The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-10-02
THE ROAD TO QUITO.
TRAVELLING ACROSS THE BREAST or
KINGLY cHImBoRAzo.
A Dangerous, Difficult TraII-Passing
Through Every Variety of Climate
Known to Man The Thibos OF
the New World.
Ecuador Cor. Inter ocean.l

Ecuador Cor Inter ocean,
All roads may have led TO Rome but
no roads lead 10 Quito There is mule
path from the port of Guayaquil over the
Andes, dangerous, difficult trail requir-
ing nine days to cross during the dry sea
son, but impossible during the winter. or
rainy season. when no one but tie mail
carriers attempt il, and they "cuj across
lots" afoot One can go from New York
to Paris in less time, at less expense, and
with infinitely more comfort, than from
Guayaquil, the seaport of Ecuador,
to Quito, the capital, dis
go up the river Guayas about thirty miles
on little steamer built at Baltimore to a
place called Bodegas, and there you get
mule-at least you try to get one. Some
times the animals can not be hired. They
can only be secured by purchase. and then
Onlr very poor ones, who look as if they
would not live to see the end of the jour
ney But the Sout American mule is
better than he looks, and the man who
despises him is guilty of an set of in
justice. In land where the iron horse
does not snort and shrek the mule is the
best substitute.
If you go to Quito you must always
furnish your own saddle. but a piece of
rope will do very well to guide your ami
NAL by. He will need no curb to restrain
him. Then one has to take his own bed.
ding-a hammock is the best thing-his
own blankets, and pillow if he can not
use a saddle as a substitute. 1t usually
requires two or three days to make prep
arations, for although people have been
going over this road for $50 years, it takes
as much time. and as much fussing to
start traveller to day as it did to get the
first man who went launched on the
journey.
But you finally get started, and spend
nine days as miserably as they could be
spent, without decent place to sleep, or
a palatable morSel to eat, and picture of
poverty, ignorance, squalor, and degrade
ton aiwass before you, but set in the
grandest frame that the Almighty Hand
ever created. The old hymn speaks of
place where every prospect pleases. and
only man is vile. That place is Ecua-
dor.
The road passes over the great bosom of
CbimboraZo, at an altitude of about 10, 900
feet. where, although directly under the
equator, the frozen wind sweeps down
upon travellers, who have often been
hurled over icy precipices by the fright
full blast Quito itself sits in the top of
the mountains at an altitude of 8, 600 feet,
or 1000 feet above the Hospice of the
Great st. Bernard in the Alps. While it
is not the highest city on the globe. no
where else can be seen such an asSemblage
of towering mountains, presided over by
the kingly ChimboraZo, whose untrOdden
summit is a mile higher than POpocata
petl, and nearly two miles higher than the
tallest peak in the United States No
where does nature affect one more deeply
with feeling of her grandeur; no where
does she exhibit more startling freaks, or
wilder contrasts, and no where within
the same distance can be found so large q
variety of both animal and vegetable life
This path to Quito passes through
every variety of climate known to man;
from the murky, miasmatic tropics.
where the crocodile is king, and rain falls
necessarily, over a rainless desert into the
zone of wheat and corn From there it
rises to region worthless except for cattle
ranges, and finally ascends into the realm
of the ice king, whose power even the
tropical sun can not dispute, and whose
only animate subject is the condor, with
fight surprising any other bird. Here Is
a valley from which no water can flow,
table-land between the two gigantic
Andean chains, the Thibet of the New
World, with an area four times as large as
the state of New ork, and history as
old as Moses. At one end of this
valley Potosi is perched, the highest
city in the world; at the other
strange empire, which, though crushed
by ii, AFRO in its budding civilization, and
fabulous magniicence, will rank as the
most extraordinary and extensive com
munity in the annals of history. Here
were unnumbered millions of people,
with patriarchal government, having no
law but the will Of an Inca, and familiar
with all the arts but those of war.
Twenty VOLCANOES, and more than fifty
mountain peaks over 10000 feet high
compose the sublime congregation that
i'll state the Omnipotence of their Gre.
ator in the valley of Quito. Here all
the mountain chains of South Amer
lea eliminate i'll one dizzy procession,
as if the Cordileras had gathered
around the Inca capital an army of their
grandest giants one sierra bends Oft 10
the east holds in its lap the ancient city
of Bogota rolls off l, 900 streams to form
the CrinOco and terminates in the beauti-
full mountains of Caracas. Another
clings to the Pacific, whose ince3sant bill
lows wash its feet, and humbling itself
when it crosses the isthmus, spreads and
rises again in the CordilleTas of Mexico,
ard the Rocky mountain chains, forming
a backbone for the hemisphere, whose
head lies on a pillow of snow in Alaska.
and whose feet dip into the sea at the land
of fire (Terre del uegol The third
chain of Sierras follow well-defned par
allel until it droops and finally exhaustS
itself on the pampas of Patagonia
Old "Chimbo, the king of the Andes,
has forbidden man to study him. Three
thousand feet of impossible snow, cling
ing to a cone of granite whose sides are
too steep to be climbed even with scaling
ladders. prevent the summit from being
reached There is legend chat Chimbo
was once half a mile higher than now.
On one of his sides stands a massive rock,
perhaps the largest piece of granite in the
world, which is called the Incas head
The Indian traditions say that this was
once the crest of ChimboraZo. and that Il
fell the day Atahaulpa, the last of the In
cas-. was strangled by PiZarro. Geological
inquiry might ascertain the truth of this
tradition, but the summit of the peak can
be studied only through the telescope.
The bravest climber has only reached an
altitude of 10, 500 feet.