oks bend over a charcoal fire,
which is fanned by a third unkempt individual, and all three blinded by
smoke (for there is no chimney), so that it is not their fault if
capillaries and something worse are mingled with the stew, with onions
to right of them, onions to left of them, onions in front of them, and
_achote_ already in the pot in spite of your repeated anathemas and
expostulations--_achote_, the same red coloring matter which the wild
Indians use for painting their bodies and dyeing their cloth--and with
several aboriginal wee ones romping about the kitchen, keen must be the
appetite that will take hold with alacrity as the dishes are brought on
by the most slovenly waiter imagination can body forth.[29] The aim of
Ecuadorian cookery is to eradicate all natural flavor; you wouldn't know
you were eating chicken except by the bones. Even coffee and chocolate
somehow lose their fine Guayaquilian aroma in this high altitude, and
the very pies are stuffed with onions. But the beef, minus the garlic,
is most excellent, and the _dulce_ unapproachable.

[Footnote 29: We noticed at Riobamba a custom which formerly prevailed
also at Quito. As soon as the guests have finished, and before they have
risen, the Indian waiter kneels devoutly down beside the table, and
offers thanks in a very solemn, touching tone.]

CHAPTER V.

Ecuador.--Extent.--Government.--Religion.--A Protestant Cemetery in
Quito.--Climate.--Regularity of Tropical Nature.--Diseases on the
Highlands.

The republic of Ecuador looks like a wedge driven into the continent
between the Maranon and the Putumayo. It has 1200 miles of Pacific
coast, and an area of about two hundred thousand square miles, including
the Galapagos Islands. Peru, however, claims the oriental half, drawing
her northern boundary from Tumbez through Canelos and Archidona; and she
is entitled to much of it, for she has established a regular line of
steamers on the Maranon, while the Quito government has not developed an
acre east of the Andes. Ecuador is hung between and upon two
cordilleras, which naturally divide it into three parts: the western
slope, the Quitonian valley, and the Napo region. The fluvial system is
mainly made up of the Napo, Pastassa, and Santiago, tributaries of the
Maranon, and the Mira, Esmeraldas, and Guayaquil, flowing westward into
the Pacific. There are no lakes proper, but the natives enumerate
fifty-five lagunes, the largest of whi