XX 



AMBATO 227 



were in the churches the buildings that suffered 

 most. On that day Dr. Taylor of Riobamba 

 and his son were my guests, and (along with my 

 lad) we were riding down the valley to eat peaches 

 at a neighbouring farm. Singularly enough, neither 

 we nor our horses felt the shock, although it was 

 a very long one ; but all on a sudden we saw 

 people running out of their houses, and clouds of 

 dust rising up among the hills. A little way farther 

 on several tons of earth had been shaken down 

 across our path, and we passed the debris with 

 difficulty, and not without risk that more might fall 

 and crush us. Below the farm, the cliff bounding 

 the valley had slid down for a length of 200 

 yards, and the people of the farm had been half 

 choked and blinded with the dust raised by the fall. 

 In the town of Ambato itself no damage was done 

 beyond the cracking of a few very old and of some 

 very new walls. On the following day, about 2 P.M., 

 I was startled by hearing the family of my neigh- 

 bour (and landlord) run shrieking into the yard, 

 crying out "Temblor! temblor!" I ran out myself 

 just in time to see the walls of an unfinished house, 

 which an ambitious shopkeeper had been rearing 

 close by to the imprudent height of three stories, 

 crumble to the ground. The adobes had not got 

 " set," and the earthquake had cracked several of 

 them; hence the downfall of the whole. Fortunately, 

 nobody was injured by the (all. 



I have been entrusted by the India Govern- 

 ment with the charge of obtaining seeds and young 

 plants of the different sorts of Cinchona (Peruvian 

 Bark) found in the Ouitonian Ancles for transporting 

 to our Eastern possessions, where it is proposed to 



