But picturesque as it all is, one finds on going ashore, that the walls of these imposing-looking edifices are merely shells of split bamboo, plastered with cement, ornamented with stucco and painted to resemble marble and stone, which sad experience has taught the people of the city will not resist earthquakes as well as this more elastic imitation they have been compelled to substitute. The residences of the well-to-do are constructed of the same materials and with wide verandas from ground to roof, enclosed with Venetian blinds. Few are elaborately furnished. In that climate it is thought better, for the sake of spaciousness and comfort, to forego evidences of wealth in the form of carpets, hangings, and upholstery, which keep out air and retain the heat. The poor of the suburbs have thatched bamboo or adobe huts with floors of hardened earth. As in Canton, China, many of them live on the water on rafts made from _balsa_, a species of timber nearly as buoyant as cork, or else of hollow trunks of bamboo. A number of logs, forty or fifty feet long, are lashed together in such a way that they can be propelled by either oars or sails, and a bamboo hut is built in the center. These often serve as the homes of whole families for generations, and are so substantial that they are used in the coasting as well as the river trade for bringing produce to market. [Illustration: STREET SCENE IN GUAYAQUIL.] [Illustration: CONDOR OF THE ANDES.] In June, 1908, a long-desired and much needed railroad was completed between Guayaquil and the capital, Quito, way up in the interandine table-land, 9350 feet above the level of the sea, and now the trip of nearly three hundred miles, that formerly took from twelve to fifteen days on mule-back, and often more by foot, may be made in two days, in a comfortably equipped passenger train. The scenery _en route_ is gorgeous. The train speeds through forests of stately trees like those of the Amazon—walnut, mahogany, rubber, cacao, cottonwood, with vines entwined around their trunks and hanging from their branches, and beds of mosses and ferns at their feet, slender bamboos shooting up straight as an arrow, and tall, graceful palms, tipped with feathery tufts—the whole mass aglow with scarlet passion flowers and orchids, and blossoms of every hue. Then come broad fields covered with prickly pineapple plants, sugar cane, coffee and snowy cotton plantations and groves of cocoanut palms, oranges, lemons, and limes saturating the air with their delicious fragrance, splendid mango trees with their golden fruit and dense foliage that makes them the best of all shade trees in the tropics, and groves of banana trees, tossing out glossy green leaves eight feet long from their sheathlike stalks, and many bearing bunches of this bread of the poor and delicacy of the rich that weigh from sixty to seventy pounds. Von Humboldt calculated that “thirty-three pounds of