ovisions.

[Illustration: Ascending the Andes.]

Leaving Savaneta at dawn, and breakfasting at a wayside hut owned by an
old negro, we struck about noon the Rio Charriguajaco, dashing down the
mountains in hot haste for the Guayas. It was refreshing to look upon
living waters for the first time since leaving the hills of our
native country. Fording this stream we know not how many times, and
winding through the dense forest in narrow paths often blockaded by
laden donkeys that doggedly disputed the passage, we soon found
ourselves slowly creeping up the Andes. We frequently met mountaineers
on their way to Bodegas with loads of potatoes, peas, barley, fowls,
eggs, etc. They are generally accompanied by their wives or daughters,
who ride like the men, but with the knees tucked up higher. On the
slippery tracks which traverse this western slope, bulls are often used
as beasts of burden, the cloven hoofs enabling them to descend with
great security. But mules are better than horses or asses. "That a
hybrid (muses Darwin) should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy,
social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life than
either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone
nature."

Toward evening the ascent became rapid and the road horrible beyond
conception, growing narrower and rougher as we advanced. Indeed, our way
had long since ceased to be a road. In the dense forest, where sunshine
never comes, rocks, mud, and fallen trees in rapid alternation
macadamize the path, save where it turns up the bed of a babbling brook.
In the comparatively level tracts, the equable step of the beasts has
worn the soil into deep transverse ridges, called _camellones_, from
their resemblance to the humps on a camel's back. In the precipitous
parts the road is only a gully worn by the transit of men and beasts for
ages, aided by torrents of water in the rainy season. As we ascend, this
changes to a rocky staircase, so strait that one must throw up his legs
to save them from being crushed, and so steep that horse and rider run
the risk of turning a somersault. It is fearful to meet in a narrow
defile, or where the road winds around the edge of a precipice, a drove
of reckless donkeys and mules descending the mountain, urged on by the
cries and lashes of the muleteers behind. Yet this has been the highway
of Ecuadorian commerce for three hundred years. In vain we tried to
reach the little village of Camin