74 The Andes and the Amazon. 



in grand commercial schemes and industrial enterprises. 

 There is not a highway for commerce in any direction, 

 only a natural path (called by the innocent natives a road), 

 which rises to the altitude of fourteen thousand feet, by 

 which the beasts of burden pick their way over the Cor- 

 dillera. And this is open only six months in the year. 

 Should a box designed for Quito arrive at Guayaquil at the 

 beginning of the rainy season, it must tarry half a year till 

 Nature makes the road passable. 



The unstable condition of the country does not encour- 

 age great undertakings ; all business is periodically para- 

 lyzed by revolution. Merchants generally buy their goods 

 in Lima, to which city and Guayaquil the fabrics of En- 

 gland and France are brought by foreigners in foreign 

 ships. The shops of Quito, as we have remarked, are very 

 small, without windows, and with only one wooden door. 

 The door is double, and is fastened by a ponderous padlock. 

 They are open from 7 a.m. till sunset, excepting between 

 nine and ten and between three and four, when the stores 

 are closed for breakfast and dinner ; the merchants never 

 trusting their clerks, even when they have any, which is not 

 usually the case. They have no fixed price, but get what 

 they can. The majority know nothing of w^holesale, and 

 refuse to sell by the quantity, fearing a cheat. An Indian 

 woman will sell you a real's worth of oranges any number 

 of times, but she would object to parting with a dollar's 

 worth — her arithmetic can not comprehend it. 



In the ^portals or arcades of the Aguirre mansion and 

 the nuncio's palace are the stalls of the haberdashers. Ar- 

 ticles are not wrapped in paper ; customers must get them 

 home the best way they can. Ladies of the higher class sel- 

 dom go out shopping, but send for samples. It is consider- 

 ed disgraceful to either sex to be seen carrying any thing 

 through the streets of Quito. The common people buy 



