CHAP. XX INDIANS OF ECUADOR 257 
are a sad and sullen people. The features, especially 
of the women, seem haggard with care and sullen 
misery. Yet, despite their sordid surroundings, 
the Ouitonians appear to possess the sentiment of 
form and colour in the highest degree. Notwith- 
standing the rigid formulas and conventionalities 
to which the priests have enslaved them, many of 
the Mestizoes and even of the full-blood Indians 
succeed in executing really remarkable religious 
paintings as well as sculptures of Christs and 
Madonnas, works greatly admired in Peru and 
other South American countries, to which they are 
regularly exported. But the natives have lost one 
artistic industry — inlaid work in costly woods. It 
has been noticed also that neither his extreme 
poverty nor the dull existence to which he is con- 
demned has prevented the Ecuadorean from 
distinguishing himself by the elegant cut and har- 
moniously-blended colours of his native costumes." 
We seem to have here the surviving remnants 
of a people with high capabilities, who have been 
so crushed down by centuries of slavery and repres- 
sion, combined with the struggle against the forces 
of nature in some of their most terrible aspects, 
as to have become degraded both physically and 
mentally, while still exhibiting unmistakable traces 
of the higher civilisation and more sympathetic 
government they enjoyed under the Incas.] 
VOL. II 
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