80 The Andes and the Amazon. 



suing law, and eighteen medicine. There are eleven pro- 

 fessors. They receive no fees from the students, but an 

 annual salary of §300. The library contains eleven thou- 

 sand volumes, nearly all old Latin, Spanish, and French 

 works. The cabinet is a bushel of stones cast into one cor- 

 ner of a lumber-room, covered with dust, and crying out in 

 vain for a man in the University to name them. The Col- 

 lege of Tacunga has forty-five students ; a fine chemical 

 and philosophical apparatus, but no one to handle it ; and 

 a set of rocks from Europe, but only a handful from Ecua- 

 dor. The College of Riobamba has four professors, and 

 one hundred and twenty students. In the common schools, 

 the pupils study in concert aloud, Arab fashion. There are 

 four papers in the republic ; two in Guayaquil, one in Cu- 

 enca, and one in Quito. El Nacional^ of the capital, is an 

 ofiicial organ, not a newspaper ; it contains fourteen duo- 

 decimo pages, and is published occasionally by the Minis- 

 ter of the Interior. Like the Gazeta of Madrid, it is one 

 of the greatest satires ever deliberately published by any 

 people on itself. There is likewise but one paper in Cuzco, 

 El Triumfo del Pueblo. 



The amusements of Quito are few, and not very amus- 

 ing. Indo-Castilian blood runs too slowly for merry-mak- 

 ing. There are no operas or concerts, no theatres or lec- 

 tures, no museums or menageries. For dramas they have 

 revolutions ; for menageries, bull-baitings. A bull-bait is 

 not a bull-fight. There is no coliseum or amphitheatre ; no 

 matador gives the scientific death-wound. Unlike their 

 fraternity in the ring of Seville, where they are doomed to 

 die, the animals are only doomed to be pothered ; they are 

 " scotched, not killed." They are teased and tormented by 

 yelling crowds, barking dogs, brass bands, red ponchos, tail- 

 pulling, fire-crackers, wooden lances, and such like. The 

 Plaza de Toros is the Plaza de San Francisco. This sj)ort 



