44 The Andes and the Amazon. 



a precipice, a drove of reckless donkeys and mules descend- 

 ing the mountain, urged 'on by the cries and lashes of the 

 muleteers behind. Yet this has been the highway of Ecu- 

 adorian commerce for three hundred years. In vain we 

 tried to reach the httle village of Camino Keal on the 

 crest of the ridge ; but the night was advancing rapidly, 

 and crawling up such a road by starlight was not a little 

 dangerous. So we put up at a miserable tambo^ Pogyos by 

 name. It was a mud hut of the rudest kind, windowless 

 and unfloored; very clean, if it had been left to nature, 

 but man and beast had rendered it intolerably filthy. Our 

 hostess, a Quichua woman, with tattered garments, and hair 

 disheveled and standing up as if electrified, set a kettle on 

 three stones, and, making a fire under it, prepared for us a 

 calabash of chicken and locro. Locro, the national dish in 

 the mountains, is in i)lain English simply potato soup. Sit- 

 ting on the ground, we partook of this refreshment by the 

 aid of fingers and wooden spoons, enticing our appetites by 

 the reflection that potato soup would support life. The 

 unkempt Indian by our side, grinning in conscious pride 

 over her successful cookery, did not aid us in this matter. 

 Fire is used in Ecuador solely for culinary purposes, not 

 for warmth. It is made at no particular spot on the mud 

 floor, and there is no particular orifice for the exit of the 

 smoke save the chinks in the wall. There is not a chim- 

 ney in the whole republic. As the spare room in the es- 

 tablishment belonged to the women, we gentlemen slept on 

 the ground outside, or on beds made of round poles. The 

 night was piercingly cold. The wished-for morning came 

 at last, and long before the smi looked over the mountains 

 we were on our march. It was the same terrible road, 

 running zigzag, or " quingo" fashion, up to Camino Eeal, 

 where it was suddenly converted into a royal highway. 

 We were now fairly out of the swamps of the lowlands. 



