"The streets of Quito are thronged from morning to evening with horses, mules, donkeys and oxen, also llamas, with loads of all kinds, and ladies in victorias drive about, or to the shops, which are replete with merchandise from London, Paris, New York, Vienna or Berlin. Officers in regimentals and gentlemen in top-hats and frock-coats are numerous, and Indians with red and yellow _ponchos_ and white cotton trousers and hats. But as regards modern conveniences Quito is backward, and the lack of hotels and public hygiene is very serious, and the general conditions surrounding public health call for urgent improvement."[29] [30] [29] A recent London traveller summed up his impressions of Quito as "a city of seventy churches and one bath." But there has been some improvement since. [30] _Ecuador_, loc. cit. The Ecuadorian "Orient," as the eastern forested region is termed, is, as has been said, the third natural division of the country, and a maze of rivers flow to it from the _divortia aquaram_ of the Cordillera. The boundary-line with Peru, Ecuador's neighbour on the south, is in dispute, notwithstanding arbitration by the King of Spain in recent years. The relations between the two nations have been seriously embittered by reason of this controversy. Ecuador is, in point of population, the weaker nation: perhaps her claims have not been considered in a sufficiently generous spirit. The law of _uti possidetis_ alone holds. But an outlet to the great navigable affluents of the Amazon is a question of paramount importance in this forested region, cut off as it is from the Pacific by the huge rampart of the Andes, and--without prejudice to the historical aspects of the boundary question--this matter should receive full consideration. The Orient, although an undeveloped and little-travelled region at present, must, in the future, be of great value. Peru enjoys a vast territory in the same zone, and could well afford to take a generous outlook upon the wishes of her neighbour, thereby healing ancient quarrels and laying the foundation of future international stability and friendship. We shall tread this region again in the chapter dealing with the Amazon. The upland region of the Cordillera between Ecuador and Peru, little known to-day, was the scene of bitter struggles between the Incas--under Tupac Yupanqui and his son Huayna Capac, both famous princes of the Inca dynasty--and the Shiris, of the empire or kingdom of Quito, which the Incas wished to subjugate. Cacha Duchisela, whose armies had beaten off the Inca attacks--he was the fifteenth and last of the Shiri Kings of Quito--was rapidly declining in health.