we shall not find a quart of milk or a
loaf of bread for sale. The descent into the valley is very precipitous,
and, after a rain, alarmingly slippery. Mules, drawing their legs
together, slide down with startling velocity, and follow the windings
with marvelous dexterity.

We arrived at Guaranda at 5 P.M. on the third day after leaving Bodegas.
This is a desolate town of two thousand souls, dwelling in low
dilapidated huts made of the most common building material in the
Andes--_adobe_, or sun-dried blocks of mud mingled with straw.[13]

[Footnote 13: From _adoub_, an Egyptian word still used by the Copts;
carried by the Moors to Spain, thence to America; and from America the
word has gone to the Sandwich Islands.]

The streets are rudely paved, and pitch to the centre, to form an
aqueduct, like the streets of old Sychar. The inhabitants are in happy
ignorance of the outside world. They pass the day without a thought of
work, standing on the Plaza, or in front of some public office, staring
vacantly into space, or gossiping. A cockfight will soonest rouse them
from their lethargy. They seem to have no purpose in life but to keep
warm under their ponchos and to eat when they are hungry. Guaranda is a
healthy locality, lying in a deep valley on the west bank of the Chimbo,
at an elevation, according to our barometer, of 8840 feet, and having a
mean temperature slightly less than that of Quito. It is a place of
importance, inasmuch as it is the resting-place before ascending or
after descending the still loftier ranges, and much more because it is
the capital of the region which yields the invaluable _cinchona_, or
Peruvian bark.[14] This tree is indigenous to the Andes, where it is
found on the western slope between the altitudes of two thousand and
nine thousand feet, the species richest in alkaloids occupying the
higher elevations, where the air is moist. Dr. Weddell enumerates
twenty-one species, seven of which are now found in Ecuador, but the
only one of value is the the _C. succirubra_ (the _calisaya_ has run
out), and this is now nearly extinct, as the trees have been destroyed
to obtain the bark. This species is a beautiful tree, having large,
broadly oval, deep green, shining leaves, white, fragrant flowers, and
red bark, and sometimes, though rarely, attains the height of sixty
feet. A tree five feet in circumference will yield fifteen hundred
pounds of green bark, or eight hundred of the dry. The roots conta