The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-03-28


 plainest farments just before burial. If you were living in Ecuador and wished to hire 8 servant, you could hardly get one by himself, or herself, but would be compelled to take up with drove of them. probably far out numbering your own family. For eX- ample, with a cook you would have to receive her husband and children, and perhaps also her father and mother, into your house to bed and board, and each would bring along all his or her portable property, consisting mainly in domestic pets, such as pigs. chickens. rabbits, dogs and other live stock. The husband may have some trade which he follows during the day. but at meal times and when night comes he returns 10 the bosom of his family and yours. It would be considered downright inhumanity to refuse them food and shelter, and not servant in Ecuador would work for so mean master or mistress. The children of your cook may be utilized for light services. such as running of errands, wedding the garden and tending the
 
 be light fingered and certain to be lousy, dirty and probably diseased. There is no help for it, however, be- cause 'el costumbre'' has decreed that for every servant you hire, you must expect at least a dozen extra mouths to feed
 Nor is this the worst of it. Occasion ally cooks relatives from another vil- lage come to pay her a visit of a fort night or two-lasting as long as you will tolerate it-men, women and chil- dren, bringing more dogs, pigs, chick ems, etc., to be housed and fed. FOrtu nately they are not accustomed to "downy beds of ease'' or sumptuous living, but consider themselves in clo- Yer if plentifully supplied with beans, corn-meal and potato soup, and will sleep contentedIy on the stones of the patio or the straw of the stable. The danger is that some of the stranger hangers-on may not be as honest as the cook herself is supposed to be, and cases are known where thieves and even murderers thus gained admission to the inside of the casa, with disas- trous results.
 In Ecuador there are only two sea- sons-the inViernO, or wet, and the yer aon, or dry. The invierno, or winter, (though astronomically it is summer time), begins in December and ends in May. The heavy rains come on about Christmas. March Is the wettest month of the year, July the coldest, and in May levers are most prevalent. During the dry season the climate of Guayaquil is nearly perfect, broken only by a few days rain after the au- tumnal equinox. The latter is called "El Cordonazo de San Francisco" and throughout all South America the peri odical alterations of wet and dry are laid to the account of some saint whose day. happens to coincide with the epoch of change But if the wealth CT be rainy when it ought to be fair, or if showers are heavier than, ordinary, the fault therefore is always ascribed to the moon-that "inconstant orb which ill other parts of the world suf- fers a good deal of undeserved blame for the souring of milk, the slow teeth ing of babies and the backWardness of gardens. Lord Byron understood it when he remarked '"The devils in the moon for mischief"
 It is during the rainy season only that Guayaquil has earned it's reputa- tion for unhealthfulness. Then the air is as hot and oppressive as that of a Turkish bath; rank vegetation lies act tayin in, and even some of the city streets are impossible; levers and dysenteries do the work of death, and the living keep up perpetual warfare on pestiferous mosquitoes, cockroaches large as the palm of your hand, centipedes, scorpi- ons and deadly serpents.
 The very finest thing about Guaya- incompara ble view to be obtained from the balconies-especially in clear days, when magnificent stretch of the Am des may be seen. The stranger in these parts will in after years forget many incidents of his journeying, but the impression produced by the first glimpse of those glorious mountains IS unfading. Clouds sometimes veil the Cordillera for days together; and then they suddenly rise like curtain and disclose a scene of inconceivable gran deur-the lofty home of the long dead Incas, made illustrious by the sword of Pizarro and the pen of Prescott. On one hand a limitless sea of hills pillow higher and higher, till they culminate in the purple mountains of Assuay; on the other, one hundred miles away, the peerless Chimborazo, lifting it's un- trodden and unapproachable summit far above it's fellows, an imposing background for lessers mountains and stately forests.
 Until lately, you know. Chimborazo has been considered the highest volca- no on the western hemisphere and to- tally inaccessible to the foot of man. It is 22,422 feet high--no slouch of a mountain to be sure. But modern sur veys show that it has superiors. In the Andean chain are five others that over- top it; and these are surpassed in the old world by several in the Himalayas.
 FANNIE B. WARD.