tagion spread to Ecuador, and some ambitious English capitalists attempted to lay a road from Guayaquil to the interior. A track seventeen miles long was built, which represents the railway system of Ecuador in all the geographies, gazetteers, and books of statistics; but no wheels ever passed over the rails, and the tropical vegetation has grown so luxuriantly about the place where they lie that it would now be difficult to find thm. Last year a telegraph line was built connecting Guayaquil with Quito, the highest city in the world, but there is only one wire, and that is practically useless, as not more than seven days out of the month can a message be sent over it. The people chop down the poles for firewood, and cut out pieces of wire to repair broken harness whenever they feel so disposed. Then it often takes a week for the line-man to find the break, and another week to repair it. In the Government telegraph office I saw an operator with a ball and chain attached to his leg—a convict who had been sent back to his post because no one else could be found to work the instrument. A female clerk took the message and the money. There is a cable, belonging to a New York company, connecting Guayaquil with the outside world, but rates are extremely high, the tariff to the United States being three dollars a word, and to other places in proportion.

Although nearly under the equator, the temperature of Guayaquil seldom rises above ninety, and after two o'clock in the day it is always as cool as a pleasant summer morning in New England. A fresh breeze called the chandny blows over the ice-capped mountains, and brings health to a city which would otherwise be uninhabitable. On clear afternoons, Mount Chimborazo, or "Chimbo," as they call it for short, until recently supposed to be the highest in the hemisphere, can be seen, white, jagged, and silently impressive against the clear sky.

The road to Quito is a mountain path around the base of Chimbo, traversed on foot or mule-back, and then only six months of the year, for in bad weather it is impassable, except to experienced mountaineers.

During the rainy season the President, Señor Don José Maria Caamaño, resides

VOL. VIII.-14

in Guayaquil, in a barracks surrounded by soldiers, where he can watch the collection of customs, and see to the sup pression of revolutions. He is the representative of the Church party, and the people of the interior are loyal to him; but the liberal element which most y exists on the coast, where a knowledge of the world has come, is in a perpetual state of revolt, and requires constant attention. A fortress overlooking the town of Guayaquil, and a gun-boat in the harbor, keep the people in subjection. We called upon the President at his headquarters, and found him swinging in a hammock and smoking a cigarette. He is a man of slight frame, with noticeably small hands and feet, which he appeared quite anxious should not escape our observation. He has a pleasant, intelligent face, but seemed to be bewildered when we drew him into conversation about the commerce of his country. He was educated in Europe, and has the reputation of being a man of culture.

Although the rest of the country is still in the middle ages, Guayaquil shows symptoms of becoming a modern town. It has gas, street-cars, ice-factories, and other improvements, all introduced by citizens of the United States. The custom-house is built of pine from Maine and corrugated iron from Pennsylvania, and a citizen of New York erected it. An American company has on the river a line of paddle-wheel steamers, constructed in Baltimore; and the only gunboat the Government owns is a discarded merchant-ship which plied between New York and Norfolk. Some of the houses, although built of split bamboo and plaster, are very elegantly furnished, and the stores show fine stocks of goods. But the poorer part of the city is so filthy that one has to hold his nose as he passes through it. The people live in miserable dirt-hovels, and the buzzard is the only industrious biped to be seen.

There is no fresh-water supply in town; what the people use is brought on rafts from twenty miles up the river, and peddled about the place in casks carried upon the backs of donkeys or men. It looks very funny to see the donkeys all wearing pantalettes-not, however, from motives of modesty, as the native children go entirely naked,

and the men and women nearly so-but to protect their legs and bellies from the fierce bites of the gadfly. Bread is sold about the town in the same way; and vegetables are brought down the river on rafts and in dug-outs, which are hauled upon the beach in long rows, and present a busy and interesting scene. Guayaquil is famous for the finest pineapples in the world-great juicy fruits, as white as snow and as sweet as honey.

One afternoon, at Guayaquil, I witnessed a singular ceremony which is, however, very common there. One of the churches had been destroyed by earthquake, and funds were needed to repair it. So the priest clad in his sacerdotal vestments, took the image of the Virgin from the altar, and the holy sacrament, and carried them about the city under a canopy. He was preceded by a brass band, a number of boys carrying lighted candles and swinging incense urns, and followed by a long procession of men, women, and children. The assemblage passed up and down the principal street, stopping in front of each house. While the band played, priests with contribution plates entered the houses, soliciting subscriptions, and the people in the procession kneeled in the dust and prayed that the same might be given with liberality. Where money was obtained, a blessing was bestowed; where none was offered a curse was pronounced, with a notice that a contribution was expected at once, or the curse would be daily repeated.

All imported goods are first brought to Guayaquil, and from that point distributed. Those destined for Quito are conveyed by a steamboat up the river for a distance of sixty miles. From the termination of the steamboat route to Quito is two hundred and sixty more, making the total distance from Guayaquil three hundred and twenty miles. Between the upper end of the steamboat route and Quito all packages of merchandise that do not weigh more than two hundred pounds are conveyed on the backs of horses, mules, or donkeys. The average cost in United States cur rency-in which all values are statedis four dollars per one hundred pounds between Guayaquil and Quito. Pianos,

organs, safes, carriage-bodies, large mirrors, and some other articles too heavy or too bulky to be carried on a single horse are placed on a frame of bamboo poles and borne on the shoulders of men the entire land portion of the journey. A piano weighing about six hundred pounds can be carried by twenty-four men, one half serving as a relay to the other. Although labor is very low-priced, this man-carriage is quite expensive. A cartroad, or railroad, both of which are feasible and practicable, would greatly reduce the expense of transportation, and would materially influence domestic manufactures, as well as the introduction of foreign manufactured products. It seems almost impossible that any American goods could, after undergoing such a very costly carriage, compete with native manufactures, however crude, in Quito; and yet they do. Nearly all the furniture in use in that city is brought in separate parts from the United States, and put together on arrival; and in that, the highest city in America, many people sleep on Grand Rapids beds. The twelve breweries running in Quito import their hops from the United States and Europe, and with railroad facilities American beer, as well as hops, could be liberally sold in Quito. American refined sugars are largely consumed, although the native products are good.

Ecuador, with about one million inhabitants, has only forty-seven postoffices, but they are so widely distributed that it requires a mail carriage of 5,389 miles to reach them all; seventy-two miles by canoes, and 5,317 by horses and mules. About five hundred miles of the seaboard is also covered by foreign steamship mail service. Between Quito and Guayaquil there are two mails each way weekly by couriers-the usual time one way, traveling day and night, being six days. Other sections of the country are less favored, the receipt and departure of mails ranging from once a week to once a month, as people happen to be going.

During the year 1885 there were carried within the country 2,989,885 letters, eighty per cent. of them being between Guayaquil and the neighboring towns, and 50,000 letters were sent to foreign countries. No interior postage is charged

on newspapers, whether of domestic or foreign publication. Interior letter postage is five cents each one-fourth of an ounce. The postage to foreign countries is twelve cents each half ounce on letters, and one cent an ounce on newspapers.

organization of them. They are like the old minstrels that we read of in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. They practice medicine, sing songs, cure diseased cattle, mend clocks, carry letters and messages from place to place, and peddle such little articles as are used in the households of the natives. Going invariably on foot, and carrying packs upon their backs, it often takes them three or four years to make a round trip. When their stock is exhausted they replenish it at the nearest source of supply. They are welcome visitors at the homes of the natives. This internal trade does not amount to much in dollars and cents, but it supplies the lack of retail establishments and

III.

IT is three hours since we left the great mob in the Bowery, and half an hour since that in Union Square received so terrible a chastisement, now so terribly avenged. The first move of the Bowery mob was to attack the nearby savings banks. The Dry Dock bank which had not opened its doors that morning, except to admit anxious officers, frightened clerks and a number of special watchmen, heavily armed, was first visited. Stones were hurled through the windows, and, with loud yells and threats, the surrender of the bank was demanded. The cool-headed Anarchists, however, knew better than to waste precious time in parleying. The mob was ordered back into the middle of the street, and in a moment a solitary bomb had blown in the doors and brought down a great mass of masonry, leaving space large enough for a score of men to enter abreast. With an exultant yell the surging crowd pressed forward for the plunder; quickly bore down the feeble, because hopeless opposition within, and in a few moments more had beaten and trampled to death all the guardians of the bank's

treasure.

But the great vaults were closed. There was no time now to hunt for milder means! "Clear the building!" and again a bomb was thrown from the middle of the street into the counting-room. Examination showed that the treasure was not yet exposed, and a second attempt brought the money within reach, though under a heap of débris. Here the mob elbowed and fought for hours, swarming, like ants, upon the ruins. It was night before all the spoil had been dug from beneath the wreck.

The leaders learned a lesson. A number then went to the Bleecker Street bank, blew in its doors, massacred its defenders, and with smaller quantities of explosives blew open the iron doors of vaults and safes, and without loss of time appropriated the contents. The Bowery Savings Bank came next; and as the great mass of now crazed men moved down town, those who were not early enough at one bank to see promise of liberal rewards, moved rapidly on to the next.

The Anarchist managers left the banks for the thoughtless rabble, and bent their steps eagerly towards the Sub-Treasury. Here, in one building, was over two

hundred millions of gold, silver and treasury notes, according to the balances published the night before; an amount twice as large as the coin and legal tenders held by all the banks of deposit. If the Bowery and Broadway were rich prizes what would be the Sub-Treasury? A few armed men were gathered and hastily thrown into the building, and the doors were barricaded with desks and furniture, but a wind-break of bulrushes might as well have been set up against a cyclone!

The long-headed Anarchists knew that this was their greatest and grandest opportunity. Several covered wagons were brought to the vicinity of the building, with orders to drive to the Pine Street entrance as soon as the Wall Street door had been forced. The mob was not large when it first appeared in Wall Street, but among the foremost this time were the orators, writers and principal agitators, bent on receiving, as their due, the lion's share of the day's spoils; the jackal's share was enough for the hordes whom they had at last succeeded in rousing to frenzy.

A little later a man was lifted upon the brawny shoulders of half-a-dozen whiskered patriots from Poland and Bohemia, until he could reach the shoulders of the heroic bronze statue of the First American, which stood in front of the structure, upon the spot where he had taken the oath of office as the first President of the United States. A rope was passed up and fastened about the statue's neck; a cheer of derisive triumph arose from the mob as the end of the long rope was passed down and out to them, and in another moment this memorial of Washington had plunged headlong to the pavement. The head was broken from the body, and the right hand that had been outstretched to take the oath, bounded away from the trunk, and was instantly appropriated by the editor of the Anarchistic organ to decorate his sanctum. It was almost as good as the key of the Bastile!

Then a bomb flew with perfect aim against the massive doors; a huge breach was made. The leaders again stepped aside and let the thoughtless crowd press in ahead of them to receive the first fire of the little garrison. Dozens of dead and dying choked the passage-but the

body of no orator nor agitator was among them. The fiery editor and the fiery orator rarely blaze upon the battle-field. America has had one Joseph Warren, and a thousand Johann Mosts.

The outcome was a foregone conclusion; the wives of the little garrison slept widows that night!

The great vaults were blown open; the wagons drove up to the side entrance, and thither the leaders, working with more industry than ever before in their beery lives, carried bag after bag of gold coin, and bale after bale of treasury notes, leaving the silver to their followers. Afraid to trust their drivers with such a precious freight, they themselves jumped into them and drove rapidly away. Men carried off the coin in bags, under whose weight they could scarcely stagger, often to be knocked down, robbed and trampled to death by the ravenous crowds outside, which had not been able to gain admittance. Here and there, little eddies in the packed masses of men showed where a plunderer was himself being plundered and torn asunder by his "brethren" with the ferocity of hungry wolves devouring a wounded comrade. One man had stripped off his overcoat, and converted it into a bag. Bending beneath nearly two hundred weight of silver he appeared upon the topmost of the long flight of steps descending to the street, only to become one more victim to the jealous fury of his outside compatriots. Hour after hour passed amid scenes like these, but still the Government hoard held out; for, finally, men who had fought their way inside learned wisdom, and contented themselves with carrying outside only such plunder as they could conceal upon their persons, trusting to future trips to make themselves rich.

The banking houses on Broad, Wall, Pine and the adjacent streets, and the great Safe Deposit Vaults shared a similar fate, while the rich stores of jewelry in Maiden Lane furnished their full quota to the saturnalia of the day. Ornaments, art, luxuries and treasure in a thousand forms were borne in an incessant stream upon the backs of men and boys towards the tenement-house districts!

Up-town, similar scenes were being enacted. Dry-goods stores did not lack for