At the entrance to many dwellings may be seen the figure of a saint with candles burning around it, and the people appear to be continually coming from or going to church. The bells are constantly clanging, and it seems to a stranger as if the entire city were given up to perpetual devotions. The next most noticeable thing is the filthiness. The streets are used as water-closets, in daylight as well as in the dark, and are never cleaned from one year’s end to another. There are no wagons or carriages, and only seldom can a cart be seen, the backs of mules, men, and women being the only vehicles of transportation. There is an unaccountable prejudice against water in every form, the natives believing that its frequent use will cause fevers and other diseases. When they have returned from a journey they never think of washing their faces for several days, for fear of taking a fever, but wipe off the flesh with a dry towel. I do not believe a Quito woman ever washes her face. She keeps it constantly covered with chalk, and looks as if some one had been trying to whitewash her. I do not know how she would look _al fresco_, but she has beautiful eyes, lips, and teeth, and a perfect figure till she reaches the age of thirty-five or thereabouts, after which she becomes either very fat or very lean. [Illustration: CHARCOAL PEDDLER.] If it were not for the climate, Quito would be in the midst of a perpetual pestilence; but notwithstanding the prevailing filthiness, there is very little sickness, and pulmonary diseases are unknown. Mountain fever, produced by cold and a torpid liver, is the commonest type of disease. The population of the city, however, is gradually decreasing, and is said to be now about sixty thousand. There were five hundred thousand people at Quito when the Spaniards came, and a hundred years ago the population was reckoned at double what it now is. Half the houses in the town are empty, and to see a new family moving in would be the sensation of the decade. Most of the finest residences are locked and barred, and have remained so for years. The owners are usually political exiles, who are living elsewhere, and can neither sell or rent their property. Political revolutions are so common, and the results are always so disastrous to the unsuccessful, that there is a constant stream of fugitives leaving the State.