54 The Andes and the Amazon. 



night's rest in Latacunga, she awoke with her skin marked 

 all over with red spots, as if from an eruptive disease. "We 

 can certify that we have been tattoed without the night's 

 rest. The town has a most stupid and forlorn aspect. 

 Half of it is in ruins. It was four times destroyed between 

 1698 and 1797. In 1756 the Jesuit church was thrown 

 down, tliough its walls were five feet thick. The houses 

 are of one story, and built of pumice, widely different from 

 the palaces and temples which are said to have stood here 

 in the palmy days of the Incas. Cotopaxi stands threaten- 

 ingly near, and its rumbling thunder is the source of con- 

 stant alarm. 



From Latacunga to Quito there is a very fine carriage 

 road, the result of one man's administration — Seiior G. 

 Garcia Moreno. For many miles it passes over an unculti- 

 vated plateau, strewn with volcanic fragments. The farms 

 are confined to the slopes of the Cordilleras, and, as every 

 where else, the tumbling haciendas indicate the increasing 

 poverty of the owner. Superstition and indolence go hand 

 in hand. On a great rock rising out of the sandy plain they 

 show a print of the foot of St. Bartholomew, who alighted 

 here on a ^ isit — surely to the volcanoes, as it was long be- 

 fore the red man had found this valley. Abreast of Coto- 

 paxi the road ciits through high hills of fine pumice inter- 

 stratified with black earth, and rapidly ascends till it reach- 

 es Tiupullo, eleven thousand five hundred feet above the 

 sea. This high ridge,* stretching across the valley from 

 Cotopaxi to Iliniza, is a part of the great water-shed of 

 the continent — the waters on the southern slope fiowing 

 through the Pastassa and Amazon to the Atlantic, those 

 on the north finding their way to the Pacific by the Rio 

 Esmeraldas. At this bleak place we breakfasted on punch 

 and guinea-pig. 



* Sometimes called Chisinche. 



