OVER TRAIL AND THROUGH JUNGLE IN ECUADOR 



345 



CROSSING A CRUDE NATIVE BRIDGE WHICH SPANS THE UDUSHAPA RIVER 



The interandean region is cut up by many streams. Often they have cut great gorges or 

 ravines with steep slopes and eroded configurations. The gorge of the Udushapa is a wild 

 region, a deep gash into the high plateau, where heavy rains bring down a turbid torrent. 



vested, the stalks are piled up to a depth 

 of a foot or two and domestic animals 

 are driven around and around over them. 



Any animal may be used, and, if the 

 farmer is poor and has but a small harvest, 

 his wife and children may trample out 

 the grain. The ripened grain is easily 

 shaken and broken out of the husk and 

 gradually sifts down through the coarser 

 chaff. 



The winnowing is done with the aid of 

 the wind. Bowls of the mixed grain and 

 chaff are poured out from the height of a 

 man's head, and the wind whisks the light 

 chaff to one side. 



Mills for grinding grain are available in 

 the more thickly settled districts, but in 

 many places wheat, barley, corn, peas, etc., 

 are ground up into flour and meal upon 

 flat stones by hand. Practically every 

 step of harvesting, of whatever crop, is 

 done by hand in the rural districts, and 

 even such a task as picking over minute 

 grains of rice does not seem to daunt 

 these people. 



Almost all of the sugar used by the 

 natives of Ecuador is of their own manu- 



facture. The sugar-mill consists of a 

 series, two or three, of wood or brass 

 rollers, operated by a long sweep, to which 

 is hitched a yoke of oxen or mules. A 

 child drives the oxen around their endless 

 course and keeps them from stopping 

 completely, although their pace is snail- 

 like at best ; nor is it accelerated by the 

 fact that the small driver is generally en- 

 grossed in personal sugar-milling on a 

 small scale, with a long section of the 

 juicy cane clutched in one fist. 



The juice from the rollers drops down 

 into a trough which carries it into a re- 

 ceptacle at one end of the shed, and thence 

 it is conveyed to a huge copper kettle to 

 be boiled down and eventually form small 

 brown cakes of crude sugar. 



THE QUICHUA WOMAN IS ALWAYS 

 SPINNING 



The Ecuadoreans keep many sheep and 

 goats and most of the Quichua clothing 

 is made from the wool the Indians them- 

 selves raise. In the higher Andean val- 

 leys this wool is long and of a fine tex- 

 ture, and a rather unusual feature is the 



