The Democrat. (Scotland Neck, Halifax Co., N.C.) 1884-1896, 1885-06-11
women all wear black.

PlZa"rO. Their costume IS short Dlack
skirt and square robe or mantle OF
black, which they wear over their heads
and hold in place by large pin or thorn
between the shoulders. They look ike
nuns, and walk the streets With bur
dens upon their backs or heads In
professions as solemn as a funeral. Iney
4 never laugh, and scarcely ever smile;
they have no songs and no amusements.
Their only scmblance to music is
mournful chant which they give in uni
son at the feasts which are intended to
keep alive the memories of the lncas.
They cling to their traditions and the
customs of their ancestors. They
remember the ancient glory of
their race, and look to its restoration
as the Aztecs of Mexico look for the
coming of Montezuma. They have rel
les which they guard with the most
sacred care, ard two great secrets no
amount of tortl re at the hands of the
| Spaniards has been able to wiring from
them These are the art of tempering
copper SO as to give it as keen and en-
during an edge as steel, and the burial
place of the Incarial treasures.
1t will be remembered that Pizarro Of
fered to release Atahuallpa if the Indians
would fill with gold the room in which
he was kept a prisoner. They did it.
Pizarro thought there must be more
| where this came from, and demanded
that the ransom be doubled. Runners
were sent over the country to collect the
| treasure of the kingdom, and were on
their way to Caxamarca, where the Inca
was prisoner, loaded down with gold
to buy his freedom, when they heard
that Pizarro had strapgled him. This
| treasure was buried somewhere in the
mountains of Llanganati, northwest of
Quito and has been searched for ever
since.
| A Spaniard named Valverde married
an Inca girl, and from poverty became
suddenly rich. To escape persecution
from those who wished to know the Sc
| cret of his sudden accumulation of gold
he fled to Spain, aud upon his deathbed
made a confession to the effect that
through his wife he had discovered the
Inca treasures, and left guide to the
pace of their deposit as legacy to his
king. This guide has been followed by
the government and by private indi-
viduais; fortunes have been wasted in
! the search, hundreds of men have per-
ished in the mountains while engaged in
it, and, while the gold of the Incas will
never cease to haunt the memories of the
avaricious, no man has been able to reach
the spot designated by the confession of
Valverde.
The last to attempt it was an English
botanist, who wrote pamphlet giving
his experience. He says that no one
who was not familiar with every iuch of
the Llanganati mountains could have
written the Valverde document for the
land marks are all minutely described
but the path indicated leads to a ravine
which is impossible, and in attempting
to cross which so many people have lost
their lives. 1t is his opinion that the
condition of this gorge has been so
changed by volcanic eruptions and earth
auakes as to obliterate the landmarks
which Valverde describes, and per-
manently obstruct path which he is said
to have followed.
| The capital and productive regions of
Ecuador are 16O miles from its only sea
port, Guayaquil, and are accessible only
by mule path, which is impossible for
six months in the year, during the rainy
season, and in the dry season it requires
eight or nine days to trav erse it, with
no resting places where a man can find a
decent bed or food fit for human con
sumption. This is the only means of
communication between Quito and the
outside world, except along the noun
tains southwark into Bolivia and Peru,
where the Incas constructed beautiful
highways, which the Spaniards have per-
mitted to decay, until they are now
practically useless. They were so well
built, however, as to stand the wear and
tear of three centuries, and the slightest
attempt at repair would have kept them
in ora er.
Although the journey from Guayaquil
| to Quito takes nine days, Garcia Moreno,
the former president of Ecuador, once
made it in thirty-six hours. He heard
of revolution, and, springing upon his
horse, went to the capital, had twenty
two conspirators shot, and was back at
Guayaquil in less than week. Moreno
was president for twelve years, and was
one of the fiercest and most cruel rulers
South America has ever seen. He shot
men who would not take off their hats to
him in the streets, and had a drunken
priest impaled in the principal plaza of
Quito as warning to the clergy to OBJ
serve abits of sobriety or conceal their
intemperance. There was nothing too
brutal for this man to do, and nothing
too sacred to escape his grasp. He died
in 1875 by assassination, and the country
has been in state of political eruption
ever since.
Although the road to Quito is over an
almost untrodden wilderness, it presents
the grandest scenic panorama in the
world. Directly beneath the equator,
surrounding the city whose origin is lost
in the mist of centuries, rise twenty vol
canoes, presided over by the princely
Chimborazo the lowest being 49,
922 feet in height, and the
highest reaching an altitude of
%, 500 feet. Three of these volcanoes
are active, five are dormant, and twelve
extinct. Nowhere else on the earth's
surface is such a cluster of peaks. such
grand assemhlage of giants Eighteen
of the twenty are covered with perpetual
snow, and the SUBMITS of eeven have
never been reached by living creature
except the condor, whose flight surpasscs
that of any other bird. At noon the
vertical sun throws a profusion of light
upon the snow crowned SUBMITS, where
they appear like group of pyramids
cut in spotless marble.
Cotopaxi is the loftiest of active vol
! canoes, but it is slumbering now. The
only evidence of action is the frequent