rest of the city appears deserted in comparison. The British steamers from Panama and Payta arrive weekly; Yankee steam-boats make regular trips up and down the Guayas and its tributaries; half a dozen sailing vessels, principally French, are usually lying in the stream, which is here six fathoms deep; and hundreds of canoes are gliding to and fro. But the balsas are the most original, and, therefore, the most attractive sight. These are rafts made of light balsa wood, so buoyant as to be used in coasting voyages. They were invented by the old Peruvians, and are the homes of a literally floating population. By these and the smaller craft are brought to the mole of the Malecon, besides articles for exportation, a boundless variety of fruits—pine-apples (whose quality has made Guayaquil famous), oranges, lemons, limes, plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, alligator pears, papayas, mangos, guavas, melons, etc.; many an undescribed species of fish known only to the epicure, and barrels or jars of water from a distant point up the river, out of the reach of the tide and the city sewers. Ice is frequently brought from Chimborazo, and sold for $1 per pound. A flag hoisted at a favorite café announces that snow has arrived from the mountains, and that ice-cream can be had. The market, held every morning by the river side, is an animated scene. The strife of the half-naked fishmongers, the cry of the swarthy fruit-dealers—"Pinas!" "Naranjas!" etc., and the song of the itinerant dulce-peddler—"Tamales!" mingled with the bray of the water-bearing donkeys as they trot through the town, never fail to arrest the attention of every traveler.

But there is another sight more attractive still—one worth a long voyage, for Nature nowhere else repeats the picture. From the balconies of Guayaquil can be seen on a clear day the long, towering range of the Andes. We may forget all the incidents in our subsequent journey, but the impression produced by that glorious view is unfading. The sun had nearly touched the Pacific when the clouds, which for days had wrapped the Cordilleras[9] in misty robes, suddenly rose like a curtain. There stood, in inconceivable grandeur, one of the stupendous products of the last great revolution of the earth's crust, as a geologist would say, but, in the language of history, the lofty home of the Incas, made illustrious by the sword of Pizarro and the pen of Prescott. On the right a sea of hills rose higher and higher, till they culminated in the purple mountains of Assuay. Far to the left, one hundred miles northeasterly, the peerless Chimborazo lifted its untrodden and unapproachable summit above its fellows—an imposing background to lesser mountains and stately forests. The great dome reflected dazzlingly the last blushes of the west, its crown of snow fringed with black lines, which were the steep and sharp edges of precipitous rocks. It was interesting to watch the mellowing tints on the summit as the shadows crept upward: gold, vermilion, violet, purple, were followed by a momentary "glory;" then darkness covered the earth, and a host of stars, "trembling with excess of light," burst suddenly into view over the peaks of the Andes.

Bidding "adios" to our Guayaquilian friends, we took passage in one of Captain Lee's little steamers to Bodegas, seventy miles up the river. The Ecuadorian government, strange to say, does not patronize these steamers, but carries the Quito mail in a canoe. The Guayas is a sluggish stream, its turbid waters starting from the slope of the Andes, and flowing through a low, level tract, covered with varied forms of vegetable life. Forests of the broad-leaved plantain and banana line the banks. The fruit is the most common article of food in equatorial America, and is eaten raw, roasted, baked, boiled, and fried. It grows on a succulent stem formed of sheath-like leaf-stalks rolled over one another, and terminating in enormous light green, glossy blades nearly ten feet long by two feet wide, so delicate that the slightest wind will tear them transversely. Each tree (vulgarly called "the tree of paradise") produces fruit but once, and then dies. A single bunch often weighs 60 or 70 pounds; and Humboldt calculated that 33 pounds of wheat and 99 pounds of potatoes require the same space of ground as will produce 4000 pounds of bananas. They really save more labor than steam, giving the greatest amount of food from a given piece of ground with the least labor. They are always found where the palm is; but their original home is the foot of the Himalayas. The banana (by some botanists considered a different species from the plantain) is about four inches long, and cylindrical, and is eaten raw. The plantain is twice as large and prismatic, and uncooked is unhealthy. There is another variety, platanos de Otaheite, which resembles the banana in size and quality, but is prismatic.

A belt of jungle and impenetrable brushwood intervenes, and then cacao and coffee plantations, vast in extent, arrest the eye. Passing these, the steamer brings you alongside of broad fields covered with the low, prickly pine-apple plant; the air is fragrant with a rich perfume wafted from a neighboring grove of oranges and lemons; the mango spreads its dense, splendid foliage, and bears a golden fruit, which, though praised by many, tastes to us like a mixture of tow and turpentine; the exotic bread-tree waves its fig-like leaves and pendent fruit; while high over all the beautiful cocoa-palm lifts its crown of glory.[10] Animal life does not compare with this luxuriant growth. The steamer-bound traveler may see a few monkeys, a group of gallinazos, and many brilliant, though songless birds; but the chief representative is the lazy, ugly alligator. Large numbers of these monsters may be seen on the mud-bank basking in the hot sun, or asleep with their mouths wide open.

Eight hours after leaving the Malecon we arrived at Bodegas, a little village of two thousand souls, rejoicing in the synonym of Babahoyo. This has been a place of deposit for the interior from the earliest times. In the rainy season the whole site is flooded, and only the upper stories are habitable. Cock-fighting seems to be the chief amusement. We breakfasted with the governor, a portly gentleman who kept a little dry-goods store. His excellency, without waiting for a formal introduction, and with a cordiality and courtesy almost confined to the Latin nations, received us into his own house, and honored us with a seat at his private table, spread with the choicest viands of his kingdom, serving them himself with a grace to which we can not do justice. Much as we find to condemn in tropical society, we can not forget the kindness of these simple-hearted people. Though we may portray, in the coming pages, many faults and failings according to a New York standard, we wish it to be understood that there is another side to the picture; that there are virtues on the Andes to which the North is well-nigh a stranger. "How many times (says an American resident of ten years) I have arrived at a miserable hut in the heart of the mountains, tired and hungry, after traveling all day without any other companion than the arriero, to receive a warm-hearted welcome, the best, perhaps the only chair or hammock offered to me, the fattest chicken in the yard killed on my account, and more than once they have compelled me by force to take the only good bed,