undertaken 
 the discovery of the guarded gold, none have ever 
 returned to tell their story. 
 
 However exaggerated this, the popular belief, 
 may be, there is no doubt that the superstitions 
 entertained by the natives, have hitherto prevented 
 their forming settlements on the island ; that traces 
 of gold have been found in the brooks by the crews 
 of ships sent there for water; and that a recent 
 attempt to clear the way for a thorough exploration, 
 by setting fire to the bush, failed from the excessive 
 moisture of the trees and grass. Up to the present 
 time, no farther trials have been made, but it will
 
 59 
 
 be strange if some of the adventurers, now collected 
 at Panama^ do not; in the course of a year or two., 
 throw some new light on the subject. 
 
 Two days brought us to Buenaventura, which 
 figures on the maps as a town, though a more 
 wretched collection of hovels could hardly be found 
 in any part of the world. It is smaller, poorer, and 
 in every respect worse than Chagres, the huts 
 of which it is composed resembling* in materials and 
 construction those of the isthmus. The river, how- 
 ever, is fine, and the surrounding coast wild, wooded, 
 and broken, with surf beating heavily on the rocks. 
 Three or four creeks empty themselves into the 
 harbour, two of which are supposed to rise at a 
 considerable distance inland, but as they run a\ holly 
 through Indian country, their course has hitherto 
 remained unexplored. 
 
 There is little trade, and the only article exported 
 is tobacco, which is sent on board in square cases 
 of raw hide with the hair on. The chief importance 
 which the place possesses, is derived from the facl 
 of its lying on the highroad to Bogota from the 
 Pacific. Travellers by this route follow the course 
 of the Cauca river, which runs through a wild and 
 mountainous tract, as far as Cartago, whence three 
 or four days of difficult and sometimes dangerous 
 riding bring them to the capital. The journey is 
 generally considered as occupying three weeks, bul 
 ;i- \\\\< supposes the day's ride not to exceed thirty 
 miles, and the whole distance to be performed with
 
 00 
 
 the same animals, half that time would probably be 
 enough for an Englishman and a tourist. The 
 scenery is said to be magnificent : and it was a 
 matter of extreme reg'ret with me that the shortness 
 of my stay in South America prevented me from 
 making* the expedition, the more so as it is alleged 
 that a communication exists between the waters of 
 the Cauca and those of the Magdalena, thereby con- 
 necting' the two oceans by a channel practicable for 
 boat navigation. 
 
 On Tuesday, Jan. 1, 1850, we crossed the line 
 about 10 a.m. By noon we were in full view of 
 Cape Pasado, the first land seen in the southern 
 hemisphere. Cape St. Lorenzo was made by sunset, 
 a bold and prominent headland. All our hopes of 
 obtaining- a sight of the Andes were frustrated by 
 incessant rain and mist, the most disagreeable 
 weather I had experienced since entering the 
 tropics, the damp warmth of the atmosphere pro- 
 ducing a closeness more unpleasant than almost any 
 amount of day heat. We were told that this is 
 usual in the Pacific ; indeed, the captain called it 
 "regular line weather:" rather a shock to one's 
 preconceived notions, for the fog was as dense as 
 that of a London November, or the Newfoundland 
 banks in any season. A Scotch mist, slightly 
 warmed, is perhaps the nearest approach to it. 
 
 The next morning we were in sight of land by 
 daylight, passing soon afterwards el enamortajado, 
 the Corpse— whose ominous title is derived from
 
 Gl 
 
 a story, often repeated, and never, I believe, contra- 
 dicted, which gives a fair idea of the internal 
 management of a South American Government. 
 The Columbian authorities, it appears, animated by 
 a very unusual spirit of activity, determined on the 
 establishment of a light-house, then as now much 
 needed. Some building 1 was accordingly erected 
 for the purpose, and four men were rowed across to 
 the island, which is altogether desert and barren, 
 and there left in charge, with six months provisions 
 supplied them. No boat was allowed, probably 
 from a suspicion that they might make off with the 
 little property consigned to their care, but they 
 were promised relief before the expiration of their 
 term, and provisioned for so long a period, they 
 were little inclined to complain. The time passed, 
 whether quickly or slowly to them can never be 
 known ; and in the interval, a revolution, or some- 
 1 hing like one, took place at Guayaquil. This being 
 a matter of very common occurrence, excited little 
 sensation beyond the immediate vicinity, but it amis 
 quite sufficient to drive out of the heads of the 
 authorities all thoughts of those whom they hud 
 consigned to solitary imprisonment; and I do not 
 know how long niter the expiration of the allotted 
 period it was that a foreign vessel, attracted by the 
 signals of distress waved from the island, Benl a 
 boat's crew ashore in time to rescue one victim, 
 w ho how e\ er died shortly afterw ards. The res! had
 
 0-3 
 
 literally starved to death ; and this within ten miles 
 of the main land. Other accounts sa} r that the island 
 received its name from the likeness which it is sup- 
 posed to bear in shape to a corpse shrouded and laid 
 out for burial^ with the arms folded over the breast; 
 but whether from want of sufficient imagination, or 
 not seeing' it from the right point of view, I certainly 
 should not have discerned the likeness if it had not 
 been pointed out. 
 
 We ran along' the coast of Puna, an island 
 25 miles in length by about 14 in the broadest 
 par^ formerly the abode of a tribe of Indians, 
 from whom the Spaniards on their first landing* 
 met a most obstinate and daring* resistance, their 
 leader Hernan Pizarro being* wounded in the 
 attack. They revenged themselves by enslaving* 
 and carrying* off the inhabitants, of whom a scattered 
 few only were left at the beginning* of the last 
 century; and even these have either died out or 
 changed their abode. Puna is little cultivated, and 
 has the reputation of being unhealthy ; but its 
 vicinity to the capital, and convenient position at 
 the mouth of the harbour, give it a certain geo- 
 graphical importance. In the hands of a naval 
 power it would be a very valuable possession; a 
 fact to which it is hinted that the Americans have 
 lately opened their eyes. Ecuador is a weak 
 government, and public debt unpaid furnishes a 
 convenient ground on which to rest a claim. 
 
 By mid-day we were in the river, which is wide
 
 but not picturesque, running- between banks generally 
 high and bare, and which in parts — strange sight 
 for the tropics — are covered with deciduous trees. 
 The seasons of Guayaquil differ altogether from 
 those of the isthmus — forming" in tact an exact con- 
 verse. The wet season, for the last of which I had 
 come in at Panama, had just commenced in Ecuador, 
 where it is supposed to end about the beginning of 
 May, leaving- the rest of the year comparatively dry. 
 This however must be taken with exceptions, for 
 about the foot of the Cordillera it rains incessantly, 
 and the change of seasons is unfelt. The town of 
 Guayaquil, the second in importance in the Equa- 
 torial Republic, and its only seaport of any conse- 
 quence, is situated at an inconvenient distance from 
 the mouth of the river. Eighty-five miles navi- 
 gation against a strong* current, and where tides 
 run with a violence unusual in the Pacific, are a 
 serious drawback to trade. Near the city the 
 ground becomes low and flat, and the haciendas of 
 the wealthier proprietors, surrounded with bright 
 green patches of cane, and gaily and fancifully 
 painted, become more and more numerous as you 
 approach. 
 
 Guayaquil itself is situated favourably enough 
 for purposes of convenience, on the low bank of the 
 river, along which a roughly-made pier or embank- 
 ment lias been carried for a distance of a mile A t 
 the end of this, and close under a hill, the only one 
 in the immediate neighbourhood, stands the old
 
 G4 
 
 town, dating- from the time of the Spanish conquest, 
 dirty and disreputable, with streets unpaved, and 
 inhabitants unwashed. The new part is in quite a 
 different, and rather a peculiar style. All the foot- 
 paths are under cover, as in Chester and Berne 5 
 and the houses directly overhang' them. The 
 gTound-floors are shops or warehouses, generally 
 open at the sides, and displaying' their contents after 
 the manner of an Eastern Bazaar. Fruit — cigfars 
 — ponchos of gaudy colours — ices, and dulces — 
 grass hammocks, which are here manufactured in 
 perfection, form the chief articles of trade. The 
 intense heat of the noon-day sun, acting" on a low 
 and swampy soil, and within two deg*rees of the line, 
 gives the population a sleepy listless manner of 
 moving* during; the day, which chang'es to bustling* 
 activity towards evening*. Then the streets are 
 thronged, the pulperias filled with a dense and dirty 
 crowd, ladies appear at their balconies and barred 
 windows, and a stranger, landing' as we did just as 
 nigiit was setting* in, would imagine that nothing* 
 less serious than a pronunciamento could possibly be 
 the cause of such a tumult as he hears and sees. 
 
 Every building* throughout the town is of lath 
 and plaster, except the old Spanish cathedral, dedi- 
 cated to St. Jag'o, the patron saint of Guayaquil, and 
 which, with all its ugiiness, is likely to outlive ten 
 more generations of modern houses, still standing as 
 the first conquerors left it. The residences of the 
 wealthier inhabitants are painted and whitewashed,
 
 65 
 
 and certainly have a neat, though not substantial 
 appearance. Some are three stories high, the second 
 being- a mere entresol, and the chief apartment 
 above ; but this is now forbidden by law ; the 
 authorities having- taken it into their heads that 
 such a style of building- increases the risk from fire. 
 They have some reason to be cautious; for three 
 times their capital* has been laid utterly in ashes, 
 and thirteen other fires are recorded of more limited 
 though still destructive extent. Anywhere but in 
 South America it would hardly be credited that this 
 could take place in a city built literally on the edge 
 of a river, and where no house stands two hundred 
 yards distant from the water : but here engines and 
 firemen are unknown, and if accidents happen, it is 
 the will of God and the saints, and there is no more 
 to be said. Not much better cared for is the state 
 of the thoroughfares : but the Macadams of Ecua- 
 dor always conceive their work to be done when 
 some dozen of big- stones have been tumbled any 
 how into the street to mend the old holes, or make 
 new ones. Wlien I have added that there is no 
 theatre, no hotel, no Government building- larger or 
 better than a private house, that the grogshops are 
 many, and that (lie appearance of the lower orders 
 bear witness to their popularity, I believe that I 
 shall have conveyed as good an idea of Guayaquil 
 as I can do by a mere verbal description. 
 
 I found myself jusl too late to witness an attempted 
 
 * In 1692, 1707, and 1764. 
 
 I
 
 GO 
 
 emeute, which took place three days before my 
 arrival. It appears that financial reform has of 
 late been introduced into Ecuador after a somewhat 
 wholesale fashion. The Ministry finding' itself in 
 arrear, decided on stopping" all salaries whatever, 
 except those of the military, whom it was important 
 not to alienate, and, of course, their own. People 
 are used to these things in the Republics of the New 
 World : and no g*reat sensation was produced, until 
 it was rumoured about, with what truth I never 
 knew, that the unexampled economy of Govern- 
 ment had left them with a surplus of £5000 in the 
 Treasury. For such a prize there were many com- 
 petitors ] and it was not long* before a plan was 
 formed to upset the Constitution, turn out the pre- 
 sent holders of office, and take possession of the 
 spoils. Extra pay, however, had been given to the 
 troops : the officers were some of them obnoxious 
 to the mob, and consequently remained loyal ; and 
 the affair passed off with only the loss of a few 
 lives. 
 
 Ear otherwise was it in the revolution of 1845, 
 when Flores lost the Presidency, and nearly his 
 life. I shall not attempt to describe from memory 
 a scene of which I have heard many versions ; but 
 the severity of the contest is sufficiently witnessed 
 by the condition of the walls and wooden pillars of 
 the houses, some of them riddled through and 
 through with musket-balls, and having the holes 
 hastily and awkwardly plugged up with dried clay.
 
 6? 
 
 In that now occupied by the British Consul there 
 are more than a dozen shotmarks ; and so unsub- 
 stantial is the style of architecture, that I myself 
 saw the place where a single bullet had passed 
 successively through an outer wall and two inner 
 partitions, stopping* finally in the third. As there 
 is no furniture with which to make a screen, and 
 mattrasses are unknown, the danger to which the 
 peaceful citizens are exposed on such occasions is 
 not much less than that incurred by the actual 
 combatants. 
 
 There is little or no foreign society in Guayaquil ; 
 the whole number of alien residents of all classes 
 falling- short of twenty-five. This arises in part 
 from the heat and unhealtliiness of the locality, one 
 of the worst in South America ; and partly also 
 from the habits of the native population, who rather 
 tolerate than desire the presence of strangers. 
 They haye among" themselves greater resources than 
 are to be found in most of the cities of the Pacific 
 coast* and singularly enough in a close, swampy, 
 and confined situation, the personal appearance, 
 both of men and women, bears, comparatively 
 speaking, a stronger likeness to the European com- 
 plexion and cast of features than to those of their 
 countrymen and countrywomen of the tropics. 
 
 On the morning after m\ arrival, determining to 
 Leave the steamer, and ride over the Cordillera to 
 Quito, I went on board again to bring offrnj luggage. 
 It' it laid not been <'a.-\ to land on the preceding 
 
 r ••
 
 C8 
 
 evening*, the task of returning* was doubly difficult. 
 The tide and current together were running" at the 
 rate of eight knots an hour down-stream : the native 
 boats are far from secure ; and the approaching* 
 departure of the packet made it necessary to lose 
 no time. Starting* about half a mile above the 
 point where she lay, and straining* every nerve to 
 keep ourselves from being* spun round in the eddies, 
 Ave at last reached the ship's bows ; and were swept 
 along* her side till broug-ht up with a shock that 
 nearly sent our frail craft to the bottom, by striking* 
 ag*ainst the starboard paddlewheel. Another pas- 
 senger, who set out about an hour later, was less 
 fortunate : missing* the ship by about ten yards, and 
 his crew, worn out by their previous exertions, being- 
 unable to stem the current, he drifted two miles 
 down the river, and then only stopped by being- 
 carried within a rope's throw of an American brig* 
 which lay anchored there. u Facilis descensus," — 
 but the return was a tedious process • and it was 
 more than an hour and a half before a tow-rope, with 
 four or five men at the end of it, had brought him 
 to the point from which they started, this time to 
 succeed. 
 
 A journey in South America, if undertaken at a 
 few hours' notice, is a serious matter. You have 
 everything* to do for yourself : and I know no such 
 trial of a man's temper — the day being* hot, and he 
 in a hurry — than to encounter the delay's and 
 dawdling* of the Spanish tradesmen. There are
 
 00 
 
 provisions to buy, a servant to engage^ papers to be 
 vised, and on eaeli and all of these matters there is 
 sure to be a squabble in resisting' the barefaced 
 imposition attempted to be practised upon you. 1 
 thought myself an ell oft' in aretting' through these 
 troubles in six or seven hours of bustle : and a little 
 before sunset, the tide running* strong - up-stream, 
 and the night being" fine, I set out in an open bout 
 for Bodegas,* the boundary of the province of 
 Guayaquil, and the point at which the navigation of 
 the river ceases. The canoes in general use being- 
 small, and unprovided with either seats or raised 
 planks in the bottom, the only practicable position is 
 that of lying at full length ) which, should there be 
 an v tendency to a leak in the craft, and the passenger 
 be conscious of rheumatic propensities, neither the 
 most agreeable, nor the most wholesome process in 
 the world. For my own part I slept soundly, lulled 
 by the monotonous splash of the paddles ; and wak- 
 ing about midnight, was not a little surprised to 
 find the men doing the same thing, and the bout 
 fast moored among a dozen others, some of large 
 size, and manned exclusively by Indians. On 
 mquiry I found that the tide had turned, and a 
 
 * Properly " Bodegas do Babahojo," " (he storehouses of 
 Babahojo," so called from a custom-house formerly established 
 there — hut the full uame has been \oted too long even for the 
 Bonorous Spanish, and us in the case oi' Ki<> Janeiro, and man) 
 others, the adjunct lias been retained, and the distinctive word 
 dropped.
 
 70 
 
 glance at the river shewed how useless it would have 
 heen to attempt to struggle against it. 
 
 The place at which we had halted was a small 
 village containing about one hundred houses, and 
 furnished— unusual accommodation — with a tavern 
 of large dimensions. This latter building 1 was nei- 
 ther more nor less than a raft, strongly moored to 
 the bank, and surmounted by a very unartificial 
 covering of bamboo and palm-leaves. Wiry such a 
 situation should have been chosen I could not under- 
 stand — it was certainly not from the value of the 
 adjoining' land, which lay wholly uncleared, except 
 where room was to be made for the huts, and to my 
 questions on the subject, the all-sufficient answer 
 a es el costumbre" was invariably returned. I 
 afterwards passed many of these floating cottages, 
 and odd as their appearance might be, I could not 
 deny their advantage in one respect. Resting on 
 the water, and rising and falling with the tide, they 
 were accessible at all times, while the more sub- 
 stantial edifices of the bank were separated from us 
 by half an acre of most tenacious mud. 
 
 I found the tavern full of boatmen, inclined to be 
 noisy and making* a night of it : so returning to my 
 canoe, I remained there until four a.m., when 
 thinking that we had wasted quite time enough, I 
 went in search of the crew. It wanted an hour to 
 daylight, and the tide was still against us, but by 
 practising* a manoeuvre, frequent on these waters, 
 avoiding the main channel, and creeping along an
 
 71 
 
 almost stagnant creek, which after many windings 
 again communicated with it, Ave succeeded in mak- 
 ing- way at the rate of about four miles in the hour. 
 As we advanced, the river grew narrower, and the 
 alligators more numerous. I counted thirty-seven 
 on one bank, sunning- themselves at their ease, with 
 the mud hardening- on their scaly backs, and too 
 lazy to stir at our approach. Any number might 
 have been killed : but the chase would have been 
 neither sportsman-like nor profitable, and they 
 appeared so tame and reg-ardless of our presence, 
 that I should as soon have thought of shooting ;it ;t 
 cow. Their favourite resort is a marsh by the 
 river-side, and during* the summer heat they not 
 unfrequently pass weeks in a state of lethargy^ 
 without access to the air, and buried two or three 
 feet deep in the dried and hardened soil. Humboldt, 
 if I mistake not, mentions an instance, where a 
 young- one, who had taken up his sleeping- quarters 
 under the floor of a clay hut, in his exertions to 
 free himself on waking-, produced a miniature earth- 
 quake, and excited great alarm among- the inhabi- 
 tants. The difference of these animals in different 
 rivers is very remarkable. Here, as on the Chag-res, 
 the natives bathed among- them in utter unconcern : 
 while in many of the adjoining streams, they dare 
 not filter the water without first beating if with 
 .-tick-, and shouting and splashing to drive them 
 off A more really dangerous, though in appear- 
 ance Less formidable enemy is the barracouta: :i
 
 72 
 
 kind of freshwater shark) who, though not large 
 enough to cany off a man ; frequently attacks 
 swimmers, and tears off pieces of flesh from their 
 legs. I have seen a native frightfully marked with 
 scars so received : and an officer in the Columbian 
 army related to me a story, for the truth of which 
 he personalty vouched, when a detachment of ca- 
 valry found themselves unable to cross a ford, the 
 horses on each trial being attacked by these animals 
 fastening on their legs, and refusing to quit their 
 hold until almost dragged out of the water. A 
 precaution often taken to guard both against them 
 and the alligators, is to poke into all the holes for 
 some distance above and below the place where a 
 party intends to pass, thereby driving' them bodily 
 out. On land the cayman is harmless, because 
 helpless : quite unable to turn, and his walk or run 
 a mere waddle. Their powers of using their tails 
 as instruments of offence have often been exag- 
 gerated : they are really far from flexile, and the 
 Indians whom I questioned had never seen them 
 strike, nor attack, except with their teeth. The 
 story ma}- have arisen from the undulating motion 
 with which, like most kinds of fish, they propel 
 themselves in the water. They have a habit which 
 they share with elderly gentlemen after dinner — 
 that of sleeping with their mouths wide open — and 
 naturalists, determined to find a reason for every 
 thing, declare that they do it on purpose to catch 
 flies and mosquitos, which they swallow by myriads.
 
 73 
 
 Anything- more ghastly than the appearance of 
 half-a-dozen of these monsters, displaying- their 
 long- lines of glittering teeth and immense power 
 of jaw, can hardly be imagined. The Indians are 
 never tired of telling- stories of their cunningr: and 
 
 o © 
 
 among- other marvellous legends of the same kind, 
 declare that the}' g-o out in parties to catch fish : 
 two or three of the number guarding 1 a narrow 
 
 © © 
 
 pass in the stream, while the others starting- per- 
 haps half a mile off, gradually drive the fish up to 
 them.* Their mode of cayman-hunting- is simple, 
 but requires g-reat nerve. An Indian stands in the 
 water, holding- in one hand a sharp stick with a 
 barbed point at each end, and some live bait — a 
 chicken or duck — tied to it. The struggles of the 
 
 O© 
 
 victim very soon bring- a cayman to the spot, who 
 rushes open-mouthed at the prize : and if the 
 hunter keeps his presence of mind, and does not 
 withdraw his arm, the force with which the animal 
 bites at his prey drives the barbs into his jaws, and 
 makes it impossible for him either to open or close 
 them. He is then defenceless, and is easily killed. 
 We caught a young- one about six inches long, 
 
 © J D ©7 
 
 playing in the shoal water. It fought hard, bit at 
 everything' that came near it, and made a strange 
 croaking noise like a young- frog*. When tumbled 
 
 * "Whether this he true or not, there is no douht that the 
 prairie-wolves have a mode of hunting deer exactly like thai 
 described in the text : they drive them towards a narrow pass, 
 where others arc lying in wait, and all join in securing the prey.
 
 74 
 
 head-foremost into the bottom of the boat; it seemed 
 to think only of revenge : and it was ludicrous to 
 see the half-naked boatmen keeping- their eyes on 
 its movements, and jerking- their bare feet out of the 
 way of its teeth. It finally scrambled over the side 
 and escaped, much to the relief of its captor, who 
 had received a severe bite on the arm from the pre- 
 cocious little reptile. 
 
 We went on all day without adventure, striking 
 once on a snag', and nearly capsizing*, a mishap 
 which might fairly be accounted for by the clumsy 
 make of our craft. When a native of Ecuador 
 thinks fit to set up a canoe of his own, (unless it be 
 of extra dimensions), his only idea of naval archi- 
 tecture is to take a large tree, burn or scoop out a 
 hole in the trunk, pare off the ends into a clumsy 
 imitation of a stem and stern, and sometimes line 
 them with sheet-lead, to prevent leakage where the 
 grain of the wood has been cut through. We 
 pulled up at a cottage where the men expected to 
 find provisions for sale : but after floundering up a 
 high muddy bank, assisted only by a long bamboo 
 which had been laid down as a kind of handrail, we 
 found the settlement deserted, and the house in ruins. 
 It is one of the peculiarities of these little riverside 
 huts, that all of them have gardens, of a primitive 
 kind indeed, an old boat being generally used for 
 the purpose, filled with mould, and set up on two 
 bamboos, making a rude but not ungraceful flower- 
 stand. I was led to believe that the plants so care-
 
 75 
 
 fully cultivated had some medical value : for beauty 
 did not appear to influence the cottagers in their 
 choice, and the quantity was too small to have 
 served them as vegetables. Inside, the only furni- 
 ture which they boasted was a calabash, a hammock, 
 and a square heap of dried clay, about four feet 
 high, on which the fire is made ; this rather elaborate 
 fireplace was universal. 
 
 Never, except in Guiana, did I see such a multi- 
 tude and variety of birds, as swarmed on the banks 
 of the Guayaquil river ; white cranes were counted 
 by thousands, a small brown bird, resembling- the 
 moko-moko of Demerara, abounded in the bushes : 
 wood-pig*eons flew overhead : and shrill- voiced 
 parroquets saluted us from every tree-top. It was 
 late in the afternoon when we reached Bodegas; 
 and I almost doubted whether we should be able to 
 leave it the same evening*. I had two letters 
 of introduction, and found the party to whom one 
 was addressed, Don Antonio Elisalde, on the very 
 point of sitting down to dinner, in a bare unfur- 
 nished room, the walls whitewashed, one window 
 blocked up with piles of meal sacks, and two or 
 three fighting- cocks in a corner, tied by their legs 
 to the wall, and keeping up an incessant crowing. 
 No English farmer would have endured the diseoni- 
 fort of such a residence, yet this man was alcalde 
 of the place, brother to a late candidate for the pre- 
 sidency of the republic, his wealth was beyond 
 doubt, and bis house the best in Bodegas. Nothing
 
 70 
 
 could be more hospitable than his reception of me : 
 he routed out a broken-legged chair from the corner 
 of the room, propped it up with a sack, made a vain 
 attempt to silence the cocks, and very civilly asked 
 me to join him at his meal j while we were at table 
 a friend dropped in — an American from the States 
 — who had forgotten his English, and spoke with a 
 comically foreign accent. He had been nine years, 
 he said, in the republic, and during' that time had 
 not heard his own lang'uage half a dozen times. 
 He carried his whole family circle inside his waist- 
 coat (a pretty ample one, by the way :) had neither 
 relative nor friend alive, and seemed not to have 
 heard the name of any president since Tyler. On 
 Ecuadorian affairs, however, he was an authority : 
 and his estimate of the people in general, was by no 
 means favourable. He described them as not given 
 to violent crimes, from which their innate cowardice 
 restrained them; but cunning, greedy of small 
 gains, unscrupulous in driving bargains, and per- 
 fectly careless of the obligations of an oath. Of the 
 country, and its natural advantages, he spoke in 
 terms of almost rapturous praise, and evidently 
 looked forward to being joined before his death by 
 many of his countrymen. The great drawback of 
 the climate he fully admitted, as also the difficulty 
 of getting " help :" Indians, though docile as dogs, 
 being less intelligent, and the negroes neither one 
 nor the other. 
 
 I was pressed for time, having undertaken to
 
 77 
 
 reach Quito within a much shorter period than is 
 generally allowed ; and set out in the twilight for 
 Savonita, twelve miles distant, having first been 
 assured by my entertainer and his companion that 
 what I proposed was utterly impossible, and that I 
 had better stay where I was. Thanking him for 
 his good advice, I mounted, and in five minutes 
 more was out of sight of Bodegas, and threading the 
 intricate mazes of a path that wound through 
 thickets of impenetrable strength and darkness. 
 Droves of oxen and mules met and delayed us at 
 every step ; many were lying down, and could 
 hardly be forced out of the track ; they had come 
 from the interior vallevs of the Andes, and were 
 worn and lame from their long march. The land 
 through which we passed seemed low, and in part 
 overflowed ; it is wholly uncultivated, and probably 
 not worth cultivation. We crossed several rivers, 
 none of any consequence ; and about 10 P.M. readied 
 the outskirts of the village of Savonita. The hut 
 where we stopped was far from waterproof, as the 
 stream that trickled down the walls abundantly 
 testified ; and the only lodging which they could 
 give us for the night was a sort of raised platform, 
 or shelf, of bamboos, which serving in turn as a seat, 
 table, and bed, ran round the verandah outside. 
 This mattered the less, as Ave purposed starting 
 again at midnight, when the moon was to rise; and 
 accordingly, making the best of a bad bargain, we 
 l;i\ down and took our ducking quietly. H\ the
 
 time appointed I found Juan Maria, my arriero, 
 looking- disconsolately at the sky which was pitch 
 dark; and then at the torrents of rain which we 
 could hear and feel as the} T splashed up from the 
 puddly ground. Bad as was our shelter, it was 
 better than a start in such weather j and we turned 
 in again till 3 a.m., when, seeing* no hopes of change, 
 a pair of wet saddles were put on the shivering' mules, 
 and rolled in ponchos, and vainly trying to solace 
 ourselves with cigars which refused to light, we set 
 out on our watery expedition. In two hours time 
 it had ceased to pour, and the thin white mist which 
 covered the lowlands slowly drifting* away, the 
 lower ridges of the Cordillera opened on the view. 
 They in no respect differed from the hills of Panama, 
 being equally g*reen and not much higher *, nor was 
 it until we had crossed half a dozen of the mountain 
 streams, whose rushing and foaming waters plainly 
 shewed their rapid descent, that we felt ourselves to 
 be bidding adieu to the monotonous beauties of the 
 "tierra caliente." Passing the last of these barrancas, 
 my baggage-mule, which was heavily loaded, missed 
 her footing, slipped, struggled, and in a second was 
 carried some dozen yards down the torrent, Avhich 
 roared with ominous loudness. There was no time 
 for assistance, or even for alarm, before we saw her 
 fast jammed between two huge stones, against which 
 she had most luckily been driven. The Indian 
 guide, who accompanied us, sometimes on foot, 
 sometimes riding on the top of the pack, did not lose
 
 79 
 
 his head for an instant, but scrambling 1 over the 
 rocks, and jumping- from point to point, -contrived to 
 set free the struggling and half suffocated brute. 
 A few bruises were all the damage done : but every- 
 thing- in my bng-s was wet through, and continued 
 so until we reached Huaranda in the course of the 
 next day. We met Indians in hundreds coming- 
 down to Bodeg*as, the great cattle market of the 
 Republic ; they reported the road almost impassable, 
 and added that it would g*et worse every day, as 
 the rainy season Mas setting* in. " Viene mucha 
 au'ua," said one of them, which with a Niagara of it 
 pouring- down upon me, I did not feel inclined to 
 dispute. 
 
 By noon we stopped to breakfast; having* then, from 
 the extreme badness of the weather, accomplished 
 only 18 miles. Our resting- place was one of the com- 
 mon huts of the country; half tilled with muleteers 
 from the interior. I found the reason of this 
 unusual crowd to be that they were afraid of the 
 road being' broken up by the rains, and did not 
 expect to be able to make another trip for sonic 
 months. Most of these men were dressed in a 
 poncho and broad straw hat, many in nothing- else ; 
 all were barefooted and barelegged, which in I lie 
 soft clayey mud was rather an advantage than 
 otherwise. The Spaniards, on the contrary, were 
 gaudily got up, their ponchos of everj colour in the 
 rainbow, their huge jackboots defyingthe wet, and 
 furnished with spurs five or six inches long, but ac-
 
 80 
 
 cording" to custom, blunt. Two leagues more brought 
 us to the Sierra de Ancas ; and here our difficulties 
 began. All before it had been mere child's play. 
 The road, greased throughout to the consistency of 
 soft soap, wound up a steep and slippery ascent, 
 where the long* straight tracks made by the descend- 
 ing* mules as they slid down, proved the difficulty 
 of the pass. Here and there portions of the path had 
 been carried away bodily ; and in these places the 
 mules invariably picked their way step by step, with 
 their noses to the ground, and feet close together, 
 seeming to take root in a manner altogether incom- 
 prehensible to a novice in mountain climbing-. They 
 were frequently stumbling", and sometimes came 
 down bodily on their noses ; but instead of strug- 
 gling* or floundering*, they only planted their hind 
 feet more firmly, and then, one after another, and 
 with a slow cautious movement, as if afraid of 
 another tumble, would lift their foreleg's up, and feel 
 for a place within reach, where the slippery soil 
 would not give way. In all these difficulties, the 
 rider had nothing- to do but to sit steady, and leave 
 his animal to take care of both, and after one or two 
 attempts to interfere, produced by the singular par- 
 tiality which all mules shew for the outside edge of 
 a track, just where it borders on a precipice, I came 
 to the conclusion that the best thing- to be done was 
 to let matters take their chance. Three hours scram- 
 bling brought us to the top of this trebly accursed 
 hill : and thenceforward the scenerv beg-an to
 
 81 
 
 change. The tropical plants came few, far between^ 
 and stunted in their growth ; new forms of vegeta- 
 tion shewed themselves, European and North Ame- 
 rican trees succeeded to the bamboo, the cottonwood, 
 and the palm ; and I noticed a shrub exactly 
 resembling- in leaf and fruit, the English blackberry. 
 The rain too had turned to a Scotch mist, piercingly 
 cold, and defying all wrappings to turn it, while 
 occasionally a shift of wind cleared the sky for a 
 few minutes, tantalizing- us with a view, over which 
 the next instant drew a veil. 
 
 Beyond Ancas, the road was one continued suc- 
 cession of hill and valley, the ascents averaging 4-5°, 
 and the descents only passable by sliding — an ope- 
 ration at which mules are wonderfully expert, as 
 they had need be. During- the last three hours, we 
 rode in utter darkness, the animals, as before, scent- 
 ing out their way, and we trusting- in Providence 
 and them. As the rider has nothing- to do with 
 choosing* his path, it is of no great consequence that 
 he should see it: but it would have been a satisfac- 
 tion to know, in case of a. tumble, when one was 
 likely to stop; and my uneasiness in this respect 
 was fully shared by the arriero, who continued 
 alternately to pom- out invocations to all the saints, 
 and curses on the mules when they stumbled, in a 
 way thai was ludicrous to hear. Our last mishap 
 bad nearly left us without shelter for the night ; in 
 the i ! i t.i- darkness, we had ridden past the house at 
 which we intended to stop, just outside the little
 
 82 
 
 village of La Chima. The mules, as usual the most 
 sagacious of the party, found out their mistake, one 
 of them turning' sharp round and making- for the 
 stable. Our reception was not hospitable. The old 
 man who owned the cottage, and his wife, were both 
 in bed, and when our thumps and kicks at the door 
 at last drew him out of his hole, he seemed to think 
 he had ladrones to deal with. When undeceived, 
 he relapsed into sullenness, and to all our demands 
 he had only one answer, u no hay." There was no 
 bread — no meat — no eggs — no fire— and he would 
 have added no water, but that a huge bamboo in the 
 corner, serving* as a pitcher, stopped the intended 
 denial. It was then nearly 10 p.m., and we had 
 been 18 hours in the saddle with only one for rest ; 
 so supper was voted needless, and we turned in 
 forthwith. 
 
 The construction of this hut, though poor and 
 dirty, served to indicate the totally different nature 
 of the country into which we had passed. Instead 
 of the light cane walls, and open sides, here all was 
 solid and massive j the walls of dried clay, the doors 
 heavy, and a deficiency of windows only to be 
 equalled in an Irish cabin, which it resembled in all 
 except the churlishness of its inmates. We had no 
 fire, wood being scarce at this height, and the cold 
 wind from the snow-mountains of the east, blowing* 
 in through a thousand crevices and cracks, struck a 
 chill to the very bones. It was quite clear, how- 
 ever, that we could do nothing to better ourselves ;
 
 88 
 
 and accordingly I rolled a wet poncho round a 
 wetter greatcoat, looked out for a clean corner on 
 the floor, placed a saddle for my pillow, and in five 
 minutes was in the land of dreams. 
 
 Our start next mornino- was made before daylight, 
 and little inviting* as our quarters might be, they were 
 very reluctantly quitted. The hour immediately 
 preceding* sunrise, when, according' to Arab tradition, 
 the angel of death visits the earth, is, as every one 
 knows, the coldest of the whole twenty-four ; and I 
 shall not soon forg'et the miserable expression of .1 unn 
 Maria's face, as I watched him by the light of a 
 huge pine-torch, endeavouring with frozen fingers 
 to adjust the saddle and baggage. At last this part 
 of the business Avas done, and for about three quar- 
 ters of an hour we rode on in the dark, scrambling 
 up invisible hills, sliding down the corresponding- 
 descents, and wading the little mountain streams, 
 which roared and splashed like full-grown torrents. 
 Day dawned at last, and wild and dreary was the 
 vi.-w which opened upon us, from the highlands over 
 which we were journeying. Immediately round us 
 lay a vast extent of undulating plains, bare and 
 treeless, except where a few bent and twisted 
 shrubs, scattered aboul in hollows and watercoursi s, 
 made a feeble attempt to grow. Faraway to the 
 ( . : .~t, towering high over the surrounding peaks, and 
 glittering with intolerable brightness, rose thesnowy 
 Bummif of Chimborazo, untrodden bj human foot - , 
 labile the white patches which strewed the whole
 
 84 
 
 line of the yet distant mountains, shewed that we 
 were really at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the 
 great dividing- range of the Southern Continent. 
 All between was a chaos of hill and valley, sharp 
 pointed needles, abrupt descents, glimpses of rivers 
 shining* like silver threads in the intervening- glens, 
 fleecy clouds hanging- round the inferior peaks — for 
 their range is limited, and seldom, if ever, does rain 
 fall on the great central chain of the Andes — while, 
 strono-ly contrasting 1 with the mao-nificence of 
 nature, thousands of little adobe huts, mere human 
 molehills, even had they not been brought into 
 invidious comparison with the surrounding* scenery, 
 speckled the brown surface of the valley with white. 
 The wet season having only recently begun, not 
 a blade of grass was visible on the fields : but the 
 hedges of aloe and cactus were in full bloom al- 
 ready, and relieved the unvaried monotony of co- 
 lour. The country appeared densely peopled, and 
 the land sub-divided into holdings almost Irish in 
 their diminutive extent, while the cabins, though 
 more substantial and better built, partook of the 
 same peculiar style of architecture. Our road 
 wound along the side of the hills, every now and 
 then dipping* down into the plain with a total dis- 
 regard of levels : and these descents — " mal pun- 
 tos," as the arriero very truly called them — were 
 not a little trying to the nerves, more especially as 
 just enough rain had fallen to convert the stiff clay 
 soil into greasy mud. Fifteen miles of riding
 
 85 
 
 brought us to lluaranda, the first of the realty 
 inland towns of Ecuador which we had seen. The 
 whole population, Indian and white, had turned 
 out in the plaza, gaily dressed and noisy : service 
 was going" on in an old white-washed church, which 
 seemed the general centre of attraction, while two 
 cracked hells were ringing, and an organ within 
 played something' that sounded to me very like an 
 opera-tune. I could not at first g-uess why the 
 bells were hung on a frame like a gallows outside 
 instead of being* mounted in a belfry : but I was 
 told that this was on account of earthquakes, which 
 are frequent and destructive. There was no hotel, 
 but I found lodgings in a private house : my worthy 
 arriero, who had a mind for a holiday, assuring- me 
 that no cattle could be obtained until to-morrow for 
 love or money. I did not believe, but submitted 
 with the better grace, because the temptations of 
 rest and cleanliness are doubly felt after a journey 
 like that which we had made. Nothing* could be 
 more hospitably attentive than the conduct of my 
 entertainers: bul my demands for water seemed to 
 puzzle them extremely: the first supply was brought 
 in a calabash, holding- about as much as a soup- 
 plate: and when they complied with my request 
 for a larger allowance, the servant who handed it 
 bun"- about me in evident curiosity to lind out what 
 possible use I could be going to make of so much. 
 
 Breakfast and dinner were knocked into one a 
 
 common custom among South A:merican travellers,
 
 86 
 
 who seldom make more than one formal meal in the 
 twenty-four hours : and though northern appetites 
 at first rebel against this custom, I adopted it ; and 
 found it answer very well. The fare was Spanish 
 in every respect — grease and oil abundant, a pro- 
 fusion of red pepper and vegetables, and light sour 
 wine drunk out of tumblers. 
 
 Huaranda is quite a mountain village, though 
 relatively to the country immediately surrounding it 
 it lies low : but the chief houses have walls of im- 
 mense thickness : fires are indispensable : and the 
 scarcity of fuel is severely felt. I was amused by 
 the croaking of an old woman, the mother of my 
 host, who sat shivering* in the chimney-corner and 
 complaining after the fashion of old women every- 
 where. She had lately come from the tierra 
 caliente of the sea-coast, and naturally felt the 
 change of climate disagreeable. On my praising 
 her gTandson, a fine young lad of some five years 
 of age, the old crone broke out into an invective on 
 the cold country, " where nothing* would grow — not 
 even boys." It is true that the population of the 
 interior is altogether different from that of the 
 coast. They are generally short and stout, red- 
 cheeked and healthy in looks, and reminded me 
 often of the Welsh. The same effect is visible on 
 the Creole Spaniard, though less strongly marked. 
 Industry they have to a greater extent than the 
 inhabitants of the low-land : but their ignorance 
 prevents them improving* the soil as they might do.
 
 — Vll the interior of Ecuador, and especially the 
 country about Huaranda, is unfitted for the pro- 
 duction of tropical fruit: but all the vegetables of 
 England and the north of Europe would flourish in 
 a climate so congenial to them: and the present 
 deficiency of natural productions is only owing to 
 the neglect of the inhabitants to cultivate them. 
 
 I passed the greater part of the afternoon in- 
 doors : listening: to and answering 1 as well as 1 could, 
 a greater number of questions on all possible sub- 
 jects than I ever remembered to have been asked 
 before — even in New England. As it was a settled 
 matter with the better informed among" them that 
 all "gueros" — fair-complexioned people — must be 
 North Americans, I could not for a long- while ex- 
 plain the fact of my having* come from a still more 
 distant country : and whether England was in 
 Europe, or Europe in England — whether the two 
 wire the same — how far they were — whether we 
 had any religion (a favourite question, which was 
 put half-a-dozen times) — whether Englishmen were 
 allowed to have more than one wife— w it li a hun- 
 dred equally pertinent interrogatories, were show- 
 ered upon me with a rapidity that defied all powers 
 of reply. The room in which I sat was soon 
 half-filled with visitors: and when, thinking that I 
 had been exhibited long* enough, after nearh three 
 hours of being stared at, I walkedout for a /><ixci>, 
 1 found myself followed b\ ;i crowd, \\1im dogged 
 
 jiiv be< ', br nearK ball' a mile out of I lie town. 
 
 -
 
 88 
 
 The churchy so crowded in the morning;, was 
 nearly empty when I went into it : and I had full 
 leisure to examine the works of art which it con- 
 tained. The most striking* of them was a likeness 
 of the Virgin, a large image with the reddest of red 
 cheeks, and a huge flaxen wig' hanging" down to her 
 waist. She was kept in countenance by a cor- 
 responding- figure of St. John, who had been adorned 
 by the painter with a very military moustache, and 
 bore a strong- general likeness to Bolivar. I ven- 
 tured to hint disapprobation of the style to a 
 Spaniard, who volunteered his services as guide, 
 and he only laughed and said that the Indians 
 called it " muy fino," which I believe was true. 
 Besides the church there was a school, — " para la 
 ensenanca mutua," — I presume a Lancasterian sys- 
 tem — which unfortunately was closed in honour of 
 the day, and I could get no more detailed expla- 
 nation of its management. Leaving the dirty 
 streets, which were knee deep in mud, I ascended 
 a neighbouring hill, commanding a magnificent view 
 of the snowy chain beyond, which from Huaranda 
 is invisible. The general barrenness of these hills, 
 so unexpected within two degrees of the line, adds 
 greatly to their wild and imposing aspect. I 
 noticed a plant resembling white heather, which 
 greAV in profusion : a few aloes and caoutchouc trees, 
 but no large timber of any description. I endea- 
 voured to estimate the size of the town, and counted 
 about 250 houses ; all of which certainly held far
 
 89 
 
 more than the English average of six persons. I 
 believe 2000 to be below the actual number of the 
 inhabitants, and it may very possibly be half as 
 much again. 
 
 On returning to my lodgings I found preparations 
 making- for a fandango, and to my great surprise 
 the polka was among the dances introduced. How 
 it found its way to the remote valleys of the Andes, 
 I could not even surmise — but they told me that it 
 was often danced, and they thought it " mm 
 hermoso." 
 
 A ball in South America is easily got up. There 
 are no carpets to take up, no chairs to displace, no 
 fixing- a day beforehand, engaging* a band, and 
 ordering a supper, perhaps to be cut out by some 
 more popular rival after all. Two or three ham- 
 mocks which, during the day, stretch across the 
 room as a lounge for the family, are unhooked and 
 taken down ; a water jar or two tumbled out of its 
 accustomed corner ; sentence of banishment is pro- 
 nounced against the cocks and hens, which in general 
 enjoy the run of the house; and with a few cigars 
 to offer to her friends, male and female, the lady is 
 provided, and ready for all guests. 
 
 The festivities did not last long, for by ten o'clock 
 every soul had left the room, and— unexpected 
 
 siarht— a real bona fide bed was introduced, and 
 
 destined for the accommodation of the "caballero 
 
 Ynfflese." .M \ fidus Achates slept on the ll • 
 
 at my feel ; and the apartment occupied hv all the
 
 90 
 
 ladies of the house — six or seven in number — was 
 divided from ours by an extempore partition, not 
 absolutely impenetrable to curious eyes : nor can I 
 say that the fair occupants appeared in any way 
 discomposed by the circumstance. 
 
 A long* day was before us on Monday : and after 
 four hours rest Juan Maria and myself were again 
 in the saddle, and sliding' and stumbling* as before 
 over the abominable road that leads northward out 
 of Huaranda. We had moonlight to help us, and 
 it did not rain : two decided improvements on our 
 condition during* the last two days' journey. All 
 our former experience of bad roads was here out- 
 done ; the mules were repeatedly at fault, and stood 
 trembling* between cold and fright ; a bare-leg'g*ed 
 Indian boy who accompanied us was unable to keep 
 his footing*, and slid rather than walked down the steep 
 descents ; while the cold, increasing* as we continued 
 to rise, exceeded in apparent severity anything* that 
 I ever felt in Canada or the western prairie. Of 
 course this was the result of our rapid chang*e of 
 climate ; but frost and snow are often seen at the 
 heig'ht which we had now reached (about 10,000 
 feet), and the occasional g*usts of wind seemed to 
 have come direct from the North Pole. 
 
 At last we came to a ravine worse than any of its 
 predecessors j the road down it wound along* the 
 edg'e of a steep bank, part of the soil had been 
 washed away leaving- a clear breach ; and the last 
 fifteen or twenty yards were one unbroken and con-
 
 91 
 
 tiniious slide, ending in the river which roared 
 below. The mules would not stir ; and neither 
 beating" nor spurring' could move them. Thev were 
 accordingly unloaded, and turned loose to shift for 
 themselves 5 while we set to work to pick out the 
 best path we could. This was no easy task ; but 
 with many tumbles and bedaubed from head to foot, 
 we at last reached the water; which being" only 
 knee-deep, was rather convenient than otherwise 
 after all the dirt Ave had o-one throuo'h, though 
 certainly too cool to make the bath an agreeable 
 one. Arrived at the bottom myself, I had time to 
 watch the progress of the animals. They seemed 
 perfectly to understand what they were about, 
 putting- their noses to the ground, feeling* with their 
 forefeet where the footing* seemed doubtful, and 
 every now and then drawing 1 all four leg's to°'ether 
 for a slide, after which they alwa}-s contrived to 
 recover themselves just at the right moment. The 
 opposite bank was nearly as hard to climb as the 
 last had been to descend; and encumbered with 
 jackboots and long- spurs, we found some trouble in 
 making- our way. The mules jumped from point to 
 point like euts, -and with the boy who drove them 
 were at the top before either Juan Maria or myself. 
 Alter this we had little difficulty; but continued to 
 ascend steadily, the path having been trodden into 
 hole- about ;t foot deep by the animals travelling 
 
 along it, invariably stepping in the same place. It 
 uu lo a.m. when \\r reached the last steep dope
 
 92 
 
 of the Chimborazo pass, elevated 15,000 feet above 
 the level of the sea, or nearly the height of the 
 summit of Mont Blanc. Eight thousand feet 
 above us, and about two miles distant on the left, 
 rose the g-io-antic mountain over whose shoulder we 
 were crossing*; in the rear successive ridges of 
 sierras, some shrouded in the morning- mist, others 
 lit up by the sun, stretched away to the far Pacific ; 
 neither shrub nor tree relieved the nakedness of the 
 bare dry sand, interspersed with stones, which 
 covered a wide expanse, barren as an African 
 desert ; skeletons of dead horses and mules strewed 
 the path, all pointing one way — the hill had killed 
 them; while the loose arid soil, drifted about 
 by every wind that blows, had left not a trace 
 of preceding travellers ; and with the excep- 
 tion of two condors wheeling* high overhead, not 
 a sio-n of life was near. One of these came near 
 enough to shew fully the immense expanse of his 
 wings, and displayed not the slightest fear of our 
 party. They are frequently caught by the Indians, 
 who hide near the carcass of a dead horse, and 
 secure the animal when gorged and unable to fly ; 
 though even in this state they are dangerous 
 .enemies. A safer though more laborious plan is to 
 dig" a hole, cover it over with loose bamboos or 
 sticks, lay the carcass upon it, and while the bird 
 has perched, and is too much absorbed in his meal 
 to notice the liberties which are being taken with 
 his toes, to tie his legs suddenly to the platform.
 
 03 
 
 This mode of sporting* involves the unpleasant neces- 
 sity of lying" for twenty-four hours, or more, imme- 
 diately under a load of putrid horse-flesh : but 
 Indians are not nice. 
 
 The difficulty of breathing- forms a staple subject 
 of complaint with all who have reached the height 
 on which we now stood ; I only name the subject, 
 because having- been repeatedly warned against it, 
 and expecting- to suffer, I was almost disappointed 
 by finding- little or no difference, at least while at 
 rest or riding-. An attempt to walk produced 
 instant loss of breath, and a choking- sensation such 
 as one imagines to belong." to asthma. Our voices 
 sounded weak and faint ; and the tread of the mules 
 could hardly be heard. They, poor creatures, evi- 
 dently felt it, for at every twenty or thirty yards 
 they stopped to breathe, and then went slowly and 
 painfully on. 
 
 I need not relate every little adventure and diffi- 
 culty of our downward road. The " casa de Chim- 
 borazo," the only house in this wild track, lying- four 
 or five thousand feet below the pass, and 83 miles 
 distant from Iluarauda, was reached by noon; and 
 there we indulged our wearied beasts and ourselves 
 with a two hours' rest. Avery dreary place w:is 
 thai solitary inn, standing alone, without tree, bush, 
 or shelter, in the heart of the mountains j nor was 
 there much within to compensate for the bleak 
 wilderness outside. Three square rooms, like prison 
 cell.- left open by accident, two of them lighted only
 
 94 
 
 through the doorway, and enclosed by walls three 
 feet thick — a necessary precaution in so exposed a 
 situation — formed the main body of the building*. 
 A fourth den served as a kitchen and living" room 
 for the inmates of the house \ round each room was 
 a broad stone bench, used as a bed place ; travellers 
 being* of course supposed to carry their own blankets 
 with them, and mattresses regarded as superfluous. 
 Many names were cut on the walls, nearly all 
 Spanish ; but I noticed two, eng*raved in letters an 
 inch long*, and followed by a still more conspicuous 
 announcement that the bearers were u Yankees." 
 
 A little beyond the inn we met an officer — a 
 C( militar" — travelling* apparently on Government 
 business, for he had with him an escort of two 
 lancers, whose weapons very much resembled those 
 carried by the beef-eaters at Court. To protect his 
 delicate complexion from the keen mountain air, he 
 had put on a mask throug'h which nothing* except 
 his eyes and mouth appeared, a most absurd figure. 
 The practice, however, is common amongst the West 
 Indian planters. 
 
 We had ten miles riding over a wide undulating- 
 savannah, which, with the exception of two or three 
 fords, now swelled by the melting* of the snows 
 above, presented no obstacles. During* this time the 
 road gradually descended, and towards evening* we 
 were passing* through a thickly-peopled and well- 
 cultivated country, whose appearance spoke better 
 for Ecuadorian industry than anything I had yet
 
 95 
 
 seen. The fields wen 1 large, and carefully irrigated ; 
 the fences strong" and substantia] enough to have 
 raised the envy of even a Norfolk farmer, being 1 
 
 . 7 O 
 
 formed of a triple row of the aloe and dagger-plant, 
 with here and there a prickly-pear, or tuna, whose 
 formidable thorns make all trespass impossible. 
 
 The crops were just above ground, and as far aa 
 I could make out, consisted chiefly of Indian corn, 
 with some wheat and barley ; soil light and dusty, 
 and almost as free from stones as that of the Mis- 
 sissippi valley. 
 
 Xothino* can be more different than the condition 
 of the inhabitants (I speak of the lower class) on the 
 two sides of the Cordillera. Westward, there is a 
 frequent communication with the sea-coast, an habi- 
 tual intercourse with strangers, and the effects of 
 this comparative civilization are very plainly dis- 
 cernible in their habits. The Spanish population, 
 moreover, exists in greater numbers ; and the pure 
 Indian blood is less often seen. To the east, or 
 inland, this state of things is reversed. The abori- 
 gines, cut off from communication with the world 
 without (for the passage of the Andes, impracticable 
 :it -oine seasons of the year, is seldom made except 
 Ic the couriers and regular traders between Quito 
 and Guayaquil), retain the habits and manners of 
 life introduced among them by the early Spanish 
 settlers. Their bouses are poorer, their dress more 
 scanty and peculiar, their Language almQsl inintel- 
 
 ligible from the admixture of Indian word-, and
 
 90 
 
 their ignorance upon all points absolute and entire* 
 They are Christians in name ; baptized and married 
 in due form,, and contributing 1 to the support of a 
 few padres who live amongst them ; but beyond 
 this they have no knowledge 5 and many of them 
 are supposed still to adhere in secret to the rites 
 and religion of their forefathers. 
 
 Far among the mountains, and out of the common 
 track of travellers, they openly maintain their old 
 independence,, allowing no white man to enter their 
 villages ; and even within fifty miles of the capital; 
 defying the whole power of the Government to 
 subdue them ; which, as they own little or no pro- 
 perty, are well armed, and fully determined not to 
 work, has not been, and is not likely to be, attempted. 
 Those of the plains -the tame Indians, as the Mis- 
 sionaries used appropriately to call them — are free 
 in name, but in name only. The land on which 
 they live belongs to their master, who takes his rents 
 chiefly in labour, and moreover generally contrives 
 to keep them in his debt. At best they are tenants- 
 at-will, and to their simple habits a removal from 
 the farms on which they have passed their lives, is 
 far worse than slavery, to which in practice they 
 have long been accustomed. The Government has 
 officers appointed to examine into their condition, 
 partly with a view to their protection, and partly to 
 see that a proper degree of subordination is enforced 
 amono- them. As th^se men act in concert with the 
 landowners, and the priests are generally on the
 
 97 
 
 same side, it may be imagined that the state of 
 dependence of the Indian is complete. 
 
 We reached Hamhato — twenty-four miles from 
 the Casa da Chimborazo — an hour after nightfall, 
 
 O 7 
 
 and found accommodation in a deserted house over- 
 hanging 1 the river. While taking- up our quarters, 
 and groping in the dark, I heard a cry from Juan 
 Maria, who had put one foot out of a low window 
 at the far end of the building", in the belief that it 
 opened on the yard, but found out his mistake just 
 in time to save himself from a fall of forty feet. 
 He held on with both hands, calling- lustily for help, 
 and was soon rescued. The nigrht beino- fine, it was 
 
 o © 7 
 
 arranged that we should start aarain at one in the 
 morning*, in order if possible to reach Quito the 
 same da)'. I shall never forget the view which 
 opened upon me at the first dawn of morning'. We 
 were in the centre of that great valley, whose 
 breadth averag*es twenty miles, and whose length 
 exceeds a hundred, formed by the two chains of the 
 Cordillera, which diverge at Quito, the mountain of 
 Pichincha, on which the city stands, being* the con- 
 necting* link between the two. To the left, and on 
 our rear, was Chimborazo, over which we had so 
 lately passed. Tunguragua, Cotopaxi, and others 
 of scarcely inferior height, snow-capped and glitter- 
 ing, bounded the whole horizon on the right; the 
 rich plain, cultivated and densely peopled in some 
 parts, in others unenclosed, stretched away in a vast 
 expanse of savannah before us; the fresh morning 
 
 H
 
 08 
 
 air almost reminded one of an English spring* ; 
 brooks and rivers ran through every hollow ; while 
 far behind the white walls and flat roofs of Hambato, 
 already many miles distant, marked the distance we 
 had traversed. The most marked feature in the 
 immediately surrounding* landscape was the number 
 and size of sand-hills, quite bare, and seemingly 
 heaped up by the force of the wind. They rose in 
 successive ridges, one behind another, contrasting 
 vividly with the bright green of the surrounding 
 fields. But for these, and the aloes and cactuses 
 that bordered the road, I could have fancied a like- 
 ness between the view before me and that from the 
 walls of Berne, where the whole range of the Alps 
 are seen in one great panorama. As we continued 
 to advance, the costume of the people grew wilder, 
 and their appearance more uncivilized. Many 
 Indians passed us, bare-headed and naked, all except 
 a ragged poncho over their shoulders, riding with 
 lassos coiled up, and hanging at their saddles. On 
 nearing Tacunga we met a party with a bull in tow, 
 securely fastened by four lassos, of which the owners 
 rode two in front and two behind, each at about 
 fifteen or twenty yards from the animal, thus making* 
 it impossible for him to rush upon them. Passers-by 
 on such occasions always keep out of the way, 
 drawing up to the side of the road, and calling to 
 the conductors to tighten the lasso ; a very necessary 
 precaution. 
 
 The road was traversed at every hundred yards by
 
 99 
 
 little canals, banked up at the sides, and conveying 
 the ^ater of the mountain-streams down to the 
 low-lying fields, which during; six months oi the 
 year, without such artificial aid, would be burnt up 
 with drought. Rain, so abundant below, is rare at 
 this elevation :* and the clouds of dust which every 
 passing horseman raised, were almost suffocating-. 
 
 Bv noon we had reached Tacunaral once a nourish- 
 ing town, but which was utterly ruined in 1797 
 by one of the most destructive earthquakes on 
 record. It occurred on a market day, when thou- 
 sands of Indians had flocked in from the country 
 round, who, cooped up in the narrow streets, and 
 blinded and bewildered by the dust from the falling 
 houses, attempted in vain to escape, trampling* on 
 each other in their flight. Every building in the 
 place was laid level with the ground, except a church 
 and college of the Jesuits, the latter of which still 
 remains, cracked in fifty places and irreparably 
 ruined. The loss of life was never estimated ; 
 Spanish exaggeration puts it down at five thousand, 
 an almost impossible number ; but the prosperity 
 of Tacunga was at an end from that day : and it 
 now bears the vacant and desolate aspect of a. city 
 too large for its inhabitants. The last mishap, 
 from which it never recovered, is still remembered 
 by many of the natives; but similar accidents had 
 
 * The average height of this interior valley varies from 7000 
 t<> 9000 feel above the sea. 
 
 ii 2
 
 100 
 
 occurred in 1743 and 1757, probably occasioned b} r 
 volcanic eruptions from Cotopaxi : and as long* ago 
 as the end of the seventeenth century, a shock which 
 destroyed, according" to tradition, seven hundred 
 houses, is recorded in the annals of the province. 
 It is not many years since an old priest died at 
 Quito, whose mind had been permanently shaken 
 by the danger he had undergone during one of these 
 convulsions of nature. He was buried alive for two 
 days, and taken out at the end of that time unhurt, 
 but unconscious of what had passed j confined for 
 years as an idiot, and restored in part to his 
 reason, but never to the use of his memory. The 
 earthquake — his danger — and all his previous life — 
 were a blank to him. He had even forgotten how 
 to read, but recovered the power in old ag*e. 
 
 I heard much of an old Indian palace in the 
 neighbourhood of Tacunga ; but time forbade us to 
 visit it. By the descriptions I received, it is now 
 almost levelled with the ground, but the original 
 plan may yet be traced : and the material employed, 
 as in the case of much of the old church architecture 
 of England, is a stone not found within many miles 
 of the spot. 
 
 Beyond Tacunga we began again to ascend, cross- 
 ing a wild and narrow range of hills, wholly uncul- 
 tivated. On the road Ave were met by long* trains 
 of baggage mules and horses, heavily loaded, and 
 bound, not across the mountains, but down the 
 valley to the various settlements of the interior.
 
 101 
 
 The drivers were Indians : some, notwithstanding' 
 the cold, clothed only in a loose wrapper round 
 the middle. They professed to speak Spanish : but 
 the dialect and mixture of native words made them, 
 to me, altogether incomprehensible. Towards even- 
 ing" we found ourselves in an open table-land, 
 higher than that which we had left, and peopled by 
 a class seemino'lv lower in the scale of civilization 
 than any we had vet seen. Their houses, if such 
 they could be called, were mere break-winds, such 
 as hunters on the prairie knock up when camping 
 for more than one night. Neither roof nor walls 
 are thought necessary : the soil is scooped out so as to 
 sink the floor a little below the level of the surround- 
 ing- earth : two or three poles are fastened tog-ether 
 at the top : boug'hs are twisted between them, 
 leaves, rushes, and clay piled over all till the whole 
 is tolerably weatherproof: and the structure Avhen 
 complete, suggests the idea of a dung-hill, with a 
 hole in the side, or a remarkably ill-constructed 
 mud-pie. Firewood is scarce : and the only means 
 of warming- these miserable dens is by stuffing- up 
 the entrance (seldom more than eig-hteen inches in 
 diameter), and leaving- the animal heat of the in" 
 mates to produce its effect. 
 
 The better class of houses, belonging' in general 
 to natives of Spanish or mixed descent, are invari- 
 ably of adobe, a kind of soft and sun-dried brick. 
 The process of manufacture is simple enough. A 
 hole aboul two feet deep being- dug- for the found a-
 
 102 
 
 tions, is filled up with stiff clay,, which is pounded, 
 trodden, jiressed with heavy weights, and left until 
 almost dry. The superstructure is carried on on 
 exactly the same principle. A framework of boards 
 serves as a mould, and is tied together at the cor- 
 ners by strips of raw hide. These are tightened 
 when the frame is filled, and taken oif at the end 
 of a day or two, when the contents appear in the 
 shape of a huge lump of adobe, about four feet 
 long- by two in breadth and depth, to which expo- 
 sure to sun and wind soon gives all the hardness 
 which it ever attains. No cement is used : but the 
 wet clay which is laid on the part already finished, 
 adheres firmly to it, and when in its turn subjected 
 to compression, forms a single and solid mass. 
 This style of building- is universal throughout 
 Spanish America : and for its durability it is 
 enough to say that many walls are standing even 
 now which date from a time previous to the con- 
 quest. 
 
 The little village of Machachas was our stopping- 
 place for the night : and the lodging which we 
 found there defies all powers of description to do it 
 justice. A yard enclosed by mud walls, and about 
 thirty feet by twenty in size, was roofed in at one 
 side : a corner partitioned off for the use of the 
 family to whom the place belonged : and the rest 
 was the common property of men, mules, horses, 
 dogs, and poultry. A large party both biped and 
 quadruped was already collected : forage was scarce,
 
 103 
 
 and food not to be had : and even to find a resting:- 
 place on the stone bench, lined as it was with pros- 
 trate and snoring' figures, was no easy matter. We 
 were, however, now only twenty miles from Quito ; 
 the thought gave us patience ; and neither hunger 
 nor cold troubled us lon<2,-. 
 
 It was pitch-dark at four in the morning, when, 
 anxious to reach my destination by breakfast time, 
 I roused up Juan Maria to saddle the mules: 
 which he did somewhat reluctantly, saying that it 
 was " muy mal camin," as indeed it proved. As 
 a counterbalancing advantage, we had it all to our- 
 selves, a great saving; of time where the narrowness 
 of the path obliges the weaker party to turn back 
 until their rivals have passed. 
 
 In many places the banks on each side rose to 
 a height of twenty or twenty-five feet : the path, 
 excavated at first by the continual treading of 
 men and beasts in the same place, having been 
 gradually worn deeper by the streams of water 
 which occupied the channel thus artificially scooped 
 out for them. One of the steep pitches leading to 
 a ford, was at once so precipitous and so dark, that the 
 mules refused cither to be ridden or led down ; and 
 after a halt of some time, and many trials, we suc- 
 ceeded at last, by the help of a box of lucifer 
 matches, and a remnant of candle, which formed 
 part of our stores, in lighting the way, when they 
 followed readilv eiioujrh. I confess that 1 looked 
 on with very little faith at the preparations for this
 
 104 
 
 experiment ; but I was bound to admit that it suc- 
 ceeded thoroughly ; and my opinion of a mule's 
 sagacity rose accordingly. We had hardly emerged 
 from this ravine into a piece of comparatively level 
 ground, Juan Maria riding- as usual in front, 
 where I always put him, thinking it just as well 
 that his neck and not mine should stand the chance 
 of being broken first, when I heard a muttered 
 {< caraniba," followed by a splash and struggle. 
 Pulling up, and peering through the darkness, I 
 discovered my worthy attendant's head just showing 
 above the surface of a pool of mud and water, into 
 which he had ridden in ignorance of its tenacious 
 qualities. He came out at last on the other side, 
 plastered like a wall : but during this journey we 
 had neither of us much to boast of in point of 
 outward appearance, and such accidents are too 
 common on South American roads to attract much 
 notice. 
 
 One more hill— a long, tedious ascent— and the 
 capital of Ecuador lay before us, at nine miles dis- 
 tance, its white, clean-looking houses spread out 
 alone* the side of Pichincha like a row of tents. Our 
 previous struggles were now exchanged for a pleasant 
 gallop over the open plain : and it was still early 
 morning, when weary, worn, and travel-stained, 
 we rode through the crowded streets of the old Indian 
 city of Quito.
 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The real date of the foundation of Quito is never 
 likely to be known. According to the common 
 accounts, it was built by Sebastian Benalcasar, in 
 the year 1.534: but this means only that the Indian 
 town which occupied its site was repaired, enlarged, 
 and appropriated to the use of the victors by turning- 
 out the former inhabitants. None but a Spaniard, 
 and not even a Spaniard in this commercial age, 
 would have selected a city so far inland and so 
 inaccessible for all mercantile purposes, as the seat 
 of government for a wide and valuable province. 
 North and south, east and west, it is equally in- 
 accessible to wheeled carriages : the cost of all im- 
 ported goods, conveyed over the Cordillera by the 
 road which I have described, is enormous, sometimes 
 exceeding* the price in Guayaquil 500 per cent ; nor 
 does any particular fertility of the soil, or greater 
 healthiness than is always to be found in a hign 
 mountain climate, counteract the manifest incon- 
 veniences of so remote and elevated a position. Two 
 advantages undoubtedly were gained by the choice: 
 the one, an entire exemption from the attacks of 
 foreign enemies, and even to a certain extent, the 
 concealment of whatever wealth the early settlers 
 might possess from the jealous eyes of the buccaneers 
 of other countries j and hardly less important poli- 
 tically, the influence obtained over the natives of
 
 106 
 
 the interior, by a situation which threw the colonists 
 so entirely upon their own resources and those of 
 the country. A seaport town in a colony is always 
 nearer to the mother-country than to the interior of 
 its own ; and local attachments are less likely to 
 spring" up where continual intercourse is kept up 
 with the land to which the colonist continues to look 
 as his home. Be this as it may, the rule holds with 
 all the Spanish capitals of South and Central Ame- 
 rica. Mexico, Leon, Bogota, Lima, Caraccas, San- 
 tiago, have each their harbour at a distance ; and 
 even these points of communication with the outer 
 world are generally of more recent growth than the 
 cities to which they belong. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive a town more awkwardly or 
 uncomfortably situated than Quito ; half the streets 
 run tolerably level along the side of a hill, but the 
 other half crossing them at right angles, resemble 
 nothing but nights of stairs denuded of the steps, 
 and in winter form miniature torrents which make 
 walking exceedingly unpleasant. No two houses 
 are on a level ; the really fine architecture of many 
 of the public buildings suffers from never being seen 
 except from above or below ; and in order to enjoy 
 a ride in the country, }ou have to go up and down 
 hills which anywhere else would be considered very 
 serious obstacles to a party of pleasure. Pichincha, 
 18,000 feet high, guards the western side 5 the 
 Panecillo peak blocks up the south, shutting out the 
 level plain of Turubainba, along which lies the road
 
 10? 
 
 to Guayaquil ; Chimbacalle intercepts the eastward 
 view ; and the table-land of the Egido, the only 
 approach to level ground which is to be found any- 
 where immediately bordering* on the suburbs, lies 
 too much above them to be seen from any part of 
 the town. It appears singular that having- pitched 
 upon the hig-hest plain in the world for a situation, 
 the first builders should have chosen to locate them- 
 selves literally in a hole ; but the intense cold of the 
 occasional winds, together with the general want of 
 fuel which forms one of the most serious drawbacks 
 to comfort in the Cordillera valleys, indicate the 
 wisdom of the choice which pitched upon a com- 
 paratively sheltered spot. 
 
 On getting fairly within, not the walls, for they 
 have ceased to exist, but the line where they are 
 supposed formerly to have run, the appearance of 
 the streets is better than would be anticipated from 
 seeing only the suburbs. The great plaza, especially, 
 which has recently been repaired, and the houses 
 surrounding it raised a story higher, is a fine en- 
 closure, and reminded me not a little in shape and 
 arrangement of buildings, of Trafalgar Square — the 
 President's palace representing the National Gallery, 
 and certainly contrasting favourably with that model 
 of cockney architecture. A cathedral, immense and 
 massive, but without ornament, and suggesting in- 
 voluntary comparisons with an enormous barn, occu- 
 pies tin- adjoining 1 side: the Bishop's palace is the 
 exact counterpart in position of Northumberland
 
 108 
 
 House : and happily for Spanish taste, the squirts 
 in the centre have no representative in the South 
 American capital. 
 
 The population is rated at 70,000 souls, but 
 South Americans have no idea of numerical compu- 
 tation, nor has anything* like a census been taken ; 
 indeed it would be impossible to attempt it, since 
 the continual stream of Indian migration backwards 
 and forwards causes the numbers to vary from day 
 to day. Judging*, however, from the apparent size 
 of the town, which is densely crowded in every 
 quarter, I should imagine the estimate here given 
 to be rather under the mark than over it. The 
 lower classes are filthy in their habits, and have 
 many of them no settled home of any description : 
 sleeping" in the streets or under the colonnades of 
 the public buildings, rolled in their ponchos, and 
 equally safe from disturbance, whether by rain or 
 the meddling- of the police. One cause of their 
 wretched condition is to be found in the extreme 
 cheapness of labour. I should be almost afraid to 
 state, had I not found it set down in my notes, the 
 smallness of the sums paid for services sufficiently 
 laborious. One householder told me that he em- 
 ployed an Indian boy as servant of all-work, paying" 
 him one dollar and a half monthly ($18. or £3. 15s. 
 per annum), as his wages. Food, clothes, and 
 lodging', were included : but the latter privilege 
 consisted merely in permission to choose the softest 
 plank on the floor, or stone in the court, for a bed :
 
 109 
 
 and a cast-oft" coat and a pair of breeches did duty 
 as livery upon all occasions. I have myself seen 
 water-carriers employed to bring* up five or six 
 heavy pitchers at a time, making- altogether a load 
 under which I could hardly stand, from a distance 
 of half-a-mile, for a sum considerablv less than an 
 English farthing 1 ; and judging from the manner in 
 which these and similar services were paid for, I 
 should say that from 2d to 3d per diem would be 
 held an ample remuneration for the most laborious 
 kind of employment. It is not extraordinary that 
 so treated, and kept continually to work, the natives 
 should now and then assert their independence by 
 joining- their countrymen in the mountains. Their 
 resistance is however purely passive ; and though 
 among* the still untamed Indians, a strong- feeling* 
 of jealousy exists against the Christians, and a 
 white man venturing* unarmed into their villages, 
 would probably meet with the same fate as a sheriff's 
 officer in Connamara fifty years ago, they have 
 never been known to attack travellers who kept to 
 the line of the high-road, nor do they shew any 
 desire to retaliate for the many oppressions which 
 they have endured in patience. Indeed many of 
 those who refuse to acknowledge the £*overnment of 
 Ecuador, and neither pay taxes, nor send recruits 
 to the army ; conic down to Quito for the purposes 
 of trade, returning at the end of a few days to their 
 homes, and conducting themselves in all respects as 
 peaceabK as the citizens. There is often some
 
 110 
 
 trouble in bargaining' with them for the gfoods which 
 they bring, as they speak no Spanish, and the patois 
 is never the same in any two villages. In early days, 
 they were to a g*reat degree brought under the in- 
 fluence of civilization by the missionaries, who lived 
 fearlessly and without danger among* them ; but 
 their establishments have long* since gone to decay, 
 and no farther progress is being made towards the 
 approximation of the two races. The natural harm- 
 lessness of their character, however, is strongly 
 attested by the insignificant part which they have 
 played in the various civil wars of Ecuador. A Spa- 
 nish and mixed population, amounting to certainly 
 not more than one-tenth of the people among whom 
 they live, have more than once been arrayed ag*ainst 
 each other, dividing their strength, diminishing their 
 resources, and offering an easy opportunity to the 
 trodden -down aborigines, to revenge themselves at 
 one and the same time on both : but the latter have 
 never sought to avail themselves of the power so 
 placed in their hands ; and in justice to the 
 masters it must be said that although far from 
 indulgent or kind to their dependants, they are not 
 in the habit of committing acts of wanton cruelty : 
 while from the nature of the country, neither possess- 
 ing* mines nor producing valuable articles of export, 
 there is not the same temptation to over-work the 
 labourer as exists in the West Indies, and among 
 the Peruvian and Chilian Andes. Singularly enough, 
 while the Indian cannot be held in nominal slavery,
 
 Ill 
 
 which, a9 in the United States, is confined to the 
 negro race, these latter are in every respect the 
 hetter oft* of the two. One provision for gradual eman- 
 cipation, which has long- formed part of Ecuadorian 
 law, I have never seen or heard of in any other 
 country. The slave may always redeem himself on 
 giving' a certain notice to his master ; and to prevent 
 dispute or difficulties as to the amount of ransom, 
 his price is fixed by a government arbitration. 
 The Ecuadorians say that this measure has been 
 effective in suppressing- slavery ; a result which is 
 probably rather attributable to the ease with which 
 labour, nominally free, can be obtained — to the cold 
 climate of Quito, destroying" the health of the 
 African, who can seldom live in a mountain country 
 — and to the comparative decrease of wealth since 
 the days of Spanish dominion. 
 
 I often endeavoured to ascertain the amount of 
 property required to constitute a rich man in 
 Ecuador j but the comparatively small number of 
 money transactions which go on, except among- 
 tradesmen and commercial men— the patriarchal 
 habits of the Hacienda dos, whose wealth consists in 
 flocks and herds, and who hardly know the extent, 
 certainly not the pecuniary value of their posses- 
 sion,— and the loose manner in which business trans- 
 actions are carried on, accounts being very seldom 
 kept, and the fear of revolutions inducing- many to 
 conceal their riches made the inquiry a very
 
 112 
 
 difficult one. Two or three proprietors were spoken 
 of as possessing- something- like £1500 or £2000 
 a year,, in English inone}' : but these were excep- 
 tions, and I am inclined to believe that for £500 
 or £000, a resident in Quito mig"ht enjoy all the 
 luxuries and comforts attainable in such an out-of- 
 the-way place. 
 
 There is not much in the houses or general style 
 of living* which differs from that of other South 
 American towns. The people are more active and 
 European in their habits, a consequence of the cold 
 climate in which they live : the labourers in general 
 are healthy ; and the diseases of tropical countries 
 are unknown. Strangers in general suffer acutely 
 from the rarefaction and extreme dryness of the air : 
 but this passes off in a few days, and even when 
 most painful, is attended with no serious or lasting' 
 injury. A more permanent inconvenience is the 
 difficulty of procuring- fuel, there being* no coal, and 
 but little wood, in the mountains, while the tem- 
 perature is quite low enoug'h to make a fire agree- 
 able. Nearly all the chief building's in Quito are 
 solid and massive, generally surrounding courts, 
 but less bare and unfurnished than those of the 
 lowland towns. The Government house, and the 
 residences of the officials, I found arranged almost 
 after the English fashion, and the rooms provided 
 with curtains, carpets, armchairs and sofas — articles 
 hardly to be seen in Guayaquil, and the importation
 
 113 
 
 of which; carried as they must have been on the 
 hacks of mules over the highest passes of the Cor- 
 dillera, is attended with great expense. 
 
 The public works, executed shortly after the 
 Spanish conquest, and like most of our own finest 
 specimens of mediaeval architecture, the result of 
 compulsory labour, are magnificent even in their 
 dilapidation. Lord Dudley says in one of his pub- 
 lished letters, that the Spaniards finish nothing' — 
 the Italians take care of nothing— in Quito both 
 remarks would have been true. By far the greater 
 part of the convents, churches, and even old private 
 houses are commenced on a plan which the builders 
 have not been able to carry out : and of what has 
 been done one-half is generally in a state of decay. 
 This is especially the case with the magnificent 
 convent of San Francisco, probably one of the 
 largest in the world. It contains seven courts, 
 occupies an area larger, as far as I could judge, 
 than that of Trinity College, Cambridge, or Christ 
 Church at Oxford ; and serves as a lodging for sonic 
 forty or fifty monks, who occupy themselves in 
 teaching, and bear a better character than their 
 order in general. It may give some idea of the 
 extent and intricacy of the cloisters and corridors, 
 when 1 say that we passed several hours in walking 
 round them ; and that my companion, who had 
 spent many years in the city, and had repeatedly 
 been a visitor to the establishment, \\:is utterly at a 
 
 J « * — to find hi.- \\:i\ out. There is :i good (\cn\ of 
 
 1
 
 114 
 
 fresco paintings for which the climate is admirably 
 adapted ; but the style in general is absurdly gro- 
 tesque, and rather striking- at a distance, than fitted 
 to bear a minute examination. Three other con- 
 vents—that of San Augustin, la Merced, and San 
 Domingo, are well worth visiting* ; but I shall not 
 attempt to describe them. In the latter there is a 
 portrait-gallery containing* the likenesses of the 
 successive superiors of the order, tolerably well 
 executed, and in some cases of considerable anti- 
 quity. One figure especially attracted my notice, 
 being" inscribed as follows : 
 
 " Philippus Thomas Howardus, Anglus e ducibus 
 Norfolk . . .* Clemente secundo anno 1675. 
 Obiit Romae anno 1C94." 
 
 In this convent they also keep a relic of a more 
 rational description than is usually to be found in 
 such places ; a small earthen jar, said to be the one 
 in which the first grains of wheat ever introduced 
 into South America were brought over. Tradition 
 adds, that this national benefit was the result of 
 accident, and that the corn had been brought over 
 as a part of the stores of the early emigrants. 
 Whether this be true or no, it can be paralleled by 
 many similar instances of fortunate carelessness. 
 In the West Indies, the guinea-grass, one of the 
 most valuable productions of Jamaica, and almost 
 the only crop on which cattle can be fattened within 
 the tropics, took root and spread from a few seeds 
 
 * A word is defaced.
 
 115 
 
 casually dropped by a captain who had Laid in a 
 -lock on the African const us food for some canary* 
 birds which he was taking- across for his friends. 
 The orange and the mango are supposed to have 
 sprung in the same way from fruits imported for the 
 purposes of consumption ; while on the other hand 
 the two greatest plagues under which the planters 
 labour — the grey rat and the ant—have been pur- 
 posely introduced with the idea of expelling- the less 
 mischievous vermin which they have replaced. 
 
 Besides its other objects of interest, Quito i.s 
 remarkable as the spot where the Incas road com- 
 mences. This extraordinary work, although in 
 great part ruined, is still sufficiently perfect to shew 
 what it has been ; and next to the wall of China is 
 probably the greatest monument of human industry 
 on record. Carried along a rugged and moun- 
 tainous country, ascending hills and dipping into 
 valleys, but always deviating as little as possible 
 from a perfectly straight line, it is said to bear a 
 strong likeness in the manner of its construction to 
 the military causeways of the Romans. It extends 
 certainly as far as Cuzco, a distance of little less 
 than fifteen hundred miles as the crow Hies ; and I 
 believe that remains have been traced still farther to 
 the southward. One circumstance connected with 
 this undertaking: has been little noticed. We are in 
 the habit of considering the Indians, previous to 
 their discovery and conquest by Spain, as ;i people 
 
 absolutely secluded from ;ill others, and ignorant oi 
 
 i 9
 
 116 
 
 the existence of nations beyond the sea. Yet if this 
 were so, what motive had they for carrying- their 
 great line of communication over ground the most 
 difficult which could possibly have been selected, 
 when the lowlands of the coast presented a road so 
 much more obvious and easy ? Nothing- except the 
 fear of maritime invasion can account for their 
 choice, since it is impossible to suppose that a 
 government capable of carrying- out so gigantic a 
 project had anything- to fear from the native tribes 
 of the " tierra afuera." There is no certain infor- 
 mation as to the date of the work, though the reign 
 of Huanca Capac, about two centuries before the 
 invasion, is named as the most probable period, since 
 it is recorded of him that he governed the whole 
 Pacific coast from the Line to Chili. The Indians still 
 retain the tradition, that the " chasqui," or runners 
 on foot, of whom relays were provided along the 
 whole line, have been known to transmit intellig*ence 
 from Quito to Cuzco in six days and nights— a rate 
 of travelling exceeding ten miles in the hour ; yet 
 those who have seen Indians run, and know their 
 power of enduring fatigue, will not reject the leg'eud 
 as taxing too highly their powers of belief. 
 
 Even in South America, Quito has become famous 
 or notorious for the suddenness with which its revo- 
 lutions have been effected. With all our recent 
 experience of improvised constitutions, and dynas- 
 ties overthrown in a day, Ave have seen little in 
 Europe which can compare with the rapidity of the
 
 117 
 
 change which put an end to the dominion of Spain. 
 Early in the morning of the 10th of August, 1809, 
 two gentlemen of Quito waited on Count lluis, then 
 governor of the province, with a request for an 
 audience. His Excellency being- in bed and sound 
 asleep, they were refused admission. Still in de- 
 fiance of etiquette they persisted in asking to he 
 heard. Importunity prevailed : a letter explaining 
 their errand was handed in by the orderly in waiting, 
 and to his utter astonishment and consternation, 
 the vigilant functionary read a document informing 
 him, in very courteous phrase, that his functions had 
 ceased, and that a u junta soberana" had been 
 established. Naturally anxious to ascertain the 
 truth, His Excellency half-dressed, hurried to the 
 door, but was stopped by the sentry and desired to 
 consider himself a prisoner. Meanwhile the mem- 
 bers of the executive had assembled in another room 
 of the palace : a crowd collected in the market-place ; 
 the soldiers turned out to support the provisional 
 government; and their bands playing the national 
 ;iirs, and the cheers of the multitude outside, soon 
 com ii iced the Count that he had nothing to hope 
 from the attachment of his quondam subjects. On 
 the next day a President was elected, and the revo- 
 lution ended without a drop of blood being shed. 
 
 It is worthy of notice, and very characteristic of 
 the people, that the conspirators began by professing 
 attachment to their Legitimate king, Ferdinand VII. 
 and accused the actual government of being in
 
 118 
 
 league with Buonaparte : thus ingeniously enlisting" 
 on their side the two feelings of loyalty to the 
 sovereign, and hatred of the oppressive system of 
 colonial administration under which they laboured. 
 
 The subsequent history of the movement is an 
 exact repetition on a smaller scale, of what has taken 
 place whenever a continental sovereign has been 
 restored to power in Europe. The victors quarrelled 
 among themselves ; the troops mutinied against the 
 new authority as they had mutinied against the old : 
 proposals were made to the ex-governor to restore 
 him to power on the basis of a general amnesty : 
 Count Ruis promised every thing, was trusted im- 
 plicitly, and kept his word just so long* as the non- 
 arrival of reinforcements from Lima and Guayaquil 
 made it dangerous for him to break it. On their 
 appearance martial law was forthwith proclaimed — 
 the province being at the time in a state of profound 
 peace — hundreds of the citizens were imprisoned on 
 the charge of participation in the conspiracy of some 
 months before : and a list was made out of eighty- 
 four of the chief offenders, including* the bishop of the 
 diocese, who were sentenced to execution so soon as 
 the judgment against them should be confirmed at 
 home. The natural result of these severities fol- 
 lowed. Nearly all the inhabitants of the surrounding 
 country had sympathized with the revolutionary 
 movement, and feeling themselves liable to punish- 
 ment, refused to enter the town. The consequence 
 was a scarcity of provision ; and this being again
 
 119 
 
 attributed to a plot served as the excuse for fresli 
 cruelties. At last the provocation grew intolerable. 
 An attempt to escape on the part of two or three 
 prisoners gave the signal for a. general massacre "by 
 the soldiery. Three hundred lives were lost : and 
 though the tumult was put down for a time, public 
 confidence was not restored, and a deep gloom per- 
 vaded the city. At this moment the news of a 
 revolution in Caraccas, and shortly afterwards of 
 that of Bogota, reached the ears of both the con- 
 tending* parties. The necessity of a compromise on 
 the part of the Spanish authorities was obvious: 
 meetings were held of a more popular nature than 
 had ever yet been known in the colony : and a semi- 
 constitutional government was patched up, which 
 quieted everybody and satisfied no one. The first to 
 complain were the royalists, who denied the right of 
 Count Huis to enter into such a treaty as had just 
 been concluded with those whom they called the 
 rebels. A force under General Arredonda was de- 
 spatched from Guayaquil to invade the territory of 
 Quito. The Quitenos on their side marched out to 
 meet them, but their valour was not put to the test ; 
 for the invading army had hardly reached the foot 
 of Chiniborazo, when one of the avalanches which 
 -oini'thnes takes place there when a season of unusual 
 heal has loosened the ice, came down with a thun- 
 dering report. Believing that the insurgents were 
 upon them, and that a cannonade had actually be- 
 an, two-thirds of the army, including their valiant
 
 120 
 
 commander, took to flight, leaving' baggage, stores^ 
 and artillery behind them, of which their opponents 
 immediately took possession. All seemed favourable 
 to the cause of independence, when matters again 
 took a new turn. A regency had been declared in 
 Spain and the Cortes established, one of whose first 
 nets was to promise the colonists ample redress, and 
 entreat them in the mean time to return peaceably 
 to their homes. Strange to say, they complied ; 
 and lest their good resolutions should not last suf- 
 ficiently long", the promised boon came in the shape 
 of an army sufficiently powerful to put down all 
 further resistance. So ended this extraordinary 
 struggle : and eleven years passed quietly before 
 General Sucre^ at the head of the Columbian troops, 
 forced on the people of Quito that independence 
 which they had proved unable or unwilling" to win 
 for themselves. Since 1 822, half a dozen squabbles 
 for power between military chiefs, have been digni- 
 fied with the name of revolutions ; but all these have 
 been forgotten in the memor} T of that fierce strug-g-le 
 which after deluging* Ecuador in blood from one 
 frontier to the other, ended in the displacing- of 
 Flores from office, and the establishment of the 
 present rickety g-overnment, which, if appearances 
 may be trusted, seems little likely to prove more 
 lasting- than any of its predecessors. 
 
 I did not pass sufficient time in the neighbourhood 
 of Quito to ascertain the practicability of continuing 
 my course eastward^ across the interior range of the
 
 121 
 
 Cordillera, and thence to the headwaters of the 
 northern branch of the Amazon. In the prosperous 
 days of the missions, parties have crossed the whole 
 breadth of the Continent by this route, with little 
 more than three weeks or a month of land travel; 
 and one of the most extraordinary narratives of 
 adventure on record, is that of Madame Condamine, 
 who, separated from her husband, and trusting- wholly 
 to such assistance and protection as an Indian es- 
 cort could give, actually reached Para in a shorter 
 time than was occupied by two British officers in 
 performing' a similar journey from Lima. Next to 
 the interior of Africa, that of South America is the 
 least explored country in the world ; and consider- 
 ing the greater healthiness of the climate, and the 
 generally inotFensive character of the people, it seems 
 extraordinary that the example of Humboldt has 
 been so seldom followed. The interior provinces of 
 Ecuador (those lying- east of the mountains) are 
 very imperfectly known : and being- quite inaccessible 
 for all purposes of commerce, at least on the side 
 <>t' the Pacific coast, are not likely to be soon opened 
 to travellers. Should they ever be colonized by a 
 civilized people, it is probable that traffic will be 
 carried on by way of the Napo and Amazon rivers, 
 the greater length of the route being- compensated 
 h\ the facilities of water carriage. It is ascertained 
 thai steamboats drawing- three or lour feel of water 
 
 can ascend to a distance of 1500 miles from the sea; 
 
 and there seems no reason tu suppose that obstacles 
 <-\i>t higher up. 1 found Im>iIi in ( t > u i t <> andGuaya-
 
 quil a very general belief in the feasibility of thus 
 commmiicatino* with the Atlantic coast : but whether 
 such expectations be well founded or not, Ecuador 
 must always remain a divided country ; the physical 
 obstacles to a union of the two, or rather three 
 parts into which it is divided, cannot be overcome 
 by any artificial means. Hence, it is not difficult 
 to foresee, that whenever colonies are formed along 
 the banks of the great rivers of Brazil, and extend 
 upwards to the Ecuadorian frontier, the country 
 within that frontier, deriving* all its resources from a 
 foreign state, and absolutely shut out from inter- 
 course with its own capital, will gradually separate 
 from its present connexion : and the boundary line 
 must ultimately be drawn, where nature has already 
 drawn it in a sufficiently legible hand, along* the 
 dividing* rang*e of the Andes. 
 
 Of the disconnected and disorganized state of the 
 republic many proofs mig*ht be given : but one will 
 suffice as an instance ; the coin struck at Quito, and 
 which according* to law ougiit to be the only leg*al 
 tender througiiout the various provinces, is actually 
 not received at Guayaquil, where Venezuelan and 
 Peruvian money passes current in its stead. 
 
 I took some pains while in Quito to ascertain the 
 nature of the nominally existing* constitution : but 
 the theory and practice differ so widely, that the 
 former is of little consequence except as it marks the 
 object of the original founder. 
 
 There are two Houses, both elective, though the 
 upper chamber is chosen for a longer term, and by
 
 123 
 
 ;i more limited constituency. This constituency, 
 however, as well ns that which elects the members 
 of the other branch of the legislature, is itself chosen 
 by an almost universal suffrage; from which none 
 except Indians and slaves are excluded. This mode 
 of voting- was adopted by the French at one period 
 of the Revolution, and it bears an analogy to that 
 still practised in British Guiana. Following- the 
 practice of the United States, the Ecuadorian Par- 
 liament requires in certain cases a concurrence of 
 two-thirds of the whole number of members ; a rule 
 intended to guard against any abuse of their power 
 by a majority, and which in a country accustomed 
 to the working" of constitutional government , sum*- 
 ciently answers its purpose : in Ecuador, on the 
 contrary^ the only result has been to bring* public 
 affairs to a dead lock about once in every session. 
 The last cause of quarrel was the appointment of a 
 President: parties being" nearly balanced, neither 
 would give way, and there appeared no prospect of 
 a speedy termination to the quarrel. Whether it 
 has by this time come to an end I have not heard : 
 but certainly the functions of administration seemed 
 to be just as well discharged in the absence of their 
 bead, nor did the citizens express either surprise or 
 annoj ance at the peculiar position of affairs.* 
 
 I have added in an Appendix two or three documents 
 of interest relative to the ail'air.s ul" Ki-uador, ami which were 
 placed iu my hands by a British resident long familiar with the 
 counl n
 
 124 
 
 The foreign society of Quito is confined to about 
 a dozen individuals, five of them English and one or 
 two more Americans; among- the latter I recog- 
 nised a former acquaintance from whom I had 
 long- since parted in the United States, certainly 
 without' any expectation on either side that we 
 should meet again among the valleys of the Cor- 
 dillera. 
 
 My return to Guayaquil was even more rapid 
 than had been my departure from thence \ and I 
 had the satisfaction of falsifying the numerous pre- 
 dictions which had there been uttered respecting the 
 impossibility of performing the journey in the time 
 which I had fixed for myself. We had accomplished 
 in the worst season, and over roads broken up by 
 the rain, a distance for which ten days is usually 
 allotted during the summer (when alone it is custo- 
 mary to travel)^ in considerably less than half that 
 time : but it is fair to add that most of those whose 
 business takes them to these out of the way regions 
 (tourists for pleasure are unknown), have been either 
 accompanied by their families and servants, or at 
 least encumbered with baggage, of which I carried 
 hardly any. 
 
 From Guayaquil a four days run brought me back 
 to Panama, and neither this nor the subsequent 
 journey to Cruces, presented anything of peculiar 
 interest; indeed, I began to think that I had 
 done with adventures ; but never was a greater 
 mistake.
 
 125 
 
 After n good deal of haggling 1 ; inevitable in such 
 transactions; I succeeded in obtaining- a promise of 
 a canoe on what I thought very reasonable terms. 
 My hopes were a little damped at the sight of this 
 conveyance \ which the proprietor, summoning- an 
 old negro, a very Charon in appearance, proceeded 
 to put at my disposal. It was one of the smallest 
 class of " dug-outs," made of a tree hollowed and 
 sharpened at the ends \ a leak near the bows admit- 
 ted the water freely, while there was barely room 
 for a single passenger to lie stretched at full length 
 in the bottom ; any other position being impossible 
 in so ticklish a craft. When this frail concern was 
 finally launched, I certainly looked at her in some 
 perplexity, wondering* whether two full-grown human 
 beings could possibly stow themselves away in so 
 small a compass ; but as Charon scrambled in with 
 a paddle in his hand, and made signs that all was 
 ready, there was nothing to be done but embark. I 
 thought first of the wise men of Gotham who went 
 to sea in a bowl ; and then of the alligators ; but the 
 alternative of missing the steamer and passing a 
 month at Cliagres, was not to be endured; and 
 before I could have changed my mind, had I been 
 so disposed, we were shooting swiftly and smoothly 
 down the stream which a month before it had cost 
 such trouble and delay to ascend. All went well 
 till we reached Grorgona, where it fell pitch-dark, 
 and Charon declared that we must wait for the 
 moon. 1 thought the proposition reasonable, as we
 
 12G 
 
 could not see a yard before the bow of our boat, and 
 did wait accordingly until near midnight, when it 
 occurred to me that the old man miffht not have been 
 passing- his time quite so innocently as I had. I 
 set out in search, and found him, as I fully expected, 
 drinking- in a pothouse. Though three-quarters 
 drunk, and looking* preternaturally solemn in his 
 efforts at sobriety, he professed his readiness to 
 start j and actually paddled above a mile, steer- 
 ing- very wild, and every now and then bringing* 
 the gunwale of the canoe to the edg*e of the water, 
 when, in attempting* to round a point, he overbalanced 
 himself, and the bows at the same instant touching* 
 the g'round ; we capsized in the shallow stream. 
 No damage was done ; but after this mishap I 
 took the paddles into my own hands, and trusting 
 to some Canadian experience, steered successfully 
 down the channel, until the imperfect light and signs 
 of approaching* rapids, induced me to run the boat's 
 head for a sand-bank, where, in American lano*uao*e 
 we a took out the balance of the night." 
 
 By the next evening* I was again at Chagres, 
 where every bed was occupied, and almost every 
 floor ; but I found a quiet corner in a meal-store, 
 and after the confinement of many hours in a 
 canoe — one of the most painful sensations when long- 
 continued that can well be conceived — enjo} T ed an 
 undisturbed repose. 
 
 The Falcon was not to sail until the afternoon of 
 the next day ; and, in company with a young Chilian
 
 127 
 
 from Valparaiso, who, like myself, was waiting- to 
 take his passage for the Havaimah, I walked up 
 to the fort before-mentioned, as being- the only object 
 of interest which the neighbourhood could shew. It 
 is still a strong and defensible post, surrounded by 
 high ramparts, on which some five-and-twenty brass 
 guns are mounted : and provided with bomb-proof 
 casemates and store-houses capable of containing 
 many months' supplies for the garrison. On three 
 sides, the height and precipitous nature of the rock 
 effectually defends it from assault. The fourth is 
 guarded by an outwork, wedge-shaped, Hanked by 
 towers at the angles, bristling with cannon, and it- 
 self commanded by the inner fortifications. A draw- 
 bridge connects this with the castle, and another 
 with the approach from without. On the crest of 
 the hill, some distance above the works, a detached 
 battery, facing' landwards, commands the town and 
 river : but there is no communication between it 
 and the main-buildings, except along the exposed 
 face of the hill. Notwithstanding the growing- 
 importance of this post, commanding as it does the 
 entrance to one of the great commercial high av ays 
 of the world, no trouble has been taken to put it 
 into repair ; a few soldiers, sickly and ragged, lounge 
 about the works and extort clacos from the visitors, 
 whose curiosity leads them to pass the inner gates : 
 while of the order and discipline maintained within, 
 on-' sample may suffice. My companion audi had 
 walked round the greater part of the buildings,
 
 128 
 
 admiring' the sea-view, examining" the quaint old 
 mottoes on the Spanish guns, and trying to make 
 out the point where Morgan led his storming party 
 over the walls. In our perambulations we chanced 
 to explore a vault rather darker and deeper than the 
 rest, and the farther end of which appeared lined 
 with barrels open at the top, and filled with some 
 black stuff ; which not being able to see in the im- 
 perfect light, we supposed to be coals or charcoal. 
 The idea of its being gunpowder, left so exposed to 
 all accidents, never entered into either of our heads; 
 and both of us accordingly continued to puff our 
 cigars in perfect tranquillit} r , until an exclamation 
 from the Chilian, who had put his hand into one of 
 the headless casks, followed by his rushing into the 
 open air and calling on me to do the same, gave a 
 hint of our danger. Cigars left outside, we returned 
 to examine ; and had the satisfaction of ascertaining 
 not only that we had been carrying fire about among 
 powder-barrels, but that the floor was strewed with 
 the droppings which had been spilt in opening* them 
 — a narrow escape. On passing the outer gate, I 
 told the sentinel of what we had been doing*, and 
 asked him if he thought it safe to leave some hun- 
 dred-weights of loose powder in the way of all 
 comers ; but he only shrugged his shoulders and 
 said he had no orders. He had orders, however, to 
 extort a real from every visitor ; in return for which 
 the said visitors are allowed to take their chance of 
 blowing up themselves and castle at their pleasure.
 
 129 
 
 The few hours detention which followed this little 
 incident w r as enlivened by another scene which could 
 hardly have happened elsewhere. In the main 
 street of the town, among* a crowd of people, two 
 men who had been quarrelling- in a wine-shop close 
 l>v, suddenly met lace to face ; and without a word 
 spoken, or warning- of any kind given, one of them 
 drew a revolver from his pocket, and fired two bar- 
 rels at his opponent, whom, however, he missed 
 with one, and only slightly wounded with the other. 
 Both were seized, a long* and loud dispute arose, 
 and some threats of lynch-law were heard ; but in 
 the end the parties were reconciled, and I saw them 
 both walking- about the strand, unmolested and 
 almost unnoticed, nor apparently in any way avoided 
 by their respective acquaintance. 
 
 Before nisrhtfall we were on board the boats of 
 the Falcon, and pulling* out of harbour with a strong* 
 g*ale blowing in our teeth, and in one of those short 
 chopping seas on which oars can lay no hold. 
 
 Many of our passengers were frightened, most 
 were sea-sick, all were wet ; but the worst was be- 
 hind. When fairly under the Falcon's stern, the sea 
 was running too high to allow of our coming' along- 
 side : and while the boat kept at a respectful distance, 
 cueli successive victim, securely looped up in a 
 running knot ;it the end of a rope, was hauled 
 overboard, and in- generally, from the distance 
 between, splashing into the water, and bumping 
 a&rainsl the bulwarks as he rose slowly in air. It 
 
 t 
 
 K
 
 130 
 
 was amusing" to watch the various expressions de- 
 picted on the faces of those whose turn was about 
 to come, contrasted with the shouts of laughter 
 above, which greeted each fresh arrival as he came 
 floundering* on deck. In an hour's time all were on 
 board ; and though one small boat, broken in half 
 by being driven under the paddle-wheel, lay floating 
 bottom-upward on the water, her crew had been safely 
 picked up before the accident was known to more 
 than half a dozen people, and a motley party of 
 some 200 souls stood, sat, or lay, unharmed and safe, 
 on the broad decks of the American steamer. Many 
 of these, indeed most, were emigrants returning from 
 California, and their looks contrasted strongly with 
 those of the outward-bound. Pale, worn, sickly, 
 hardly able to rouse themselves to exertion, and 
 stretched helplessly on their mattresses or along the 
 benches, they had evidently had enough of roughing 
 it ; and even the splashing of the spray over their 
 bodies, and the captain's orders to get out of the 
 way of the men, and stow themselves below, could 
 hardly move them from the places into which they 
 had dropped on first coming on board. 
 
 We lay at anchor all night, rolling heavily ; but 
 the first sound that greeted my ears at early morn- 
 ing was the straining of the windlass, and the 
 trampling of many feet overhead ; by noon Chagres 
 and its castle had gone down astern ; and all before 
 us was the wide Atlantic. 
 
 THE END.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 ECUADORIAN DEBT. 
 
 The Loans contracted by Colombia with the British in the 
 years 1822 & 24, were, when that Republic ceased to exist, 
 divided between Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador. 
 
 The first becoming responsible for . 50 per cent 
 N. Granada . 29 „ 
 
 Ecuador .... 21 „ 
 
 Venezuela and N. Granada have made arrangements with 
 the British Bondholders, and so far have complied with their 
 obligations. Ecuador never has done anything towards fulfilling 
 her engagements respecting her share ; for, although the Con- 
 gress at different times has decreed that certain revenues shall 
 be set apart for the payment of the interest, — the decrees have 
 been unregarded, and up to the present time, have been treated 
 as so much waste paper. 
 
 In 1815, after the Ecuador had overthrown the Government 
 of General Flores, and instituted a National Government, 
 the Convention of Cuenca acknowledged the responsibility of 
 the State for the capital and interest of the aforesaid 21 per 
 cent of the old Colombian loan, but up to the present day, not 
 one penny of the revenue has been set aside for the payment 
 of either interest or capital. But it appears that the late 
 P ident Roca and his Ministers wrote to Loudon, und bad 
 purchased on their account, about one hundred thousand pounds 
 of bonds at their depreciated price, say some 2 \ or 3 pounds for
 
 132 
 
 every hundred, and had ready to issue in exchange for these 
 other bonds, admissible in the customhouses of Guayaquil and 
 Manta (the only ports of entry in Ecuador) for the payment 
 of duties. Thus making available for themselves the only 
 means the State possesses of revenue, and whilst Roca and his 
 family were sharing the plunder, the bona fide British holder 
 got nothing but the 2 or 3 pounds for his hundred. The in- 
 terest on the bonds purchased by this set of men, was to be 
 paid them in waste lands, — and they had already fixed on the 
 district of Esmeraldas (the most valuable in the Republic.) 
 
 The Rocas, having lost the elections in 1849, had to leave 
 place, and as these private arrangements then came to light, they 
 have been repudiated by the present administration ; but it 
 appears that the Rocas, for greater security, had employed an 
 Englishman to purchase the bonds in London, and he now 
 comes forward, claiming the fidfihnent of the contract, and 
 threatens to appeal to the British Government for their sup- 
 port. The new bonds payable at the customhouses had been 
 engraved, and were ready for issuing before the pretended con- 
 tract for the purchase of the bonds in England was concluded, 
 as now appears by the respective dates. These are now in the 
 hands of Roca — and the British bonds are also in the hands of 
 the Governor of this province. 
 
 The revenues of this Republic at present, barely suffice to 
 cover the outgoings, as the country is full of employes ; and it 
 is feared that the only means of payment left for the British 
 bondholder, are the waste lands. Those on the seaward side, 
 such as Esmeraldas, and others bordering on the tributaries to 
 the Maraiion River, are the most desirable, as being better 
 fitted for colonization. 
 
 Guayaquil, 15th January, 18.'>0.
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 Revenue of Ecuador for the year 1849. 
 
 Customs 
 
 . #328,000 
 
 Poll Tax ou Indians 
 
 169,000 
 
 Salt— Government monoply 
 
 82,000 
 
 Gunpowder 
 
 5,500 
 
 Tonnage dues 
 
 3,300 
 
 Liquors 
 
 37,000 
 
 Alcabala, duty on Tithes 
 
 8,000 
 
 One third of Tithes 
 
 50,400 
 
 Stamps . . . 
 
 27,500 
 
 Sundries . 
 
 82,200 
 
 
 #792,900 
 
 This was a year of great roguery and jobbing; the income 
 
 being at least #900,000.
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 Statement of Exports from the Port of Guayaquil in the year 1849. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Jan. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 Ships. 
 
 Mar. 
 
 j> 
 j> 
 »> 
 
 >> 
 
 April 
 
 5> 
 
 May 
 June 
 
 July 
 Aug. 
 
 Sept. 
 
 ?> 
 ?» 
 >> 
 '? 
 Oct. 
 
 )> 
 Nov. 
 
 j> 
 >» 
 
 Dec 
 
 4 
 19 
 20 
 17 
 19 
 21 
 
 )» 
 
 24 
 26 
 5 
 
 jj 
 30 
 
 Fla? 
 
 7 
 14 
 
 28 
 1 
 
 31 
 6 
 
 13 
 
 20 
 5 
 
 16 
 6 
 8 
 
 21 
 
 27 
 5 
 
 »i 
 
 17 
 
 19 
 
 21 
 
 27 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 »> 
 
 10 
 19 
 
 24 
 
 26 
 
 1 
 
 21 
 
 28 
 
 Preciosa 
 
 Miceno 
 
 Rapida 
 
 Circumcision 
 
 Diana 
 
 Dominga 
 
 10th of May 
 
 Sarah Charlotte 
 
 Kunigunde 
 
 Perseverancia 
 
 Mercedes 
 
 Panchita 
 
 Heredia 
 
 Robin Gray 
 
 Zoila 
 
 Infatigable 
 
 George Loi*ing 
 
 Rapida 
 
 Esmeralda 
 
 Flora 
 
 George & Henry 
 
 Aurora 
 
 Guadalupe 
 
 Zodiacus 
 
 Zoila 
 
 Infatigable 
 
 Peruvienne 
 
 Corvo 
 
 Mercedes 
 
 Clorinda 
 
 Trois Freres 
 
 Argos 
 
 Enterprise 
 
 Concordia 
 
 Maria 
 
 Adolfo 
 
 Maria Theresa 
 
 Constancia 
 
 Carolina 
 
 Zoila 
 
 10 th of May 
 
 Rapida 
 
 Mercedes 
 
 Esmeraldas 
 
 Nautilus 
 
 Boterin 
 
 Jesus 
 
 Ferdinand 
 
 Destination. 
 
 Spanish 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 Dutch 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 British 
 
 Bremen 
 
 Spanish 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 Spanish 
 
 British 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 Spanish 
 Equatorian 
 
 >• 
 British 
 American 
 Peruvian 
 Equatorian 
 Danish 
 Peruvian 
 
 French 
 
 American 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 French 
 
 Hambro 
 
 British 
 
 Italian 
 
 Spanish 
 
 Hambro 
 
 American 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 Spanish 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 Granadian 
 
 British 
 
 Peruvian 
 
 Equatorian 
 
 French 
 
 Cocoa. 
 Cargas — Lbs, 
 
 Santander 
 
 Hamburgh 
 
 Mexico 
 
 Paita 
 
 Gibraltar 
 
 Callao 
 
 C. America 
 
 England 
 
 Bremen 
 
 Cadiz 
 
 C. America 
 
 Guaymas 
 
 Malaga 
 
 England 
 
 Callao 
 
 >» 
 Barcelona 
 Acapulco 
 
 Cadiz 
 
 Havana 
 
 Valparaiso 
 
 » 
 Hamburgh 
 
 Valparaiso 
 
 Callao 
 
 Bordeaux 
 
 New York 
 
 Panama 
 
 Huanchaco 
 
 Punta Arena 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 Santander 
 
 Genoa 
 
 Malaga 
 
 Hamburgh 
 
 Baltimore 
 
 C. America 
 
 Spain 
 
 Valparaiso 
 
 ?> 
 Mexico 
 
 >> 
 Manzanilla 
 Santander 
 Callao 
 Panama 
 Bordeaux 
 
 11,248 
 
 4,852 
 
 1,000 
 
 201 
 
 5,344 
 
 171 
 
 370 
 
 6,628 
 
 6,381 
 
 15,000 
 
 502 
 
 896 
 
 10,071 
 
 7,102 
 
 In sundry vessels less than 100 cargas . 
 Total Cargas of 81 lbs.. 
 
 1 
 36 
 
 '21 
 
 SI) 
 22 
 30 
 49 
 53 
 
 52 
 
 o 
 
 35 
 25 
 
 245 30 
 
 119 
 6,500 
 201 
 866 
 4,045 
 6,000 
 4,320 
 1,998 
 5,733 
 802 
 457 
 6,456 
 3,670 
 111 
 123 
 2,000 
 617 
 10,958 
 3,957 
 4,484 
 7,529 
 4,051 
 920 
 10,447 
 504 
 1,587 
 942 
 483 
 1,000 
 7,407 
 393 
 187 
 6,630 
 480 
 
 40 
 74 
 
 57 
 •2'.i 
 17 
 
 80 
 
 40 
 44 
 00 
 40 
 
 10 
 
 ■2^ 
 2 
 67 
 30 
 28 
 23 
 ■JO 
 63 
 78 
 50 
 55 
 
 7 
 33 
 
 15 
 
 TO WHAT COUNTRIES. 
 
 Cargas — Lbs. 
 
 Spain 85,508 11 
 
 England 13,730 74 
 
 France 13,086 40 
 
 Germany 24,497 4 
 
 Italy 3,957 67 
 
 U. States 7,721 23 
 
 Mexico 5,389 63 
 
 Havana 6,000 — 
 
 Chile 9,214 18 
 
 Peru 2,049 13 
 
 N. Granada 440 54 
 
 C. America 3,793 21 
 
 California 617 23 
 
 176,006 
 
 176,006 
 
 Totals of pi 
 
 •oduce exported 
 
 m 
 
 1849. 
 
 
 14,256,492 lbs. 
 
 Straw Hats . 
 
 18,457 doz. 
 
 Tanned Hides 
 
 22,677 sides 
 
 Tobacco .... 
 
 1,555 qqles 
 
 Timber 
 
 3,508 logs. 
 
 Lumber .... 
 
 189,000 feet. 
 
 Mangles .... 
 
 1,032 poles 
 
 
 12,688 lbs. 
 
 Orchilla Weed 
 
 240 qqles 
 
 Coffee 
 
 206 „ 
 
 Zarzaparrilla 
 
 60 „ 
 
 Tamarinds . . 
 
 236 „ 
 
 Equal to 14,256,492 lbs. Spanish. 
 
 Against 20,875,884,, „ exported in 1848. 
 
 Guayaquil, 31st Dec. 1849. 
 
 COX, GAME, k Co.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 3, line 2, for "seemed," read " served." 
 ,, 4, „ St for " blocked," read " blotted." 
 
 „ G, „ 10, for « large," read " lay." 
 
 14, „ 8, /or " association," read "associations." 
 18, „ 20, for " rnrriage," read " cayuca." 
 14, „ 10, dele "the." 
 
 .57, 4th line from bottom, for "Picaguna," read "Picayune." 
 GO, line 21, for "day," read "dry." 
 
 63, ,, 2.5, read "Guayaquil is so laid out as to command 
 in every part an easy access to the river, along whose 
 banks," &c.
 
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