PAITA. 19^ 



Entering a small bay, which appeared as though 

 scooped out by the action of the waves, we discovered, 

 crowded between the gray clifls and the sea, half buried 

 beneath the drifting sands of the desert, the wretched 

 town of Paita. The first question which the traveller sug- 

 gests to himself, after having surveyed the curious pile of 

 quaint, mud-plastered, tumble-down, bamboo structures, is, 

 " What could possess any people to set up their household 

 gods in such a desolate portion of creation ? " It is, in- 

 deed, curious to observe where man has sought out a 

 habitation. How often we find him presumptuously plant- 

 ing his little domicile upon the very flank of some restless 

 volcano, which he knows will eventually heap it in rub- 

 bish ! Deserting the inviting plains of La Plata, he has 

 travelled southward, crossed the Straits of Magellan, and 

 melts with the warmth of his own body the falling snows 

 of the inhospitable Ticrra del Fuego ; upon the delta of 

 the Orinoco he has swung his house in the trees, when the 

 fertile Llanos and mountain-flanks of Venezuela offer him 

 an enviable home. The only excuse we could find for the 

 existence of Paita was in the fact that it served as a port 

 to more pretentious inland towns. 



Going ashore we followed our guide through the nar- 

 row streets, which are just wide enough to admit the pass- 

 ing of two pack-animals. Through these contracted pas- 

 sages we wended our way, dodging the careless donkeys 

 which, with cargoes apparently adjusted with no particular 

 reference to the safety of pedestrians, rushed recklessly 

 through the streets. "We kept our eyes with ill-concealed 

 apprehension upon the seemingly heavy walls of the 

 houses, the most of which were alarmingly removed from 

 perpendicularity; but the discovery that beneath the 

 plastering of mud, which gave them their wall-like appear- 

 ance, was only a slight frame-work of split canes, lessened 

 our fears of the evil consequences which might attend the 



