total distance from Guayaquil three hundred and twenty miles. Between the upper end of the steamboat route and Quito all packages of merchandise that do not weigh more than two hundred pounds are conveyed on the backs of horses, mules, or donkeys. The average cost in United States currency--in which all values are stated--is four dollars per one hundred pounds between Guayaquil and Quito. Pianos, organs, safes, carriage-bodies, large mirrors, and some other articles too heavy or too bulky to be carried on a single horse are placed on a frame of bamboo poles and carried on the shoulders of men the entire land portion of the journey. A piano weighing about six hundred pounds can be carried by twenty-four men in two divisions, one half serving as a relay to the other half. Although labor is very low-priced, the man-carriage is quite expensive. A cart-road, or railroad, both of which are feasible and practicable, would greatly reduce the expense of transportation, and would materially influence domestic manufactures, as well as the introduction of foreign manufactured products. It seems almost impossible that any American goods could, after undergoing such a tremendous carriage, compete with native manufactures, however crude, in Quito, and yet they do. Nearly all the furniture in use in that city is brought from the United States in separate parts and put together on arrival; and in that, the highest and oldest city in America, many people sleep on Grand Rapids beds. The twelve breweries running in Quito import their hops from the United States and Europe, and with railroad facilities American beer, as well as hops, could be liberally sold in Quito. American refined sugars are largely consumed, although the native products are very good. [Illustration: A PASSENGER TRAIN.] Ecuador, with about one million inhabitants, has only forty-seven post-offices, but they are so widely distributed that it requires a mail carriage of 5389 miles to reach them all; seventy-two miles by canoes and 5317 by horses and mules. About five hundred miles of the seaboard service is also covered by foreign steamship mail service. Between Quito and Guayaquil there are two mails each way per week by couriers--the usual time one way, travelling day and night, being six days. Other sections of the country are less favored by mail service, the receipt and departure of mails ranging from once a week to once a month, as people happen to be going. During the year 1885 there were carried within the country 2,989,885 letters, and 50,700 letters were sent to foreign countries, eighty per cent. of them being between Guayaquil and the neighboring towns. No interior postage is charged on newspapers, whether of domestic or foreign publication. Interior letter postage is five cents each one-fourth ounce. The postage on letters to foreign countries is twelve cents each half ounce and one cent per ounce on newspapers. [Illustration: THE COMMON CARRIER.]