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Quitonians put us to shame by their unequaled courtesy, cordiality, and good-nature, and are not far below the grave and decorous Castilian in dignified politeness.

A newly-arrived foreigner is covered with promises: houses, horses, servants, yea, every thing is at his disposal. But, alas! the traveler soon finds that this ceremony of words does not extend to deeds. He is never expected to call for the services so pompously proffered. So long as he stays in Quito he will not lose sight of the contrast between big promise and beggarly performance. This outward civility, however, is not hypocritical; it is mere mechanical prattle; the speaker does not expect to be taken at his word. The love of superlatives and the want of good faith may be considered as prominent characteristics. "The readiness with which they break a promise or an agreement can only be equaled by the sophistical ingenuity with which they defend themselves for having done so." The Quitonians, who are sensible of their shortcomings, have this standing apology: "Our vices we owe to Spain; our virtues to ourselves."

One can form his own judgment of the spiritless people from the single statement which we have from Dr. Jameson, that during the last forty years not ten Quitonians have visited the grand crater of Pichincha, though it is possible to ride horseback to its very edge. Plenty of gentlemen by profession walk the streets and cathedral terrace, proud as a Roman senator under his toga, yet not ashamed to beg a cup of coffee at the door of a more fortunate fellow-citizen. 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" 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 only really live man in the republic is the president, Se?or G. Garcia Moreno, a man of wide views and great energy, standing in these respects head and shoulders above his fellow-citizens. Quito and Quito Valley owe nearly all their improvements to this one man.

The unstable condition of the country does not encourage great undertakings; all business is periodically paralyzed by revolution. Merchants generally buy their goods in Lima, to which city and Guayaquil the fabrics of England and France are brought by foreigners in foreign ships. The shops of Quito, as we have remarked, are very small, without windows, and with only one wooden door. The door is double, and is fastened by a ponderous padlock. They are open from 7 A.M. till sunset, excepting between nine and ten and between three and four, when the stores are closed for breakfast and dinner; the merchants never trusting their clerks, even when they have any, which is not usually the case. They have no fixed price, but get what they can. The majority know nothing of wholesale, and refuse to sell by the quantity, fearing a cheat. An Indian woman will sell you a real's worth of oranges any number of times, but she would object to parting with a dollar's worth--her arithmetic can not comprehend it.

Nearly the only sign of progress is the late introduction of the grape and silk-worm; and these give so much promise of success that the threadbare nobility have already begun to count their coming fortunes. Husbandry is more pastoral than agricultural. Thousands of cattle are raised on the paramos, but almost wholly for beef. "A dislike to milk , or at least the absence of its use before the arrival of Europeans, was, generally speaking, a feature common to all nations of the New Continent, as likewise to the inhabitants of China." Some cheese and a little butter are made, but in the patriarchal style. Only one American churn is in operation; the people insist upon first boiling the milk and then stirring with a spoon. Custom is omnipotent here, and its effects hereditary. Milking is done at any hour of the day, or whenever milk is wanted. The operation is a formidable one to these bull-fighting people. Stopping at a hacienda near Pelil?o for a drink of milk, we were eye-witness of a comical sight. A mild-looking cow was driven up to the door; the woman, evidently the bravest member of the household, seized the beast by the horns; a boy tied the hind legs with a long rope, and held on to one end of it at a respectful distance; while the father, with outstretched arms, milked into a calabash.

Agricultural machinery is not in use. The first threshing-machine Quito ever saw was made in 1867 by some California miners, but it remained unsold when we last saw it. The spade is not known; the nearest approach to it is a crowbar flattened at one end. Hoes are clumsy and awkward. Yankee plows are bought more as curiosities than for use. Many a crooked stick is seen scratching the land, as in Egypt, which the cattle drag by their horns. Sometimes a number of sharp-nosed hogs are tied together and let into a field, and driven from place to place till the whole is rooted up. Corn is planted by making holes in the ground with a stick, and dropping in the seed. The soil and climate of Ecuador, so infinitely varied, offer a home to almost every useful plant. The productions of either India could be naturalized on the lowlands, while the highlands would welcome the grains and fruits of Europe. But intertropical people do not subdue nature like the civilized men of the North; they only pick up a livelihood.

Spanish Americans, like Castilians on the banks of the Tagus, have a singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or shade tree in a land where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, is considered downright folly in theory and practice. A large portion of the valley, left treeless, is becoming less favorable for cultivation.

Yet, as it is, the traveler is charmed by the emerald verdure of the coast, and by "evergreen Quito"--more beautiful than the hanging gardens of Babylon--suspended far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds. In the San Francisco market we find wheat, barley, maize, beans, peas, potatoes, cabbages, beets, salads, pine-apples, chirimoyas, guavas, oranges, lemons, pears, quinces, peaches, apricots, melons, and strawberries--the last all the year round. Most of these are exotics; the early discoverers found not a cereal grain of the Old World, not an orange or apple, no sugar-cane or strawberries.

There is but little manufacturing industry in the interior of Ecuador, but much more than on the coast. The chief articles manufactured are straw hats, shoes, baskets, carpets, embroidery, tape, thread, ponchos, coarse woolen and cotton cloth, saddles, sandals, soap, sugar, cigars, aguardiente, powder, sweetmeats, carved images, paints, and pottery. Wines, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silks, and fine cloth are imported. There are three cotton mills in the country; one in Chillo , another in Otovalo , and a third in Cuenca . The machinery of the Chillo factory came from England; that of Otovalo from Patterson, N.J. The latter was utterly destroyed in the late great earthquake, and the proprietor killed. The cotton is inferior to that of New Orleans; it is not "fat," as mechanics say; the seeds yield only two per cent. of oil. But it is whiter than American cotton, though coarse, and can be used only for very ordinary fabrics. The average length is five eighths of an inch. One pod will produce on an average three pennyweights. The mills of Chillo and Otovalo consume 425,000 pounds annually. The first sugar-mill was erected by the Aguirres in 1840 at Nanegal.

Quito is more than a century behind this age of steam and lightning. To form an adequate idea of the mechanic and fine arts in that "city of the kings," we must transport ourselves to the Saxon period of European civilization. Both the material and the construction of the houses would craze Sir Christopher Wren. With fine quarries close at hand, they must build with mud mixed with stones, or plastered on wattles, like the Druses of Mount Lebanon. Living on the equatorial line and on the meridian so accurately measured by the highest mathematics of France and Spain, Quitonians must needs leave out every right angle or straight line in the walls, and every square beam and rafter. Except on the grand road from Quito to Ambato, commenced by President Moreno, there is not a wheel-barrow to be seen; paving-stones, lime, brick, and dirt, are usually carried on human backs. Saint Crispin never had the fortitude to do penance in the shoes of Quito, and the huge nails which enter into the hoofs of the quadrupedants remind one of the Cyclops. There are not six carts in Quito. If you wish to move, you must coax a dozen Indians, who care little for your money or your threats. Horse-hire, peonage, and most mechanical work must be paid for in advance. Carriages--antique vehicles, of which there are two or three in the city--are drawn by mules. The first was introduced by Se?or Aguirre so late as 1859, and he was fined by the police for the privilege of riding in it. Quitonians are not a traveling people, and they are painfully ignorant of their own country. The most enterprising merchant ignores every thing but Quito and the road to Guayaquil.

We can not praise the musical talent of Spanish Americans; their intonation is too nasal, while in their jumpings and chirpings they take after the grasshopper. A resident Englishman, who has traveled in many countries, and sings the songs of nearly every nation, told us he could not remember one of Ecuador. Pianos they have brought over the mountains at great expense; but they are more at home with the guitar. 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.

Other pastimes are carnivals and masquerades. Carnival is observed by pelting one another with eggs and sprinkling with water. Whoever invented this prelude to Lent should be canonized. Masquerades occur during the holidays, when all classes, in disguise or fancy dress, get up a little fun at each other's expense. The monotony of social life is more frequently disturbed by fashionable funerals than by these amusements; and, as the principal families are inter-related, the rules of condolence keep the best part of society in mourning, and the best pianos and guitars silent for at least six months in the year.

A word about the ladies of Quito. We concur in the remark of our minister, Mr. Hassaurek, that "their natural dignity, gracefulness, and politeness, their entire self-possession, their elegant but unaffected bearing, and the choiceness of their language, would enable them to make a creditable appearance in any foreign drawing-room." Their natural talents are of a high order; but we must add that the se?oras are uneducated, and are incapable of either great vices or great virtues. Their minds, like the soil of their native country, are fertile, but uncultivated; and their hearts, like the climate, are of a mean temperature. Prayer-books and French novels are the alpha and the omega of their literature; Paris is considered the centre of civilization. They are comely, but not beautiful; Venus has given her girdle of fascination to few. Sensible of this, they paint.

Holinski gives his impressions by contrasting the fair Quitonians with the fairer Guayaquilians: "Les yeux vifs et ardent, le pied fine et mignon, les teintes chaudes et dor?es" distinguish the latter. In the ladies of the high capital there is nothing of this: "Les yeux ne lancent pas de flammes, le pied est sans gentillesse, l'epiderme ne refl?te pas les rayons du soleil." The ladies on the coast take all possible pains to preserve the small size of the foot; a large foot is held in horror. Von Tschudi once overheard some ladies extolling in high terms the beauty of an English lady; all their praise, however, ending with this exclamation, "But what a foot! Good heavens! it is like a great boat!" Gibbon is continually talking of beautiful se?oras and se?oritas on the Andes; surely the lieutenant is in sport.

The ladies of Quito give few entertainments for lack of ready money. They spend much of their time in needle-work and gossip, sitting like Turkish sultanas on divans or the floor. They do not rise at your entrance or departure. They converse in a very loud, unmusical voice. We never detected bashfulness in the street or parlor. They go to mass every morning, and make visits of etiquette on Sundays. They take more interest in political than in domestic affairs. Dust and cobwebs are unmistakable signs of indifference. Brooms are rarities; such as exist are besoms made of split stick. Since our return, we have sent to a Quitonian gentleman, by request, a package of broom-corn seed, which, we trust, will be the forerunner of a harvest of brooms and cleaner floors in the high city. Not only the lords, but also the ladies, are inveterate smokers. Little mats are used for spittoons.

Ecuador.--Extent.--Government.--Religion.--A Protestant Cemetery in Quito.--Climate.--Regularity of Tropical Nature.--Diseases on the Highlands.

The republic of Ecuador looks like a wedge driven into the continent between the Mara?on and the Putumayo. It has 1200 miles of Pacific coast, and an area of about two hundred thousand square miles, including the Gal?pagos Islands. Peru, however, claims the oriental half, drawing her northern boundary from Tumbez through Can?los and Archidona; and she is entitled to much of it, for she has established a regular line of steamers on the Mara?on, while the Quito government has not developed an acre east of the Andes. Ecuador is hung between and upon two cordilleras, which naturally divide it into three parts: the western slope, the Quitonian valley, and the Napo region. The fluvial system is mainly made up of the Napo, Pastassa, and Santiago, tributaries of the Mara?on, and the Mira, Esmeraldas, and Guayaquil, flowing westward into the Pacific. There are no lakes proper, but the natives enumerate fifty-five lagunes, the largest of which, Capucuy, is not over five miles long.

Villavicencio tells the world that his country has a total population of 1,308,042. But Dr. Jameson believes it does not exceed 700,000. The government is based on the Constitution of 1845, amended in 1853. The president is chosen by a plurality of votes, holds his office for four years, and has a salary of ,000. He can not be re-elected, nor can he exercise his functions more than twenty-five miles from the capital. But the law is often set aside by those in power. During the administration of Garcia Moreno, prominent citizens were shot or banished by his order, without trial by jury. To every plea for mercy the stern president replied, that as he could not save the country according to the Constitution, he should govern it according to his own views of public necessity.

Congress assembles on the 15th of September every other year, and consists of eighteen senators and thirty representatives. The chambers are small, and literally barren of ornament. The members sit in two rows facing each other, have no desks, and give an affirmative vote by a silent bow. Politics has less to do with principles and parties than with personalities. Often it has a financial aspect; and the natural expression on learning of a revolution is, "Somebody is out of money." The party in feathers its nest as fast as possible; there is scarcely a public officer who is not open to bribery. The party out plots a premature resurrection to power by the ladders of corruption, slander, and revolution. 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.

The Supreme Court consists of five judges. Criminal cases only are tried by jury; and an attorney is not permitted to question a witness. There are no penitentiaries: second-class criminals are made to work for the public, while political offenders are banished to the banks of the Napo, or to Peru. Here, as in no other country, every man's house is his castle. No search-warrants are allowed; a policeman can be shot dead on the threshold. The person and property of a foreigner are safe; and no native in the employ of a foreigner can be taken by the government for military purposes. All, except pure Indians, can vote if over twenty-one, and can read and write. A man's signature is without value if it lacks his flourish--a custom of Spanish origin.

The permanent army consists of two regiments. The soldiers are mostly half-breeds, and are generally followed by their wives. They are poorly paid; and as they are impressed into the service, they carry out the principle by helping themselves wherever they go. In marching, they have a quicker step than Northern soldiers. The chief expenditure of the republic is for the army, about 0,000; the next is for the payment of the national debt, 0,000. The foreign debt is ?1,470,374. Ecuadorians claim a revenue of a million and a half, of which one half is from the custom-house, and one fiftieth from the post-office.

One would suppose that the people who breathe this high atmosphere, and enjoy this delightful climate, and are surrounded by all that is truly grand and beautiful, would have some corresponding virtues. But we find that Nature, here as every where, has mingled base and noble elements. The lofty mountains, bearing in their steadfastness the seal of their appointed symbol--"God's righteousness is like the great mountains"--look down upon one of the lowest and most corrupt forms of republican government on earth; their snowy summits preach sermons on purity to Quitonian society, but in vain; and the great thoughts of God written all over the Andes are unable to lift this proud capital out of the mud and mire of mediaeval ignorance and superstition. The established religion is the narrowest and most intolerant form of Romanism. Mountains usually have a more elevating, religious influence than monotonous plains. The Olympian mythology of the Greek was far superior to the beastly worship on the banks of the Nile. And yet at the very feet of glorious Chimborazo and Pichincha we see a nation bowing down to little images of the rudest sculpture with a devotion that reminds us of the Middle Ages.

The Protestant in Quito is annoyed by an everlasting jingling of bells and blowing of bugles night and day. The latter are blown every third hour. The bells are struck by boys, not rung. A bishop, returning from a visit to London, was asked if there were any good bells in England. "Very fine," he replied, "but there is not a man there who knows how to ring them." Foreign machinery is sprinkled with holy water to neutralize the inherent heresy; but a miller, for example, will charge more for his flour after the baptism.

Lotteries are countenanced by both Church and State, and in turn help support them; we saw one "grand scheme" carried out on the cathedral terrace and defended by bayonets.

At half past nine in the morning all Quito is on its knees, as the great bell of the cathedral announces the elevation of the Host. The effect is astonishing. Riders stop their horses; foot-passengers drop down on the pavement; the cook lets go her dishes and the writer his pen; the merchant lays aside his measure and the artisan his tool; the half-uttered oath dies on the lips of the Cholo; the arm of the cruel Zambo, unmercifully beating his donkey, is paralyzed; and the smart repartee of the lively donna is cut short. The solemn stillness lasts for a minute, when the bell tolls again, and all rise to work or play. Holidays are frequent. Processions led by a crucifix or wooden image are attractive sights in this dull city, simply because little else is going on. Occasionally a girl richly dressed to represent the humble mother of God is drawn about in a carriage, and once a year the figures of the Virgin belonging to different churches are borne with much pomp to the Plaza, where they bow to each other like automatons.

"This is a bad country to live in, and a worse one to die in," said Dr. Jameson. But times have changed, even in fossil Quito. Through the efforts of our late minister, Hon. W.T. Coggeshall, the bigoted government has at last consented to inclose a quarter of an acre outside the city for the subterranean burial of heretics. The cemetery is on the edge of the beautiful plain of I?aquito, and on the right of the road leading to Gu?polo. "What a shame," said a Quitonian lady of position, "that there should be a place to throw Protestant dogs!"

On St. Nathaniel's day died Colonel Phineas Staunton, Vice-Chancellor of Ingham University, New York. An artist by profession, and one of very high order, Colonel Staunton joined our expedition to sketch the glories of the Andes, but he fell a victim to the scourge of the lowlands one week after his arrival in Quito. We buried him at noon-day in the new cemetery, "wherein was never man laid," and by the act consecrated the ground. Peace to his ashes; honor to his memory. That 8th of September, 1867, was a new day in the annals of Quito. 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.

The mean diurnal variation of the barometer is only .084. So regular is the oscillation, as likewise the variations of the magnetic needle, that the hour may be known within fifteen minutes by the barometer or compass. Such is the clock-like order of Nature under the equator, that even the rains, the most irregular of all meteorological phenomena in temperate zones, tell approximately the hour of the day. The winds, too, have an orderly march--the ebb and flow of an aerial ocean. No wonder watch-tinkers can not live where all the forces in nature keep time. Nobody talks about the weather; conversation begins with benedictions or compliments.

The greatest variations of the thermometer occur in autumn, and the greatest quantity of rain falls in April. While on the western side of the Andes, south of the equator, the dry season extends from June to January, on the eastern side of the Cordillera the seasons are reversed, the rain lasting from March to November. The climate of the central valley is modified by this opposition of seasons on either side of it, as also by the proximity of snowy peaks. Nine such peaks stand around Quito within a circle of thirty miles. The prevailing winds in summer are from the northeast; in the winter the southwest predominate.

According to Dr. Lombard, mountain districts favor the development of diseases of the heart; and contagious diseases are not arrested by the atmosphere of lofty regions. This is true in Quito. But while nervous diseases are rare in the inhabited highlands of Europe, in Quito they are common. Sleep is said to be more tranquil and refreshing, and the circulation more regular at high altitudes; but our experience does not sustain this. Go?tre is quite common among the mountains. It is a sign of constitutional weakness, for the children of go?tred parents are usually deaf and dumb, and the succeeding generation idiots. Boussingault thinks it is owing to the lack of atmospheric air in the water; but why is it nearly confined to the women? In the southern provinces about Cuenca, cutaneous affections are quite frequent. In the highlands generally, scrofulous diseases are more common than in the plains. There are three hospitals for lepers; one at Cuenca with two hundred patients, one at Quito with one hundred and twelve patients, and one at Ambato. Near Riobamba is a community of dwarfs.

According to Dr. Archibald Smith, the power of muscular exertion in a native of the coast is greatly increased by living at the height of 10,000 feet. But it is also asserted by observing travelers that dogs and bulls lose their combativeness at 12,000 feet, and that hence there can never be a good bull-fight or dog-fight on the Sierras. This is literally true: the dogs seem to partake of the tameness of their masters. Cats do not flourish at all in high altitudes; and probably the lion, transplanted from the low jungle to the table-lands, would lose much of his ferocity. Still, cock-fights seem to prosper; and the battle of Pichincha was fought on an elevation of nearly 11,000 feet. Bolivar and the Spaniards, also, fought like tigers on the high plain of Junin.

Astronomic Virtues of Quito.--Flora and Fauna of the Valley of Quito.--Primeval Inhabitants of the Andes.--Quichua Indians.

Quito, with a position unparalleled for astronomical purposes, has no observatory. The largest telescope in the city is about five feet long, but the astute professor of natural philosophy in the Jesuit College who has charge of it had not the most distant idea that an eclipse of the sun would occur on the 29th of August, and an eclipse of the moon fifteen days later. In ancient days this "holy city" had within it the Pillar of the Sun, which cast no shadow at noon, and a temple was built for the god of light. The title of the sovereign Inca was the Child of the Sun; but there was very little knowledge of astronomy, for, being the national religion, it was beyond the reach of scientific speculation.

The atmosphere of Quito is of transparent clearness. 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.

Living under the equatorial line, Quitonians enjoy the peculiar privilege of beholding the stars of both hemispheres, the guiding stars of Ursa Major as well as the Magellanic Clouds and Southern Cross, not omitting that black spot near the latter, "the unappropriated region in the skies reserved by Manager Bingham for deposed American presidents."

The zodiacal light here appears in all its glory. This strange phenomenon has long puzzled philosophers, and they are still divided. It is generally considered to be produced by a continuous zone of infinitesimal asteroids. The majority place this zone beyond the orbit of the earth, and concentric with the sun. But Rev. George Jones, of Philadelphia, who has spent several years in observing this light, including eight months in Quito, considers it geocentric, and possibly situated between the earth and its satellite. At New York only a short pyramidal light, and this only at certain seasons, is to be seen; but here, an arch twenty degrees wide, and of considerable intensity, shoots up to the zenith, and Mr. Jones affirms that a complete arch is visible at midnight when the ecliptic is at right angles to the spectator's horizon. We have not been so fortunate as to see it pass the zenith; and Professor Barnard contends that it never does pass. We may remark that the main part of the zodiacal light shifts to the south side of the celestial equator as we cross the line. To us the most magnificent sight in the tropical heavens is the "Milky Way," especially near Sobieski's Shield, where it is very luminous. We observed that this starry tract divided at Centauri, as Herschel says, and not at , as many maps and globes have it. The brightest stars in the southern hemisphere follow the direction of a great circle passing through Orionis and Crucis.

Another thing which arrests the attention of the traveler is the comparatively well-defined boundary-line between day and night. The twilight at Quito lasts only an hour and a half; on the coast it is still shorter. Nor is there any "harvest moon," the satellite rising with nearly equal intervals of forty-eight minutes.

From the stars we step down to the floral kingdom on the Andes, using as our ladder of descent the following sentence from Humboldt, at the age of seventy-five: "If I might be allowed to abandon myself to the recollections of my own distant travels, I would instance among the most striking scenes of nature the calm sublimity of a tropical night, when the stars--not sparkling, as in our Northern skies--shed their soft and planetary light over the gently heaving ocean; or I would recall the deep valleys of the Cordilleras, where the tall and slender palms pierce the leafy veil around them, and wave on high their feathery and arrow-like branches."

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. The vegetable productions are consequently most varied and prolific. Tropical, temperate, and arctic fruits and flowers are here found in profusion, or could be successfully cultivated. As the Ecuadorian sees all the constellations of the firmament, so Nature surrounds him with representatives of every family of plants. There are places where the eye may embrace an entire zone, for it may look up to a barley-field and potato-patch, and down to the sugar-cane and pine-apple.

A very useful as well as the most ordinary plant in the valley is the American aloe, or "Century Plant." It is the largest of all herbs. Not naturally social, it imparts a melancholy character to the landscape as it rises solitary out of the arid plain. Most of the roads are fenced with aloe hedges. While the majority of tropical trees have naked stems with a crown of leaves on the top, the aloe reverses this, and looks like a great chandelier as its tall peduncle, bearing greenish-yellow flowers, rises out of a graceful cluster of long, thick, fleshy leaves. When cultivated, the aloe flowers in much less time than a century; but, exhausted by the efflorescence, it soon dies. Nearly every part serves some purpose; the broad leaves are used by the poorer class instead of paper in writing, or for thatching their huts; sirup flows out of the leaves when tapped, and, as they contain much alkali, a soap is also manufactured from them; the flowers make excellent pickles; the flower-stalk is used in building; the pith of the stem is used by barbers for sharpening razors; the fibres of the leaves and the roots are woven into sandals and sacks; and the sharp spines are used as needles. A species of yucca, resembling the aloe, but with more slender leaves and of a lighter green, yields the hemp of Ecuador.

The "crack fruit" of Quito, and, in fact, of South America, is the chirimoya. Its taste is a happy mixture of sweetness and acidity. Hanke calls it "a masterwork of Nature," and Markham pronounces it "a spiritualized strawberry." It grows on a tree about fifteen feet high, having a broad, flat top, and very fragrant flowers. The ripe fruit, often attaining in Peru the weight of sixteen pounds, has a thick green skin, and a snow-white pulp containing about seventy black seeds. Other pomological productions are alligator pears, guavas, guayavas, granadillas, cherries , peaches , pears , plums, quinces, lemons, oranges , blackberries, and strawberries . The cultivation of the grape has just commenced. Of vegetables there are onions , beets, carrots, asparagus, lettuce, cabbages, turnips, tomatoes , potatoes , red peppers, peas , beans, melons, squashes, and mushrooms. The last are eaten to a limited extent; Terra del Fuego, says Darwin, is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article of food.

The most important grains are barley, red wheat, and corn, with short ears, and elongated kernels of divers colors. Near the coast three crops of corn a year are obtained; at Quito it is of slower growth, but fuller. The sugar-cane is grown sparingly in the valley, but chiefly on the Pacific coast. Its home is Polynesia. Quito consumes about one hundred and fifty barrels of flour daily. The best sells for four dollars a quintal. The common fodder for cattle is alfalfa, an imported lucerne. There is no clover except a wild, worthless, three-leaved species . Nearly all in the above list are cultivated for home consumption only, and many valuable fruits and vegetables which would grow well are unknown to Quitonians. As Bates says of the Brazilians, the incorrigible nonchalance and laziness of the people alone prevent them from surrounding themselves with all the luxuries of a temperate as well as tropical country.

America is plainly the continent of vegetation; and wherever the vegetable element predominates, the animal is subordinated. We must not look, therefore, for a large amount or variety of animal life in the Ecuadorian forests. Time was when colossal megatheroids, mastodons, and glyptodons browsed on the foliage of the Andes and the Amazon; but now the terrestrial mammals of this tropical region are few and diminutive. They are likewise old-fashioned, inferior in type as well as bulk to those of the eastern hemisphere, for America was a finished continent long before Europe. "It seems most probable that the North American elephants, mastodons, horse, and hollow-horned ruminants migrated, on land since submerged near Behring's Straits, from Siberia into North America, and thence, on land since submerged in the West Indies, into South America, where for a time they mingled with the forms characteristic of that southern continent, and have since become extinct." The rise of the Mexican table-land split up the New World into two well-defined zoological provinces. A few species, as the puma, peccari, and opossum, have crossed the barrier; but South America is characterized by possessing a family of monkeys, the llama, tapir, many peculiar rodents, and several genera of edentates.

The tapir, the largest native quadruped, is sometimes found on the mountains, but never descends into the Quito Valley. A link between the elephant and hog, its true home is in the lowlands. The tapir and peccari are the only indigenous pachyderms in South America, while the llama and deer are the only native ruminants; there is not one native hollow-horned ruminant on the continent. The llama is the only native domesticated animal; indeed, South America never furnished any other animal serviceable to man: the horse, ox, hog, and sheep , are importations. Of these animals, which rendered such important aid in the early civilization of Asia and Europe, the genera even were unknown in South America four centuries ago; and to-day pure Indians with difficulty acquire a taste for beef, mutton, and pork. The llama is still used as a beast of burden; but it seldom carries a quintal more than twelve miles a day. The black bear of the Andes ascends as high as Mont Blanc, and is rarely found below three thousand five hundred feet. The puma, or maneless American lion, has an immense range, both in latitude and altitude, being found from Oregon to the Straits of Magellan, and nearly up to the limit of eternal snow. It is as cowardly as the jaguar of the lowlands is ferocious. It is a very silent animal, uttering no cry even when wounded. Its flesh, which is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste, is eaten in Patagonia. Squirrels, hares, bats , opossums, and a large guinea-pig , are found in the neighborhood of Quito.

As only about sixty species of birds are common to North and South America, the traveler from the United States recognizes few ornithic forms in the Valley of Quito. Save the hummers, beautiful plumage is rare, as well as fine songsters. But the moment we descend the Eastern Cordillera into the interior of the continent, we find the feathered race in robes of richest colors. The exact cause of this brilliant coloring in the tropics is still a problem. It can not be owing to greater light and heat, for the birds of the Gal?pagos Islands, directly under the equator, are dull.

From the animal creation we mount by a short step to the imbruted Indian. When and by whom the Andes were first peopled is a period of darkness that lies beyond the domain of history. But geology and archaeology are combining to prove that Sorata and Chimborazo have looked down upon a civilization far more ancient than that of the Incas, and perhaps coeval with the flint-flakes of Cornwall, and the shell-mounds of Denmark. On the shores of Lake Titicaca are extensive ruins which antedate the advent of Manco Capac, and may be as venerable as the lake-dwellings of Geneva. Wilson has traced six terraces in going up from the sea through the province of Esmeraldas toward Quito; and underneath the living forest, which is older than the Spanish invasion, many gold, copper, and stone vestiges of a lost population were found. In all cases these relics are situated below high-tide mark, in a bed of marine sediment, from which he infers that this part of the country formerly stood higher above the sea. If this be true, vast must be the antiquity of these remains, for the upheaval and subsidence of the coast is exceedingly slow.

Geological History of South America.--Rise of the Andes.--Creation of the Amazon.--Characteristic Features of the Continent.--Andean Chain.--The Equatorial Volcanoes.

At length the morning breaks upon the last day of creation, and the fiat goes forth that the proud waves of the Pacific, which have so long washed the table-lands of Guiana and Brazil, shall be stayed. Far away toward the setting sun the white surf beats in long lines of foam against a low, winding archipelago--the western outline of the coming continent. Fierce is the fight for the mastery between sea and land, between the denuding power of the waves and the volcanic forces underneath. But slowly--very slowly, yet surely--rises the long chain of islands by a double process; the submarine crust of the earth is cooling, and the rocks are folded up as it shrivels, while the molten material within, pressed out through the crevices, overflows and helps to build up the sea-defiant wall. A man's life would be too short to count even the centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro: supposing the Andes to have risen at this rate uniformly and without interruption, seventy thousand years must have elapsed before they reached their present altitude. But when we consider that, in fact, it was an intermittent movement--alternate upheaval and subsidence--we must add an unknown number of millennia.

Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level, and again were slowly brought up to their present height. The suns of uncounted ages have risen and set upon these sculptured forms, though geologically recent, casting the same line of shadows century after century. A long succession of brute races roamed over the mountains and plains of South America, and died out ages ere man was created. In those pre-Adamite times, long before the Incas ruled, the mastodon and megatherium, the horse and the tapir, dwelt in the high valley of Quito; yet all these passed away before the arrival of the aborigines: the wild horses now feeding on the pampas of Buenos Ayres were imported from Europe three hundred and thirty-three years ago.

And now the Andes stand complete in their present gigantic proportions, one of the grandest and most symmetrical mountain chains in the world. Starting from the Land of Fire, it stretches northward and mounts upward until it enters the Isthmus of Panama, where it bows gracefully to either ocean, but soon resumes, under another name, its former majesty, and loses its magnificence only where the trappers chase the fur-bearing animals over the Arctic plains. Nowhere else does Nature present such a continuous and lofty chain of mountains, unbroken for eight thousand miles, save where it is rent asunder by the Magellanic Straits, and proudly tossing up a thousand pinnacles into the region of eternal snow. Nowhere in the Old World do we see a single well-defined mountain chain, only a broad belt of mountainous country traversing the heart of the continent.

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