CHAP. V. 



MY YOUNG FBJENDS. 



103 



of the country, is '^a great cavalier/ and if he is decently mounted 

 he may aspire to marry any woman in the land. 



In the evening, when traffic ceased, the youth of the fau- 

 hourg turned out for the only pastime they enjoyed, which 

 consisted in whacking a huge ball in the air by clubs 

 fastened around their wrists. The Christian names of 

 the children of this place were of the fanciful kind 

 common in Ecuador. Fidelity might be seen playing 

 with Conception, or Incarnation running after Immor- 

 tality. They became useful as collectors, and angled 

 for reptiles which they would not dare to touch, and 

 brought them in alive, dangling from cotton nooses 

 at the end of sticks.^ ''What/^ my young friends 

 timidly enquired of the dusky Indian youth who was 

 nominal waiter and actual slave at the tambo, ^* does 

 the Senor Doctor do with all these things ? '^ and, when 

 it was heard that they were collected with a view to 

 the future, the rumour was circulated that we lived 

 on lizards and frogs, and were thought more odd than 

 before. 



Machachi reposes upon a series of strata of vol- 

 canic ash or dust which must have been emitted dur- 

 ing eruptions incomparably more severe than any that 

 are recorded. The sections which can be seen by the 

 sides of the lanes shew this very clearly. In one that 

 was exposed in the road nearly opposite to the tambo, 

 leading to the village proper, the surface soil which 

 was under cultivation was about six feet deep, composed of a mis- 

 cellaneous assemblage of volcanic debris. This was followed by 

 a horizontal stratum of the finest ash, ten inches thick, almost 

 as soft to the touch as cotton -wool. It was perfectly uniform 

 in character throughout ; composed of infinitesimal fragments, 



1 Nothing would induce Ecuadorians — either whites or Indians — to touch 

 lizards, and they were almost equally afraid to handle frogs. 



