Loja

“ Most of the country between the Andes and the sea is covered by Tertiary and Quaternary beds; but the range of hills which runs north-west from Guayaquil is formed of Cretaceous and porphyritic rocks similar to those of the Andes. In the intra-andine depression, between the East and West Cordilleras, recent deposits with plant remains occur near Loja, and to the north-east of Cuenca is a sandstone containing mercury ores, somewhat similar to that of Peru. ”

“ An iron bridge spans the river Genil, which flows past the town on the north, forcing a passage through the mountains which encircle the fertile and beautiful Vega of Granada. This passage would have afforded easy access to the territory still held by the Moors in the last half of the 15th century, had not Loja been strongly fortified; and the place was thus of great military importance, ranking with the neighbouring town of Alhama as one of the keys of Granada. Its manufactures consist chiefly of coarse woollens, silk, paper and leather. Salt is obtained in the neighbourhood. ”

“ Very little is definitely known of the affluents of the Morona, Pastaza and Tigre, as the territory through which they run has been but slightly explored. The Santiago, which enters the Marañon near the Pongo de Manseriche, is formed by the confluence of the Paute, which rises in the province of Azuay, and the Zamora, which has its source among the mountains of Loja. According to Alexander Garland (Peru in 1906) , the rivers of eastern Ecuador are navigable at low water for steamers of 2 to 4 ft. ”

“ In this enormous city (only two streets of which were then accessible to Europeans) , factories, English counting-houses, and extensive warehouses abound. There is not a single hotel in the place. At the houses where you wish to transact business, you send in your card. The retail dealers are classed as a separate body of tradesmen. One quarter of the city is wholly occupied by the porcelain-sellers, another by the tea-dealers, a third by the silk-merchants. ”

“ The factory consists of a large log-house, an extensive store to contain the goods bartered with the Indians, and huts inhabited by work people, hunters, voyageurs, and others; a small village, in short, and a number of boats and canoes of all sizes were lying in the bay. It is not merely the love of gain that induces well-educated men—gentlemen—to pass twenty years of their lives in such a place as this; you must add to the prospective acquirement of a large fortune, two possessions which men are most wont to covet—power and freedom. ”

“ Here is a mirror shop—imports from Austria. There the flourishing grain merchants, whose premises are the neatest and cleanest of the whole bazaar. Each merchant tastily displays his various cereals in heaps on speckless enormous brass trays, and by the side of them dried fruit, in which he also deals extensively. ”

“ Perhaps when we make use of the term ‘Brokers’ Shop,’ the minds of our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand-stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate foreground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers’ shops ”

“ Most amusing of all, however, are those bazaars in which each trade occupies its separate quarter. You pass through an old stone gateway or down a narrow turning, and find yourself amid a colony of saddlers, stitching, hammering, punching, riveting. ”

“ The mode of dealing is more Oriental than Occidental, as the merchants in any particular kind of goods are clustered together as in the bazaars of the East. For a mile or more there are warehouses filled only with iron, and very judiciously they are on the bank of the river to save labor in handling and transportation. ”

“ In these circumstances village stores are to be found to-day in rural districts where shops had been non-existent down to the Railway Age, while the conditions of retail trade in probably every country town have no less changed, and have altered to a proportionate extent the conditions, also, of wholesale trade. ”

“ It is neither a shop devoted to one limited branch of trade, nor a warehouse implying the same branch carried out on a greater scale, nor is it a bazaar where many different owners offer goods of various kinds within the same walls. ”

“ There are many of our modern 112 towns which have grown up in manufacturing districts, near great railway centres, or near docks and railway stations, which have no market. Nearly all of our old towns have, or at one time had, the right of holding markets.
Nobody can set up a stall in a market as he pleases. On the market-day you will see the beadle going about from stall to stall taking the toll from each stall-holder. In many cases he wears an old-fashioned dress trimmed with gold lace. He reminds us of the time when no one except a freeman of the town could trade freely. ”

“ A brisk trade is carried on in many of these narrow avenues, and the small merchants who engage in it have their shops in the bows of their boat and their residences at the stern. If business happens to be dull at one end of the town they move to the other, or else take a tour in the provinces, carrying their whole establishment to a region where the family can enjoy balmy air, and where they will delight the. hearts of the rustics with their display of city wares. ”

“ Another set are actually in trade at the moment, if that can be called a trade, which consists of a shop of all sorts; these are called "general dealers," and partake much of the character of the jobbers; only that the latter for a shop, keep a "warehouse," upstairs in a garret; or their lodging room at the public house serves the purpose of a warehouse! I have known one of these, at the same time a dealer in cutlery, coffins, pictures, paper, hose, books, bandanas, and other heterogeneous articles ”

“ The worthy couple then climb into their Cape cart, or spring wagon, and drive off home, where they vegetate until the low condition of the domestic stores compels them again to visit the store, or until a Nachtmaal is announced at the nearest church. The profits of such a store are very large, and, as a rule, amply sufficient to compensate the proprietor, often a man who has received his business training in a large wholesale house in England or Germany, for his eight or nine years of exile. ”

“ You seldom see the narghile, or Turkish water pipe with a long tube. The bazaars cover many acres, which are cut up into narrow, winding streets sheltered from the sun by roofs of masonry or awnings of matting, and, as usual, the trade is classified for the convenience of the public. The vegetable dealers, the butchers, the candlestick makers, the hardware and iron mongers, the leather mongers and print dealers, all have their own streets, and the shops are so close together that rival merchants can chatter together while waiting for customers. ”

“ One dealer will have nothing but silk shawls, another nothing but calico prints, a third nothing but fezzes. The business is all divided and dealers in the [123] same line of goods occupy the same quarter and sit cross-legged in their shops waiting for customers. Several hundred merchants are found in each of the bazaars, who pay a small rental to the government and are under the control of a superintendent appointed by the minister of the interior, who is supposed to keep the alleys clean and preserve order. Ladies of wealth seldom go into the bazaars to trade. ”

“ After this the merchant carries on shore all the furniture for his dwelling, it being necessary for every one who trades to India to carry a sufficient provision of household staff for his use, as none such are to be procured. Then the broker who takes charge of his cargo, makes his servants carry the merchant's furniture to some empty house in the city, every broker having several such for the accommodation of their merchants, where there are only bedsteads, tables, chairs, and empty water jars. ”

“ In a semi-barbarous age the trader journeys from one district to another, and finds only, in a whole kingdom, that demand for his merchandise which, when in an after period civilisation has introduced her artificial wants among the people, may be found in a single province. So late as the year 1730, one solitary shopkeeper more than supplied the people of Cromarty with their few, everyday necessaries, of foreign manufacture or produce; I say more than supplied them, for in summer and autumn he travelled the country as a pedlar. ”

“ The weather clearing, I visited the bazaar in the evening, under the guidance of my old friend, the Wazir. Trade is, as I have said, practically nil in Beïla, and the manufactures, which are trifling, are confined to oil, cotton, a rough kind of cloth, and coarse carpets; indeed, throughout the country, commerce is almost at a standstill. ”

“ Between the market-place and the sea, as far as the mouth of the Baker River, stand immense warehouses, in which are stored wool ready for export, and all such imported stores as are awaiting conveyance to the interior. ”

“ Every block had its two or three saloons, its meat market, its delicacy store, its tiny establishments where drygoods and milk and shoes and tobacco and fruit and paints and drugs and candies and hats were sold, and the women who drifted up and down all morning shopping usually patronized the nearest store. ”

“ The dealers assemble in immense bazaars until midday, and sell their wares—that is to say, their fruit, vegetables, and quarters of meat, for any other trade is unknown among the Indians, as every family weaves and manufactures its own clothing and the objects which it requires. ”

“ On the eventful night the General Secretary and perhaps another Central officer, come down to the town. They bring a Branch box containing sets of Rules and cards of membership, a full set of cash and other books, a number of business papers, and even a bottle of ink—in fact all that is needful to carry on the business of a Lodge. The room will be crammed full of the men in the trade interested in hearing what the Society is and what it wants to do. ”

“ For just as in London you expect to find bankers in Lombard Street, silkweavers in Spitalfields, coachbuilders in Long Acre, watchmakers in Clerkenwell, and so forth, so in the East each trade has its own bazaar—the silkweavers, the coppersmiths, the saddlers, letter-writers, the dealers in Moorish, Turkish, Persian, or Algerian stuffs, each cluster together in their own quarter. ”

“ These stalls represented the modest and unpretending branches of trade. Here an old German cried his wares—glasses to drink the waters—engraving on them with an emery wheel the initials of the purchasers’ names in their presence; there a Swiss offered for sale toys, dolls, little boxes, and book folders carved in beech-wood by the shepherds; here lenses were sold, there combs and writing-materials. Lucía’s favorite stall was one presided over by a peddler of curiosities from Jerusalem and the Holy Land. ”

“ Equally surprised was I to notice that in houses where the ground floor is arranged as a shop, the whole width of the front is thus occupied, and no room left for a private door. The cook with her market-basket, the water-carrier with his pails, the housewife and the visitors, have all to go through warehouses sometimes filled with costly wares arranged to the best advantage. ”

“ Cloth-makers, dyers, tanners, and fullers were near an accessible supply of running water, upon which their trade depended. Streets were often named by the trade located there, such as Butcher Row, Pot Row, Cordwainer Row, Ironmonger Row, Wheeler Row, and Fish Row. Hirers of labor and sellers of wheat, hay, livestock, dairy products, apples and wine, meat, poultry, fish and pies, timber and cloth all had a distinct location. Some young men were apprenticed to craftsmen to assist them and learn their craft. ”

“ His wife invariably manufactures the slight articles of clothing, which, in such a climate, the common people are in the habit of wearing. What can be spared of the fruits of their joint industry from the supply of their immediate wants, is carried to market, and exchanged for a little salt fish, dried meat, or for other trifling comforts, hoarded as a store for the purchase of an ox or a buffalo, or expended in procuring materials for repairing the hut and mending the implements of husbandry. ”

“ These banks in their respective counties should be a general staple and factory for the manufactures of the said county, where every man that had goods made, might have money at a small interest for advance, the goods in the meantime being sent forward to market, to a warehouse for that purpose erected in London, where they should be disposed of to all the advantages the owner could expect, paying only 1 per cent. ”

“ A square at the back of the custom-house is the general market of Loanda, and presents a curious scene, from the great variety of articles sold, and the great excitement of buyers and sellers crying out their wares and making their purchases at the top of their voices. ”

“ In contrast, consider in the Western city above mentioned of thirty thousand population. There are one hundred and forty-one attorneys, twenty-four accountants, twenty cleaning and dyeing establishments, fifteen laundries, ten lumber yards, nineteen druggists, seven department stores, eight bakeries, nine men's clothing stores, fifteen dress shops, twelve shoe shops, and twelve furniture stores. We no doubt will save a great deal in labor, handling, delivery, and materials by concentrating our stores to the minimum, at the same time provide a better service. ”