ECUADOR. 



EDUCATION AND ILLITERACY. 225 



and Ecuador is not only more considerable 

 than that between the United States and that 

 republic, but steadily growing in importance : 



No more recent report of the shipping move- 

 ments at the port of Guayaquil has been pub- 

 lished than that given for 1879 in the " Annual 

 Cyclopaedia "for 1881. 



There are at present seventy-seven miles of 

 railway completed in the republic. 



For many years past little tranquillity has 

 been enjoyed within the borders of this, per- 

 haps, the most distracted of all the Spanish- 

 American republics, not excepting Venezuela ; 

 and the people, though rarely exposed to the 

 horrors of civil war, have been so harassed by 

 the misrule and abuses of reckless despots as 

 to be impeded from continued and energetic 

 application to their pursuits, to the very great 

 detriment of the industries and commerce of 

 the country. The Dictator Garcia Moreno, 

 assassinated in 1875, was succeeded by a con- 

 stitutional President, Dr. Antonio Borrero, 

 who inaugurated a new order of things, but 

 from whose hands the power was wrested be- 

 fore the lapse of a year by the disloyalty of 

 one of his trusted officials. General Ignacio 

 Veintemilla, to whom Borrero had confided the 

 important military command of Guayaquil in 

 an hour of threatening peril for the Govern- 

 ment, used the troops committed to his charge 

 to depose his chief and cause himself to be 

 proclaimed President of the Republic. Vein- 

 temilla's term of office, under the articles of 

 the present (eighth !) Constitution, should have 

 expired in August, 1882 ; but, not satisfied with 

 six years of power, he voluntarily provoked a 

 revolution which might enable him more sure- 

 ly to accomplish his design to cause himself 

 once more to be declared "Supreme Chief," 

 or Dictator, as he had already done in 1878.* 

 It had been arranged beforehand that the pro- 

 nunciamiento should be simultaneous in Guay- 

 aquil, Quito, and the other principal towns 

 of the republic. The Dictator, in the decrees 

 relating to this mock revolt, styled himself 

 "Supreme Chief by the unanimous vote of the 

 people"; but events soon transpired which 

 revealed the real nature of that vaunted una- 

 nimity. The fictitious pronunciamiento was 

 immediately followed by a genuine one in every 

 part of the country, the expressed determina- 

 tion of a people, irritated beyond further en- 

 durance, to rid themselves of the terrorism 

 of Sefior Veintemilla. How unanimous this 

 resolution was has been demonstrated by the 

 fact that, in the course of a few months, the 



* See the " Annual Cyclopaedia " for 1878, p. 260. 

 VOL. xxu. 15 A 



Dictator was forced to take refuge in his last 

 stronghold Guayaquil. The first province to 

 rise in arms was that of Esmeraldas, north of 

 Guayaquil, which took place in April; but, 

 unfortunately for the cause, the leader of the 

 movement was a person at once incompetent 

 and presumptuous. The main body of the Gov- 

 ernment troops, having taken up their position 

 in Esmeraldas, had intrenched the town, and 

 seemed determined to remain there for the 

 purpose of sustaining the Dictator's supremacy 

 in the north. The revolutionists, comprehend- 

 ing that possession of the place was indispen- 

 sable to the success of their efforts, attacked it 

 in August, and were repulsed, the intrepidity 

 of the besiegers, for the most part Colombians, 

 having been, it is said, more than counter- 

 balanced by the incapacity of their leader, 

 Alfaro. A second and successful attack was 

 made in January, 1883, under General Salazar, 

 whose services had been arrogantly refused 

 some months previous by Alfaro. The Gov- 

 ernment forces, before abandoning their posi- 

 tions, sacked the stores and dwellings, and set 

 fire to the town in three places. They then 

 took refuge on board a steamer, the Huacho, 

 and were conveyed to Guayaquil. In the mean 

 time the revolutionary movement had become 

 general in the interior ; the Government gar- 

 rison, seven hundred strong, in Quito was at- 

 tacked by a republican (revolutionary) body 

 of volunteers, numbering one thousand, under 

 Colonel Sarasti, a lawyer and impromptu sol- 

 dier. The latter, General Salazar, and Colonels 

 Landazuri and Reynaldo Flores, are named as 

 the officers who have taken the most active 

 and distinguished part in the struggle, and as 

 those to whose efforts was mainly due the des- 

 perate, almost hopeless, situation in which the 

 Dictator found himself in the last week of 

 January. 



EDUCATION AND ILLITERACY. The 

 subject of public education has been acquiring 

 new interest and importance of late, not only 

 in the United States, but in European coun- 

 tries. The statistics of the decennial census 

 of 1880 show the extent of illiteracy in the 

 Union, and the Bureau of Education furnishes 

 figures exhibiting the provision made for pop- 

 lar education iu the several States. Of the 

 entire population of 50,155,783 in the United 

 States, 36,761,607 are returned as ten years 

 old and upward. Of these persons 4,923,451, 

 or 13 '4 per cent, were unable to read, and 

 6,239,958, or 17 per cent, were unable to write. 

 Of the total population ten years old and up- 

 ward, 32,160,400 were white, and 4,601,207 

 colored. The number of the former unable to 

 write was 3,019,080, or 9'4 per cent of the 

 whole, while of the latter 3,220,878, or 70 per 

 cent, are unable to write. Of the whites 25,- 

 785,789 were natives of the country, and 6,374,- 

 611 were foreign-born. Of the former 2,255,- 

 460, or 8-7 per cent, could not write, and of 

 the latter 763,620, or 12 per cent. The per- 

 centage of illiteracy, taking inability to write 



