XX 
AMBATO 
227 
were in the churches — the buildings that suffered 
most. On that day Dr. Taylor of Riobamba 
and his son were my guests, and (along with my 
lad) we were riding down the valley to eat peaches 
at a neighbouring farm. Singularly enough, neither 
we nor our horses felt the shock, although it was 
a very long one ; but all on a sudden we saw 
people running out of their houses, and clouds of 
dust rising up among the hills. A little way farther 
on several tons of earth had been shaken down 
across our path, and we passed the debris with 
difficulty, and not without risk that more might fall 
and crush us. Below the farm, the cliff bounding 
the valley had slid down for a length of 200 
yards, and the people of the farm had been half 
choked and blinded with the dust raised by the fall. 
In the town of Ambato itself no damage was done 
beyond the cracking of a few very old and of some 
very new walls. On the following day, about 2 p.m., 
I was startled by hearing the family of my neigh- 
bour (and landlord) run shrieking into the yard, 
crying out " Temblor ! temblor !" I ran out myself 
just in time to see the walls of an unfinished house, 
which an ambitious shopkeeper had been rearing 
close by to the imprudent height of three stories, 
crumble to the ground. The adobes had not got 
" set," and the earthquake had cracked several of 
them; hence the downfall of the whole. Fortunately, 
nobody was injured by the fall. 
I have been entrusted by the India Govern- 
ment with the charge of obtaining seeds and young 
plants of the different sorts of Cinchona (Peruvian 
Bark) found in the Ouitonian Andes for transporting 
to our Eastern possessions, where it is proposed to 
