James Orton

“ Not a human being nor a habitation have we seen since leaving Coca; and to-day nothing is visible but the river, with its islands, and plains, and the green palisades—the edges of the boundless forest. Not a hill over one hundred feet high are we destined to see till we reach Obidos, fifteen hundred miles eastward. Were it not for the wealth of vegetation—all new to trans-tropical eyes—and the concerts of monkeys and macaws, oppressively lonely would be the sail down the Napo between its uninhabited shores. ”

“ Ten miles farther south is the bare-headed Guamani range, over which passes the road to the wild Napo country. [78] The view from the crest is magnificent; but, like every grand panorama, eludes description. As we look eastward over the beginnings of the mighty forest which stretches unbroken to the Atlantic, the vast ridges, trending north and south, and decreasing in height as they increase in distance, seem like the waves of a great ocean rolling toward the mountains.
Near by stands Antisana in his snowy robe. This volcano ranks next to Chimborazo in dignity. ”

“ The peculiar charm of a tropical forest is increased by the mystery of its impenetrable thicket. Within that dense, matted shrubbery, and behind that phalanx of trees, the imagination of the traveler sees all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things. Tropical vegetation is of fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than the vegetation of the north. The leaves are not shed periodically—a character common, not only to the equator, but also to the whole southern hemisphere. ”

“ His feet are as eternally green as his head is everlastingly white; but they are far away beneath the bananas and cocoa-palms of the Pacific coast.
Rousseau was disappointed when he first saw the sea; and the first glimpse of Niagara often fails to meet one's expectations. But Chimborazo is sure of a worshiper the moment its overwhelming grandeur breaks upon the traveler. You feel that you are in the presence-chamber of the monarch of the Andes. There is sublimity in his kingly look, of which the ocean might be proud. ”

“ On that day the imperial city beheld, for the first time in three centuries, the decent burial of a Protestant in a Protestant cemetery. Somewhere, mingled with the ashes of Pichincha, is the dust of Atahuallpa, who was buried in his beloved Quito at his own request after his murder in Caxamarca. But dearer to us is that solitary grave; the earth is yet fresh that covers the remains of one of nature's noblemen. ”

“ Late in the afternoon the road led us through a sandy, sterile tract, till suddenly we came in sight of Ambato, beautifully situated in a deep ravine, eight thousand five hundred and fifty feet above the Pacific. The city ranks next to Quito in beauty. It is certainly an oasis, the green foliage of its numerous shade-trees and orchards contrasting with the barren hills around. It is two degrees warmer than Quito, and is famous for its fruit and fine climate. It is the Lynn of Ecuador, the chief articles of manufacture being boots and shoes—cheap, but of poor quality. ”

“ Westward, the mountains tumble down into hills and spread out into plains, which, in the far distant horizon, dip into the great Pacific. The setting sun turns the ocean into a sheet of liquid fire. Long columns of purple light shoot up to the zenith, and as the last point of the sun sinks beneath the horizon, the stars rush out in full splendor; for at the equator day gives place to night with only an hour and twenty minutes of twilight. The mountains are Alpine, yet grander than the Alps; not so ragged as the granite peaks of Switzerland, but with rounder heads. ”

“ The path brought us to the verge of a mountain, whence we could look down on the savage valley of the Cosanga and upward to the dazzling dome of Antisana; it was our farewell view of that glorious volcano. At the distance of twelve miles from Baeza we reached the banks of the Rio Cosanga, camping at a spot called Chiniplaya. This is the river so much dreaded by Indians and whites traversing the Napo wilderness. It is fearfully rapid—a very Tigris from its source to its junction with the Coca. The large, smooth boulders strewn along its bed show its power. ”

“ In its untamed might it rolls through the wilderness with a stately, solemn air, showing its awful power in cutting away the banks, tearing down trees, and building up islands in a day. Down the river we can look till the sky and water meet as on the sea, while the forest on either hand dwindles in the [Pg 227] perspective to a long black line. Between these even walls of ever-living green the resistless current hurries out of Peru, sweeps past the imperial guns of Tabatinga into Brazil, and plows its way visibly two hundred miles into the Atlantic. ”

“ Idle men, with an uncertain mixture of European, Negro, and Indian blood; sad-looking Quichua women, carrying a naked infant or a red water-jar on the back; black hogs and lean poultry wandering at will into the houses—such is the picture of the motley life in the inland villages. Strange was the contrast between human poverty and natural wealth. We were on the borders of a virgin forest, and the overpowering beauty of the vegetation soon erased all memory of the squalor and lifelessness of La Mona. ”

“ Life may be maintained with as little labor as in the Garden of Eden. Perhaps no country in the world is capable of yielding so large a return for agriculture. Nature, evidently designing this land as the home of a great nation, has heaped up her bounties of every description—fruits of richest flavors, woods of finest grain, dyes of gayest colors, and drugs of rarest virtues; and left no sirocco or earthquake to disturb its people. ”

“ Society is in a constant struggle between ostentation and want.
Nature has done more for Ecuador than for Ecuadorians. She laid out this beautiful valley for an Elysian field; "de Quito al Cielo" (from Quito to Heaven) is not an empty adage; and it is painful to look upon tottering walls and impassable roads, upon neglected fields and an idle population—poor as poverty in the lap of boundless natural wealth. ”

“ The embroidery and lace, wood carving and portrait painting of Quito, are commendable; but the grandeur of the Andes, like the beauty of the Alps, was never sketched by a native.
Ecuador boasts of one University and eleven colleges; yet the people are not educated. Literature, science, philosophy, law, medicine, are only names. Nearly all young gentlemen are doctors of something; but their education is strangely dwarfed, defective, and distorted; and their knowledge, such as they have, is without power, as it is without practice. ”

“ In New Granada there is a final and unique display of Andine grandeur: the Cordilleras combine just above the equator into one dizzy ridge, and then spread out like a fan, or, rather, like the graceful branches of the palm. One sierra bends to the east, holding in its lap the city of Bogota, and, rolling off a thousand streams to swell the Orinoco, terminates in the beautiful mountains of Caracas ”

“ Revolution has so rapidly followed revolution that history has ceased to count them; and it may be said of them what Milton wrote of the wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, "that they are not more worthy of being recorded than the skirmishes of crows and kites." The Grand Plaza, the heart where all the great arteries of circulation meet and diverge, is where the high tides of Quito affairs ebb and flow. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. The Volcanoes of Ecuador.— Western Cordillera.— Chimborazo.— Iliniza.— Corazon.— Pichincha.— Descent into its Crater.
Coming up from Peru through the cinchona forests of Loja, and over the barren hills of Assuay, the traveler reaches Riobamba, seated on the threshold of magnificence—like Damascus, an oasis in a sandy plain, but, unlike the Queen of the East, surrounded with a splendid retinue of snowy peaks that look like icebergs floating in a sea of clouds.
On our left is the most sublime spectacle in the New World. ”

“ Were the Andes on the Atlantic side, South America would be turned into a vast Sahara. As it is, the interest which attaches to this continent, save a few relics of the Incas, is exclusively that of pure nature. Nowhere does Nature affect us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur; nowhere does she exhibit wilder freaks or more startling contrasts; nowhere do we find such a theatre for the free development of vegetable and animal life. ”

“ The pending branches of moss are so saturated with moisture that sometimes the branches are broken off to the peril of the passing traveler. Yet the climate is healthy. The stillness and gloom are almost painful; the firing of a gun wakes a dull echo, and any unlooked-for noise is startling. Scarce a bird or a flower is to be seen in these sombre shades. Nearly the only signs of animal life visible thus far were insects, mostly butterflies, fire-flies, and beetles. The only quadruped seen on our journey to the Napo was a long-tailed marten caught by the Indians. ”

“ There is scarcely a sound in a tropical forest which is joyous and cheering. The birds are usually silent; those that have voices utter a plaintive song, or hoarse, shrill cry. Our door-yards are far more melodious on a May morning. The most common birds on the Napo are macaws, parrots, toucans, and ciganas. The parrots, like the majority in South America, are of the green type. The toucan, peculiar to the New World, and distinguished by its enormous bill, is a quarrelsome, imperious bird. It is clumsy in flight, but nimble in leaping from limb to limb. ”

“ The silence is absolute and actually oppressive. The road from Guayaquil to Quito crosses Chimborazo at the elevation of fourteen thousand feet. Save the rush [Pg 132] of the trade wind in the afternoon, as it sweeps over the Andes, not a sound is audible; not the hum of an insect, nor the chirp of a bird, nor the roar of the puma, nor the music of running waters. Mid-ocean is never so silent. You can almost hear the globe turning on its axis. There was a time when the monarch deigned to speak, and spoke with a voice of thunder, for the lava on its sides is an evidence of volcanic activity. ”

“ Few buildings can boast of architectural beauty, yet Quito looks palatial to the traveler who has just emerged [Pg 65] from the dense forest on the coast, "crossing bridgeless rivers, floundering over bottomless roads, and ascending and descending immense mountains." He is astonished to find such elegant edifices and such a proud aristocracy in this lofty lap of the Andes. The Indian habitations which girdle the city have no more architectural pretensions than an Arab dwelling. They are low mud hovels, the scene within and without of dirt and disorder. ”

“ Delight is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who for the first time wanders in a South American forest. The superb banana, the great charm of equatorial vegetation, tossed out luxuriantly its glossy green leaves, eight feet in length; the slender but graceful bamboo shot heavenward, straight as an arrow; and many species of palm bore aloft their feathery heads, inexpressibly light and elegant. On the branches of the independent trees sat tufts of parasites, many of them orchids, which are here epiphytal ”

“ Father Velasco praises Ecuador as "the noblest portion of the New World." Nature has doubtless gifted it with capabilities unsurpassed by those of any other country. Situated on the equinoctial line, and embracing within its limits some of the highest as well as lowest dry land on the globe, it presents every grade of climate, from the perpetual summer on the coast and in the Orient to the everlasting winter of the Andean summits, while the high plateau between the Cordilleras enjoys an eternal spring. ”

“ Humboldt saw the poncho of a horseman with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of ninety thousand feet. The sky is of a dark indigo color; the azure is less blended with white because of the extreme dryness of the air. The stars stand out with uncommon brilliancy, and the dark openings between them the great German compared to "tubes through which we look into the remotest depths of space." It is true at Quito, as Humboldt noticed at Cumana, that the stars do not twinkle when they are more than fifteen degrees high; "the soft planetary light" of the stars overhead is not mere rhetoric. ”

“ The silence is almost perfect; its chief interruption is the crashing fall of some old patriarch of the forest, overcome by the embrace of loving parasites that twine themselves about the trunk or sit upon the branches. The most striking singularity in these tropical woods is the host of lianas or air-roots of epiphytous plants, which hang down from the lofty boughs, straight as plumb-lines, some singly, others in clusters; some reaching half way to the ground, others touching it and striking their rootlets into the earth. ”

“ We followed our Indian in single file, keeping close together, that the stones set free by those in the rear might not dash those below from their feet; feeling our way with the greatest caution, clinging with our hands to snow, sand, rock, tufts of grass, or any thing that would hold for a moment; now leaping over a chasm, now letting ourselves down from rock to rock; at times paralyzed with fear, and always with death staring us in the face; thus we scrambled for two hours and a half, till we reached the bottom of the crater. ”