The city is defended by three forts, two on the borders of the river, and the other inland, to guard the entrance of a deep ravine which leads to it. The number of inhabitants is 10,000, most of whom are engaged in commerce, the Spaniards and creoles being the merchants, and the creoles and castes the artizans and labourers. The trade of this town is gradually increasing, and from the situation of its port, it will in all probability become a place of the first consequence, notwithstanding the insalubrity of its climate, and the dreadful tempests it is subject to in winter. The women of Guayaquil are proverbially handsome, which causes many Europeans to marry and settle here. The island of Puna has a fort or rather battery on it, where all ships coming in and going out are brought to. Guayaquil was named a royal dock-yard, in 1767, and the abundance of excellent timber produced in its neighbourhood, renders it very fit for this purpose. The balsam-tree and several others yield excellent knees, and are celebrated for resisting worms and rot. Notwithstanding these advantages, the building of vessels is neglected, and the river and coasting trade is carried on in balsas, which receive the cargoes of the vessels arriving from Europe, Lima, or Panama. These balsas or rafts are peculiar to the coast of the provinces of New Granada; they are made of five, seven, or nine trunks, of an exceedingly light tree, called balsa. A little boy can carry a log of this wood twelve feet long, and a foot in diameter, with great ease. The rafts are made larger or smaller, according as they are wanted for fishing, for the coasting trade, or for the rivers, and they go as far as Payta in Peru from Guayaquil with safety. The logs of which they are made are sixty feet in length, and two, or two and a half, in diameter, so that a large one of nine logs, is between twenty and twenty-four feet in breadth. These logs are fastened to each other by bejucos, (a sort of parasite plant,) or withies, and have cross logs lashed so firmly with these pliable plants, that they rarely give way, though the sea in their coasting voyages runs very high.