while the highlands
would welcome the grains and fruits of Europe. But intertropical people
do not subdue nature like the civilized men of the North; they only pick
up a livelihood.

Spanish Americans, like Castilians on the banks of the Tagus, have a
singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty
Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or
shade tree (a thing of foresight and forethought for others) in a land
where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, is considered
downright folly in theory and practice. A large portion of the valley,
left treeless, is becoming less favorable for cultivation.

Yet, as it is, the traveler is charmed by the emerald verdure of the
coast, and by "evergreen Quito"--more beautiful than the hanging gardens
of Babylon--suspended far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds. In
the San Francisco market we find wheat, barley, maize, beans, peas,
potatoes, cabbages, beets, salads, pine-apples, chirimoyas, guavas,
oranges, lemons, pears, quinces, peaches, apricots, melons, and
strawberries--the last all the year round. Most of these are exotics;
the early discoverers found not a cereal grain of the Old World, not an
orange or apple, no sugar-cane or strawberries.[27]

[Footnote 27: The vase is still shown in which Father Rixi brought the
first wheat from Europe. It was sown in what is now the San Francisco
Plaza, the chief market-place of the city.]

There is but little manufacturing industry in the interior of Ecuador,
but much more than on the coast. The chief articles manufactured are
straw hats, shoes, baskets, carpets, embroidery, tape, thread, ponchos,
coarse woolen and cotton cloth, saddles, sandals, soap, sugar, cigars,
aguardiente, powder, sweetmeats, carved images, paints, and pottery.
Wines, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silks, and fine cloth are imported.
There are three cotton mills in the country; one in Chillo (established
by Senors Aguirre in 1842), another in Otovalo (built by Senor Parija in
1859), and a third in Cuenca (1861). The machinery of the Chillo factory
came from England; that of Otovalo from Patterson, N.J. The latter was
utterly destroyed in the late great earthquake, and the proprietor
killed. The cotton is inferior to that of New Orleans; it is not "fat,"
as mechanics say; the seeds yield only two per cent. of oil. But it is
whiter than American cotton, though coarse, and can be used only for
very ord