Monsters unknown to northern waters can be seen from the decks of the steamers, and at night their movements about the vessel are shown by a line of fire which always follows their fins. The water is so strongly impregnated with phosphorus that every wave is tipped with silver, and every fish that darts about leaves a brilliant trail like that of a comet. The larger fishes, the sharks and porpoises, find great sport in racing with the ships; and under the bowsprit a school of them were to be seen every evening, sailing beside our vessel, darting back and forth before it, leaping over and plunging under one another. Every motion was apparent, and the outlines of their bodies were as distinct as if they were drawn with a pencil of fire. Nowhere else is this phenomenon so conspicuous.

Near the mouth of the river Guayaquil is the island of Puna, where Pizarro first landed, and where he waited with a squad of thirteen men while the deserters from his expedition went back to Panama in his ships, promising to send reinforce ments, which afterward came. Beside Puna is the famous Isla del Muerto (dead man's island), which looks like a corpse floating in the water. Just below, and the northernmost town of Peru, is Tum

NATIVES OF ECUADOR.

bez, where Pizarro met the messengers from Atahuallpa's army, who came to ask the object of his visit.

Behind Tumbez are the petroleum deposits of Peru, which have been known to the natives ever since the times of the Incas, but they were ignorant of the character or the value of the oil. A

Yankee by the name of Larkin, from Western New York, went down there to sell kerosene, and recognized in the material which the Indians used for lubricating and coloring purposes the same article he was peddling. Attempts have been made to utilize the deposits, which are very extensive, but so far they have not been successful in producing a burning fluid that is either safe or agreeable.

At each of the little ports on the coast the steamer stops and takes on produce for shipment to Liverpool or Germany. These towns are usually collections of mud-huts, dreary, dusty, and dirty; and are inhabited by fishermen or the employes of the steamship company. Back in the country, along the streams which bring fertility and water from the mountains, are places of commercial importance, the residences of rich hacienda owners, and the scenes of historic events as well as of prehistoric civilization. The products of the country are sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton, while those of the towns are "Panama hats" and fleas. In each of the ports the natives are busy braiding hats from vegetable fibres, and the results of their labor find a market at Panama and in the cities of the coast, where, as in Mexico, a man's wealth is

judged by what he wears on his head. The hats are usually made of toquilla, or pita, an arborescent plant of the cactus family, the leaves of which are often several yards long. When cut, the leaf is dried, and then whipped into shreds almost as fine and tough as silk. Some hats are made of single fibres, without a splice or an end from the centre of the crown to the rim. It often requires two or three months to make them, and the best ones are braided under water, as the fibre is more pliable when immersed. The cost of a single hat is sometimes two hundred and fifty dollars, but such last a lifetime, and can be packed in a vestpocket, or worn inside out, each side being as smooth and well finished as the other. The natives make beautiful cigarcases too; but it is difficult for a stranger to purchase either these or the hats, be

cause they have an idea that all travelers are rich, and will pay any price that is asked. One old lady produced a cigarcase, such as is sold in Japanese stores for one or two dollars, and politely offered to sell it for twenty dollars. When I told her I could get a silver one for that price, she came down to eighteen dollars, then to twelve dollars, and finally to one dollar. They have no idea of the value of money, and are habitually imposed upon by local traders, who exchange food for their work at merely nominal rates, and then sell the hats at enormous figures.

When the steamer stops, an army of officials come aboard at each port, to get a good dinner or breakfast, and a cocktail or two, at the expense of the steamship company. They wear swords and gay uniforms, and there is usually one inspector, or other official, for every ten packages of merchandise. First is the Captain of the Port, with his retinue; then the Governor of the District, with his staff; then the Collector of Customs, with a battalion of inspectors; and, finally, the Comandante of the military garrison and all his subordinates. The deck of the vessel fairly swarms with them, and as the steamer's arrival is the only event to give variety to the monotony of their lives, they celebrate it for all it is worth. There is little wonder that the governments of the South American countries are poor, with all

these tax-eaters at every little town of four or five hundred inhabitants.

There are many more railroads than is generally supposed. Nearly all of the coast towns have a line connecting them with the plantations of the interior; and as there are no harbors, but only open roadsteads, expensive iron piers have been constructed through the surf from which merchandise is lifted into barges or lighters and taken to the ships, which anchor a mile or so from the shore. Where there are no piers, the lighters are loaded at low water, run through the surf when the tide is high, and then floated off to buoys to await the arrival of vessels.

A system of "deck trading" is carried on by the people of the country all along the coast. Men and women come on board the steamer, with fruits, market produce and other articles, which are strewn about the deck, and sold to people who visit the vessel at each port. These traders are charged passage-money and freight by the steamship companies, and are a nuisance to the other passengers. Each female trader brings a mattress to sleep upon, a chair to use during the day, her own cooking and chamber utensils, and spends a great part of her life sailing from one port to another.

Guayaquil has the same longitude as Washington, and is only two degrees south of the equator. It is sixty miles from the sea, on a river which looks like

the Mississippi at New Orleans, and it stretches along the low banks for more than two miles. So brilliant are the terraces of gas-lamps, rising one above the other, as the town slopes upward toward the mountains, that one's first impression, if he arrives at night, is that the ship has anchored in front of a South American Paris. When morning dawns the deception is renewed, and a picture of Venice is presented, with long lines of white buildings, whose curtained balconies look down upon the gayly clad men and women that float upon the river in narrow, quaint-looking gondolas and broad-bosomed rafts. Unless he is forewarned, the traveler meets with a very unpleasant surprise upon disembarking; for the gondolas are nothing but "dug-outs" bringing pine-apples and bananas from up the river; the rafts are balsam-logs lashed together with vines; and the houses, which look as if they had been erected by an architectural lunatic, and would tumble into the river with the first gust of wind, are dilapidated skeletons of bamboo with a thin veneering of white-washed plaster. The streets are dirty and have a repulsive smell, and the half-naked Indians who

FLOATING HOUSES AT GUAYAQUIL.

throng them are continually scratching their bodies and their heads. Half the filth that festers under the tropic sun in Guayaquil would breed a sudden pestilence in New York or Chicago, yet the in

habitants say it is a healthy city, and that yellow-fever nor cholera never visits it. A narrow-gauge street railway, or tramvia, as they call it, runs a couple of miles across the city; and upon its cars the products are brought from the plantations to be transferred by lighters to outgoing vessels.

When the steamer arrives, the passengers are immediately surrounded by a crowd of boatmen, who clamber up the sides of the vessel, screaming with all the strength of their lungs the merits of their craft. Their vociferousness and persistency would make the Niagara Falls hack men blue with envy; and the fact that most of them are almost nude makes the scene picturesque, though somewhat alarming to a timid person. The costume of the Ecuador boatmen is equivalent to a pair of cotton bathing-trunks, and they are as much at home in the water as in their canoes.

With twenty-five or thirty of these naked black men pulling and pushing one another, screaming, gesticulating, and performing a war-dance of the most extraordinary description, a nervous man is apt to be deceived by appearances, and imagine that he has fallen into the hands

of a tribe of hungry cannibals, instead of a party of innocent Sambos who wish to promote his welfare. As soon as these maniacs discovered that our party were Americans they were smart enough to introduce into their bedlam as much of our mother tongue as they could command, which made the occasion all the more amusing. One big fellow, black as midnight, with only about half a yard of muslin and a dilapidated Panama hat to protect his person from the elements, jumped up and down, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Me Americano! me Americano! me been to Baltimoore!" Becoming interested in the fellow, we learned that he had been a sailor on a Spanish manof-war which several years ago visited that city.

Among the crowd of howling dervises

was a pleasant-looking fellow with a whole pair of pantaloons and a linen duster. He was not so noisy as the others, and could speak a little English. Taking him aside, I told him how large our party

tiful scene of tropical vegetation in its full glory, and no artist ever mixed colors that could convey an adequate idea of nature's gorgeousness there. The most beautiful thing in the tropics is a young palmtree. The old ones are more graceful than any of our foliage plants, but they all show signs of decay. The young ones, so supple as to bend before the winds, are the perfection of grace and loveliness, as picturesque in repose as they are in motion. The long, spreading leaves, of a vivid green, bend and sway with the

was, and where we wanted to go. He agreed to take us and our luggage ashore for two dollars, and was at once engaged; whereupon, instead of going off and minding their own business, the crowd began to abuse Pepe and his patrons in the most violent manner. When the baggage was brought up they seized upon it, and each man attempted to carry a piece into his own boat; but the mate of the steamer was equal to the occasion, and laid about him with so much energy that the deck was soon cleared.

The street railway extends only to the limits of the city, but a short walk beyond it gives one a glimpse of the rural tropics. At one end of the main street, which runs along the river front, is a fortress-crowned hill, from the summit of which a charming view of the surrounding country can be obtained, but the better plan is to take a carriage and drive out a few miles. The road is rough and dusty, but passes pineapple plants and banana trees bending under the enormous loads of fruit they bear, among cocoa-nut groves and sugar plantations, through forests fairly blazing with the wondrous passion-flower, so scarlet as to make the trees look like living fire. The rickety old carriage we engaged rolled along until our senses were almost bewildered. Nowhere can one find a more beau

STREET CORNER, GUAYAQUIL.

breeze, and nod in the sunlight with a beauty no other tree possesses.

Founded in 1535 by one of the lieutenants of Pizarro, Guayaquil has been the market for five hundred miles of coast ever since, but now it is almost destitute of native capital. Nearly all the merchants are foreigners, chiefly English and German, with one or two from the United States. It is the only place in Ecuador in which modern civilization exists. The rest of the country is a century behind the age. Since its foundation, Guayaquil has been burned several times, and often plundered by pirates. Now its commercial condition seems secure from all danger, except the revolutions, which are epidemic in this section. Earthquakes are frequent, but the elastic bamboos only tremble-they never fall. Touched by the