Omaha daily bee., 1914-02-15

and the Yukon are to our con-
~EN tinent II is the biggest
60 stream which flows into the
Pacific; and in the rainy season it turns
the lowlands from here to the Andes
INTO great swamp or lake. Where the
ships come in from the ocean the river
$ sixty miles wide, and as you sail up
o Guayaquil you seem to be passing
through q great inland sea. The water
as thick as pea soup and of much the
ame color The Andean floods bring
Town patches of green. and great trees
nay be seen floating out to the sea. In
coming in you pass the Island of Puma,
where Pizarro first landed. and about
IXty miles farther up you find yourself
N front of this port.
The river is now mile wide and
twenty-siX feet in depth; and II gives
a good and safe harbor for steamers
Just now 1t has but little shipping on
account of the plague, but there are
hundreds of dug-outs, canoes, RATS and
cargo boats i'm which the Indians bring
their wares from the interior to SELL
The ocean vessels anchor far out in the
streOm, and are unloaded by lighters
The only wharves of the city are those
for small craft. Nevertheless they ex-
tend for mile or two up and down the
west bank of the river. and are backed
with great warehouses and stores which
are open at the front so that you can
see everything i'm them as you go along
the street
GuayaauiI n Modern city.
From the ships deck Guayaquil is
imposing. 1t is town of about 1O0.-
GOO people, and as the most of its
houses are of only one or two stories
it covers a great deal of ground. 1t
has wide streets and buildings that at
first sight seem to be of stone or of
brick covered with stucco. They are
really of wood plastered over and
painted land most OF them have walls
of bamboo cane upon which mud has
been spread and smoothed down with
trowel. The city has some public
improvements. 1t has an electric
street car line and electric lights. 1t
has public squares which are beautifully
kept, and its hospitals are as good as
can De found i'm South America. 1t has
half dozen newspapers, several high
priced hotels and it does an export and
import business amounting to $4,000 900
or $2OOOooOO a year. 1t is, in fact, the
made as healthy as Panama it might be
great resort for tourists and trade.
But before 1 go further, let me tell
you something of the South American
republic, which is to be brought to our
doors by the Panama canal Heretofore
the steamships from our Atlantic coast
have had to go more than 10000 miles
around by the Strait of Magellan to
i
York will be nearer by ship to this port
than it is now to Great Britain. Boston
will be only a little over a week from
any part of Ecuador, and our gulf ports
will be still nearer. AS it is now, Guaya-
uuil is less than 800 miles from Balboa
and the railroad that is building from the
Bay of Caraquez to Quito will bring the
capital of Ecuador to within three days
of Panama. The contract for that road
has been let to French company. The
trains were in operation last year over
about forty miles of track, and the road
should be completed by the time of the
opening of the great ditch at Panama.
The Land of the Equator.
The word Ecuador means equator, and
Ecuador is a land of the equator That
hottest line on the globe passes through
it and the whole of it lies in the tropics.
The country is a triangle, surrounded by
Colombia, Brazil and Peru, 1t lies on
the west coast of South America, in the
shape of fan whose handle is in north
ern Brazil and whose scalloped rim Is
washed by the Pacific ocean.
Next to Colombia, Ecuador Is the near
est republic to us, and still it is one of
the least known Parts of it have never
been surveyed and today the estimates
of it's size range from the bigness of
California to that of Texas. The most
authentic figures now place it at 10000
square miles, an area equal to that of
Ohio, Virginia and Indiana combined.
The most of the country is taken up by
the Andes. The coast line is low and a
tropical vegetation extends from the
ocean back to the foothills The Andes
cross the country from north to south in
two great ranges. upholding between
them a series of beautiful valleys, in
which about nine-tenths of the natives
now live. These valleys are higher above
the sea than Mexico City and they have
a climate more like that of New York
or Ohio than of the equator. Quito, the
capital. is situated in one of the highest
of these Andean valleys. 1t is $500 feet
above the sea, or almost two miles
above the altitude of Washington city
In that city the weather is like October
or our Indian summer all the year round
New Railroad Constructed.
On the eastern side of the Andes the
land slopes from the temperate zone tc
a tropical wilderness II reaches the