CHAPTER XX. MODERN TUMBES-RUINS OF ANCIENT TUMBES-GULF OF GUAYAQUIL- TUMBES has a population of about three thousand, there being but few of the pure European blood, more of unmixed Indian descent, and still a larger portion of mongrels. The houses differ from those heretofore described in that a greater number of them are two-story buildings; not because earthquakes are not both frequent and severe on this part of the continent, but from the facility of procuring cane and bamboo as building materials, which readily yield to such terrestrial motions and shocks without falling. Posts of algaroba-commonly known as iron-wood-crotched at the upper end, are planted deeply in the ground. These, simply divested of bark, are used of their natural shape, as from the metallic hardness of the wood no plane will make an impression on it. And for the same reason, no nail being capable of penetrating it, the cross timbers are lashed to the uprights by withs of passaya bark, and twigs of the bejuco; both of them being strong, pliant, and more durable than hempen rope. The walls are made of interlaced bamboo sticks, plastered with mud, and sometimes whitewashed. The ceiling is of board, or muslin; the roof, framed of large guayaquil cane, hollow and light, is crossed thickly with bamboo for the support of a thick flag thatch; and the floor is made of large guayaquil cane, partially split into small ribs in such manner as to allow its being spread out like a board with a bamboo substratum, on cane rafters, forming a compact, cool, and elastic, though rather noisy material to walk on. The light fantastic toe may not trip on it— The rude algaroba whatever its purpose, without detection. pillars within the best-built houses, are sometimes covered with marbled paper, as are also the walls, and put on quite a show of style. The form and adornments may be peculiar, but certainly neither iron nor marble can be stronger than the algaroba column. The projecting roofs are supported by posts in front of the houses; and when many of these adjoin, a continuous arcade is thus formed which protects pedestrians from sun and rain. Sidewalks and streets are unpaved. May other travellers visiting this town meet with as kind friends as I did to extend to them private hospitalities! The Posada of Tumbes is a wretched counterfeit of an inn. If your dinner were cooked under your own eye, superintended by a greasy mulatto wench whose fat hung about her in folds, and who with the same wooden spoon stirred, tasted, and stirred, ad infinitum, during the interesting process, the various dishes designed for your use, with a view doubtless of seasoning them to your liking, do you think you would like them at all? Of course you would pay for the culinary exhibition, and the natives would be amazed that you had left the meal untouched; and perhaps you would be somewhat surprised yourself, after having felt an hour before as if no number of dishes of fish, flesh, and fowl could stagger your appetite. It was necessary to work day and night, in order to finish business in time to reach Guayaquil for the next steamer thence to Panama. But how to get to Guayaquil, was a question not easy of solution. Two means were possibly attainable to hire a small one-masted river "bunque," or "chata," with one large square sail, and no shelter but that of a thatched arch open before and behind; or procure a row-boat capable of carrying sail if the wind should favor. The latter alone could be relied on; for if becalmed, the bunque would fail to arrive in time for the steamer, and two or three weeks would elapse before another opportunity would be afforded of sailing for Panama. After some trouble, a boat and four rowers were hired to carry me to Guayaquil, for fifty-six dollars; but no temptation would induce the crew to start short of a day's preparation; and it was determined to occupy that interval in visiting the ruins of the ancient Peruvian Temple of the Sun, on the site of the old city of Tumbes, now called Corales, where Pizarro first landed in Peru in 1527. Our projected adventure made it necessary to cross the river Tumbes, which we had ascended a few miles by boating the day before, and which may be navigated by canoes eighteen or twenty miles beyond the town, where its falls interrupt further progress, although, heading in the Andes it has a length of seventy-five or eighty miles. This river was the former Spanish line of separation between the Viceroyalties of Lima and Quito; and hence between the States of Peru and Ecuador, although the former has for some time claimed to the Macara, about twenty miles further north. Since the accession of Castilla to power, he is ever ready to make this an excuse for intermeddling in the domestic affairs of Ecuador. This disposition on the part of Peru has led to a proposition of General Flores for a union of the States of Ecuador, New Granada, and Venezuela, for common defence against the aggression of more powerful neighbors, which would effectually arrest the encroachments of Castilla. Having crossed by the ferry-boat, we found on the opposite side of the river horses in waiting, which had been provided by L. G. Sanford, Esq., United States Consul, and Dr. R. M. Columbus, a graduate in medicine of a North American University; with whom, and several other friends, I started for the ruins of the temple, after having refreshed ourselves at the chacra of the hospitable Don Manuel Rodriguez, with a luscious draught of cocoanut water, fresh from trees growing in profusion on the river bank. To see a native almost walk up the perpendicular trunk of a tree without any thing adventitious to assist him, and pluck the pulpy and juicy fruit from the tufted top seventy or eighty feet high, would lead you to think that he had been taking lessons of his fellow-countrymen of the monkey tribe. Our road was westwardly, and deep with dust, for it was the dry season, and no rain had fallen for several months. Several well-cultivated chacras skirted the way, until we came to a very heavily-timbered Algaroba forest; the trees looking as if they were the memorials of ages that had gone before us, and had been moulded of iron, or been hewn from dark imperishable rock. Tropical vines were seen clambering up their knarled and stalwart trunks, clothing them in verdure, and clinging with feeble tendrils to brawny limbs; while iris-hued flowers bloomed along the wayside, fit companions of the birds that flashed their rich plumage from bough to bough. About five miles brought us to the old bed of the river Tumbes, now dry, and since the change of its channel only occasionally containing water when the river is greatly swollen by heavy rains. Crossing this, dry-shod, we mounted the opposite bank of thirty or forty feet, and passing some bamboo houses sparsely scattered over a level of a half mile, came to hills, skirted by the remains of an aqueduct eighteen or twenty feet wide, and seven or eight feet deep. Along this we rode, circling the hills, the sides of which, in many places, appeared supported by dilapidated walls, built of large boulders in some places, in others presenting the distinct rectangular outlines of large adobes, seamed with shingle or cobble stones. Some of these may have upheld superincumbent structures now no more. On crossing over some of the least elevated of the hills, small quadrangular stone foundations were observed, as of houses; while the larger size, and perfectly regular and level surface of other places, indicated the probable existence there of streets and public squares. A mile and a half from where we crossed the old bed of the river, we came to the foot of a hill from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet in height, commanding a fine view of the surroundings. Off to the west, five miles distant, El Punta Garrita formed the northern termination of a range of hills, the Padarones, which, stretching away to the southward, throws off a smaller spur to the eastward, upon the several eminences of which the ancient city of Tumbes was built, supposed to have had one hundred thousand inhabitants. The hill on which we stood is the northernmost of the spur, and is isolated from the rest by a narrow space bounding its southern foot. To the north of this isolated hill, four miles distant, is plainly seen the Bay of Tumbes, in which Francisco Pizarro 3 cast anchor when he first feasted his eyes on this land of promise. And spreading out from the Padarones Range on the west, to the river Tumbes on the east, a distance of ten miles, is a level plain, which, in the days of the Incas, was watered by innumerable small canals, fed by the large aqueduct circling the hill-sides before described, that tapped the Tumbes River at a height sufficient to distribute water to the town, and the outspread plain before it. Nor is it surprising that the beauty, fertility, and wealth of bountiful nature and human industry unrolled before him, should have filled the Spanish intruder with amazement; and that he should have become inspired with visions of the magnificent conquest that this transcendently beautiful portal of Peru opened to his imagination. On the level summit of the hill which we had ascended and carefully explored, were seen parts of a symmetrical quadrangular wall of great thickness, seven hundred and fifty feet long and four hundred and twenty feet wide, enclosing the remains of massive walls, abutments, and arches, nearly all prostrated, rent, and crumbling, under the combined influence of human and natural causes; earthquake, fire, and storm aiding the hand of man in the work of destruction. There still are visible, however, some large adobe blocks, with intermediate waterwashed stones, doubtless from the gulf shore; the size of these blocks justifying the presumption that they were parts of massive walls. Portions of walls, too, of the thickness of from five to six feet, are standing supported by huge abutments; and a descent of fifteen feet below the present general surface level, at one spot exposed a perfectly symmetrical arch of four feet radius, with a part of the wall supporting it on each side, in an excellent state of preservation. Near to this arch a tottering wall, resting against neighboring fallen masses, exhibits on its exposed side two well-proportioned and unbroken niches; once, possibly, adorned with images of gold or silver. Mr. Prescott says, in his "History of the Conquest of Peru," in describing ancient Peruvian architecture, in it "there is no appearance of columns or of arches, though there is some contradiction as to the latter point. But it is not to be doubted that, although they may have made some approach to this mode |