CHAP, xx INDIANS OF ECUADOR 257 



are a sad and sullen people. The features, especially 

 of the women, seem haggard with care and sullen 

 misery. Yet, despite their sordid surroundings, 

 the Ouitonians appear to possess the sentiment of 

 form and colour in the highest degree. Notwith- 

 standing the rigid formulas and conventionalities 

 to which the priests have enslaved them, many of 

 the Mestizoes and even of the full -blood Indians 

 succeed in executing really remarkable religious 

 paintings as well as sculptures of Christs and 

 Madonnas, works greatly admired in Peru and 

 other South American countries, to which they are 

 regularly exported. But the natives have lost one 

 artistic industry inlaid work in costly woods. It 

 has been noticed also that neither his extreme 

 poverty nor the dull existence to which he is con- 

 demned has prevented the Ecuadorean from 

 distinguishing himself by the elegant cut and har- 

 moniously-blended colours of his native costumes." 

 We seem to have here the surviving remnants 

 of a people with high capabilities, who have been 

 so crushed down by centuries of slavery and repres- 

 sion, combined with the struggle against the forces 

 of nature in some of their most terrible aspects, 

 as to have become degraded both physically and 

 mentally, while still exhibiting unmistakable traces 

 of the higher civilisation and more sympathetic 

 government they enjoyed under the Incas. 



VOL. II 



