The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-03-21

| to one customer until better one can
! be found, when the former will be left
| incontfnently in the lurch, and dispatch
means putting off every duty as long as
| the most fertile imagination can find
excuse for delay, especially if pay has
been secured in advance. Although the
charge announced is only ten cents for
! the short row from ship to shore, with
ten cents additional for each piece OF
= luggage. it may be as many dollars for
the equally short row back again, about
which a discreet silence is preserved
until you are quite at the mans mercy.
The only way is to make bargain in
presence of the ships officers for the
round trip, it being distinctly under
stood that not cent will be paid until
you are safely back on deck.
At this point the Guayas river looks
much like the Mississippi in the neigh
borhood of New Orleans. You are sur
prised to find regular Water-market
stretched all along the edge of the
town, where native boats laden with
all manner of produce, are drawn up
close, while their owners stand on shore
shouting the merits of their respective
wares. All the city's provisions, raised
in outlying gardens and plantations, are
brought down the river on balsas
| (rafts) and thus exposed for sale. In
| this crowded water-market are fish
whose like we have never seen before,
from snaky cells to enormous coW-bass,
sold in slices; poultry in cane cages,
which kept up vigorous cackling;
pigs and parrots; vegetables Of all de-
scriptions; and tropical fruits perfum-
ing the air, in spite of the reeling odors
of their vendors and the vicinage.
Most noticeable of all the things for
sale were the pineapples, for which Ec-
uador is particularly famous as produc
ing the finest in the world-some of the
great pinl1ish-golden globes large as an
ordinary water bucket, white as snow
| inside and sweet as honey.
| A narroW-guage tramvia, or horse
car line, runs from the landing to the
outskirts of the town; and upon its
cars all the products of the adjacent
plantations that are not brought in
boats for the city's daily use, are con-
veyed to the dock and thence by light
ers to ships in the harbor. The passen-
ger cars of the tramvit are square,
box-lke affairs, each with a queer lit
tie window stairway leading from the
rear platform to the roof. upon which
two benches, placed back to back, ex
tend from end to end. The outside fare
is second-class in price, and therefore
no Ecuadorian with any pretensions to
social standing could be induced to
avail himself of it. However, those ell
evated, outside seats are infinitely pre-
ferable to the stuffy interior, both for
fresh air and observation; therefore we
clambered to the top and made our de-
but in the dusty streets of Guayaquil
amid molly collection of los pobres."
| By the way, the name of town and
gulf is pronounced as if spelled Yah
keel, accenting the final syllable; and
of the river as Vas, with the accent on
the first syllable: and both are called
in honor of the Inca cacique, Guayas,
feudatory chief of the great Atahualpa.
The region was conquered under one of
PiZarro's lieutenants in the year 1885,
and the city received its name and
charter from Carlos V. 1t has a pres
emit population of about forty thousand
The streets are comparatively straight,
crossing at right angles, but mostly
very narrow, lined with mud-plastered
novels and Astounding with smells
which beggar description. There is not
the slightest attempt at sewerage in
Guayaquil, and enough filth lies loose
about its streets every day to breed
pestilence that would depopulate one of
our northern cities. But though only
two degrees removed from the equator
and on a level with the sea- Guayaquil
is reckoned among the most salubrious
of South American cities-barring occa-
sional brief epidemics of cholera, yell
low fever and smallpox, as confidently
expected as flies in summer time and
almost as little feared.
| That there is any degree of healthful-
ness is largely due to the buzzards,
those industrious scavenger- birds that
blacken every roof and refuse heap and
whose lives are protected by law; and
to the fact that the adjacent gulf has a
tide of twenty feet, the great flow of
water in and out every day preventing
| impurities from collecting. The tenn
perature seldom rises above ninety-five
degrees, and always after 2 p. m. it
grows cool and pleasant as June
morning in New England, because of a
land breeze which blows directly over
the ice-capped Andes, bringing health
and cooling to the burning coast.
Though full century behind the
times, Guayaquil is the only place in
Ecuador in which any degree of mod
ern civiizati ton exists, and it's limited
march of progress is not at all due to
Ecuadorians. For example, it's street.
car line was projected and built by cit
liens of the United States; and so were
it's gas works, factories and most of the
other Improvements. An American
company owns and controls a line of
paddle-Wheel steamers on the Rio
Guayas, which were constructed in Bal
tmore. The only gunboat in possession
of the government is a WORKOUT mer-
chant ship, now covered with corruga-
ted iron, which used to ply between
New York and Norfolk. Even the Gus
tom house, the largest and hanrsomest
structure in the section, was built by
a New Yorker, with pine from the for
ests of Maine and corrugated iron from
Pennsylvania. Though FOR nearly four
centuries the old town has been the one
miles of seacoast, it is to-day nearly