240 
A JOURNEY IN ECUADOR 
rough road from Guayaquil to Quito, crossing the Andes at an 
elevation of 14,0rX) feet just south of Chimborazo. 
On the journey from Tumaco I was accompanied by an English- 
man named Nelson. The first day out we stoi)ped for the night 
in this interior channel. The vegetation was dense and thick, and 
])arasitic vines stretched completely across the waterway. Many 
different kinds of parrots combined with innumerable insects 
and lizards and a few monkeys to make night hideous ; and 
when a sharj), curious noise like a dog-bark caused my friend 
to thrust his head from under his leafy canopy in the canoe to 
inquire, “ What is that noi.se?” I answered “An equi snake.” 
Nelson dropj>ed back under his ranch, and when he ventured 
out in the morning remarked, “ What an infernal country, when 
even the snakes bark ! ” 
We followed the inland passage to the mouth of Rio Santiago 
and ascended this river 12 miles to Borhon. The pa.ssage was 
so narrow and the vegetation so thick as to give the impression 
of floating through a forest. At Borhon we found a warehouse 
which thereafter served as our base of supplies. The Spaniards 
knew of gold jdacers on the Santiago over two hundred 3’^ears 
ago and brought in negro slaves to work them. The descendants 
of these .slaves now peoi)le one branch of the river, numbering 
over 1 ,500. The\^ crowded out the natives (the Cayapas Indians, 
about 1,000 in number), who retired to another fork of the same 
river. At Borhon the Santiago forks, the left (northern) and 
decidedl}' smaller branch retaining the name, while the right 
fork is called Cayapas, after the native tribe. The old semi- 
civilization of South America and Central America seems to 
have been confined to the elevated j)lateaus, particularly in Peru 
and Ecuador, and there onlv do we find ruins of the remarkable 
Imildings constructed by the Incas, such as those of Quito, Cuzco, 
and Lake Titicaca. When Pizarro conquered this region in the 
earlier half of the sixteenth century many of these people fled 
before the conquistador and established new homes along the 
banks of these torrential rivers, which plunge into the Pacific 
after a limited course, usuall}" 75 to KK) miles. These rivers 
would seem magnificent if the}' were not surpa.ssed by the gran- 
deur of their neighbors, the Orinoco and the Amazon. Santiago 
river and its branches rise in the snowy crest of the Andes, and 
the Cayapas Indians are })robably descendants of the Chimec or 
Chibcha, who, conquered neither by Inca nor Spaniard, retired 
to remote districts and held themselves aloof from strangers. 
