Casual Wanderings in EcuadorCentury Company, 1923 - 249 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
America Baños beauty become birds boat brought called carried Chimborazo church clear climb close clouds coast color dark direct door Ecuador Ecuadorian engineer eyes face fall feet felt fields figures flowers followed four gold green Guayaquil hand happened head hills hour houses hundred Indian knew land later leaving light lives look lovely morning mountain moved mule never night once Optimist Panama passed past perhaps played port Quito rain rest Riobamba river road rock season seemed seen Señor ship showed side South Spanish spirit stand stood streets talk thing thousand tiny tion trail train turn valley village waited walked wall wandering watched woman women yellow fever
Popular passages
Page 2 - But a story is how destiny is interwoven, the fine and gallant and the tragic points of life. And you must n't look at them with the eyes of the body, but you must feel with the antennae of your being. Now, if you were to look at the Lord Jesus with physical eyes, what would it be but a kindly, crazy man and He coming to a hard and bitter end? Look at it simply, and what was the story of Troy but a dirty row over a woman?
Page 87 - ... s brain, in the brain of John Harman; and finally a reality, coming to be known familiarly as the "G. & Q." Locomotives puff heavily up the steep grades of the "Devil's Nose" to the Pass; smoothly on over the plateau ; over a second pass, this time at Urbina, and at last down into the basin of Quito. But the three men who brought into being the G. & Q.
Page 133 - You hear what your master says — you are to do what is right." "My master told me to make out the bill in that way," replied the major-domo. "You hear what your servant says, Senor Chiriboga." "Quite right, Doctor — take a drink. Yes, it is all right. My servant will do what is right.
Page 84 - ... switch connecting us with the track which led up along the Nose. Up this track we began now to back. The brakeman swung on board again. Very slowly, the locomotive laboring with ponderous measured chugs, we were pushed up a grade incredibly steep, backing along a single track cut out of a ledge of rock. "Below us was the line over which we had just come. As we mounted, it dropped away from us, growing rapidly smaller. "We climbed with great sobbing breaths, spaced far apart— so far apart that...
Page 31 - ... Pizarro. Calling together the halfmutinous and discontented followers, he stood before them and traced a line on the sand with his sword — the famous line which has gone down to history. " Comrades," he said, " on the south of this line lie hardship, hunger, and possibly death : on the north side ease and salvation. On the south is Peru, with its riches ; on the north Panama, with its poverty. Choose which you will ; for my own part I go to the south. Who follows?
Page 86 - Tibetans, yet in many ways recalled them. They both have the sturdy, stocky build of mountain people. The shape and cast of their features are astonishingly similar, for the Ecuadorian Indian of the highlands is of a decidedly Mongolian type. The warm red blood glows under their yellowish brown skins just as it does in the faces of the Tibetans who flock about the station at...
Page 164 - Although deep furrows seared his cheeks, as the quebradas sear the face of the land, his heavy bullet-shaped head was covered with a thick shock of black hair; for the Ecuadorian Indian seems never bald and rarely gray. It was only those lines in his face and a certain droop of the figure that suggested age — age and a lifetime of toil. His eyes were fixed, as though held immovably by some unseen force; fixed upon that image whose coloring matched his own.
Page 149 - A family would undertake the contract to move an entire house, and one day we saw twentyfour men hurrying under the weight of a great iron water-wheel — and yet all moving in perfect harmony of step. Sometimes a costly limousine would dispute the way with a flock of sheep or a drove of rebellious pigs. The Indian women who shepherded these beasts showed a complete indifference to limousines.
Page 158 - American women of the older generation. The lives of such women rarely have any intellectual outlet. They center in family affections and in a highly personalized love of the church. I found them bafflingly indifferent to all the world ; without curiosity about abstract things but keenly, amazingly interested in every member of my family. How long had each been*married and how many children did they have ? And what were their names and ages?
Page 81 - The story of Ecuador is, like the story of that road, a story of struggle. Mighty forces brought the very land itself into being. Terrifying earthquakes piled mountain upon mountain, and then opened up appallingly precipitous gorges down which the melting mountain snows poured in torrential rivers. Volcanic eruptions scattered over the land ash and huge boulders, red with the heat of eternal subterranean fires.