After Lima and Santiago, the suburbs strike one as rather squalid and dilapidated. In the city proper, however, the houses improve in size and finish and continue to improve until the Grand Plaza is reached in the center. The more pretentious are of two stories, a few three, and of massive construction, with adobe walls two or three feet thick and tiled roofs, and are built around a square courtyard, or _patio_, in the old Spanish style, often with a fountain or flower plot in the center. Here, too, around the _patios_ are pillared arches supporting galleries used as the passage way to rooms in the upper tier; the floors are paved with large, square, red bricks. The public buildings, some of them dating back to Philip II, are clustered about the three plazas. The most imposing, the capitol, a low building adorned with a splendid colonnade, faces the Grand Plaza. With its long rows of columns it looks a little like the Fifteenth Street side of the Treasury Building in Washington. To the right of it is an ancient but beautiful cathedral; on the other side is the palace of the Papal Nuncio. All are fine specimens of the architecture of the periods in which they were built. The scene in the shopping district and around the market has quite an Egyptian flavor. The shops are very small and exposed; groups in gay ponchos stand chatting and smoking in front of them or lean idly against the walls, enjoying the sunlight; soldiers saunter to and fro; Indians, in every variety of costume, are scattered about guarding heaps of vegetables they have brought in from the surrounding country for sale; bronze-complexioned women in many-colored gowns peddle oranges and alligator pears from baskets carried on their heads; purchasers, mostly men and in more conventional attire, wander from store to store, for it is not here so much as in the vicinity of the churches that one is favored with a glimpse of the ladies of the upper class. They do little shopping themselves, these _señoras_ and _señoritas_, yet they are very devout, and it is their custom to wrap themselves in their black mantillas and attend mass every day. [Illustration: ROOM IN THE OLD PALACE AT QUITO, IN WHICH THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WAS SIGNED, AUGUST 16, 1809.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ X COLOMBIA Journeying overland into Colombia from Ecuador, there opens before the traveler the vast mountainous country that was once the ancient kingdom of the Chibchas—the contemporary of the Inca empire, and, later the pivotal state of Bolívar’s great confederation. Colombia occupies the extreme northwestern corner of the continent. With its 465,714 square miles of territory, it is as large as Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Louisiana, and has a population of 4,320,000.