BUT my career in Ecuador had its political, as well as its commercial side, in
order to trace which I must hark back to my Salinas days.
One day, shortly after Alfaro started his revolution,
I happened to be in Guaranda on business. It was market-day, and the plaza
was full of Indians selling everything from saddles to lard, including
codfish glue and gents' neckwear. Suddenly there was a great tearing down
of awnings, and a general stampede. It took me some time to discover that
the Pretender's invading army was to be seen coming along a valley eight
or ten miles away.
The populace disappeared and the troops were called out.
The latter proceeded to the edge of the town, lay down, and opened fire.
I followed to see the fun. They were shooting with their sights at fifty
yards, and a number of them were using eight mm. cartridges in an eleven
mm. rifle. I took pity on them, showed them something about the rudiments
of marksmanship, and so involuntarily became associated with the Government
Forces in the bloody civil war which followed.
I may mention that while in Quito some months later, when
it was all over, and Alfaro was President, I learned from the official statistics
that ten million rounds of ammunition were used up, while the only casualty
was a man who was kicked by a mule. Those unacquainted
with that type of
warfare should not be surprised, for the fact was that if the noise and smoke
of the rifles of the defending force did not scare away the attackers before
they came within extreme range, they, the defenders, either evacuated the
town or changed their clothes and marched out with a brass band to meet the
invaders, shouting "Viva Alfaro." That was exactly what happened in Guaranda.
When the defenders saw that the Revolutionary column kept coming on they
soon gave up firing, long before the enemy could have become aware of their
desperate resistance.
The defence melted away, and the officers who had been
feverishly directing the fire swapped their swords for no more harmful
instruments than piccolos and drums. As Alfaro's army marched in to the music
of the defenders' band, I stood and watched the show. The officers, who had
surely been as heavily coated in dust as the rank and file a few minutes
before, sparkled in their scintillating uniforms, neither they nor their
sleek horses showing any wear and tear from the long, dusty trails. In violent
contrast were the "common soldiers," an un-uniformed, hatless, bootless,
ragged rabble; some of the more fortunate had picked up animals on the
road—horses, mules and donkeys, some of which had no skin on their backs,
while others had frying-pans and other utensils slung around their necks,
clashing like cymbals as they walked. Some of the less fortunate animals
carried two, or even three men; there were even donkeys with two riders facing
ahead and one astern. Quite half the army had rifles, while the rest were
following in their wake in the hope of a good square meal.
A few days after I had returned to Salinas (for I was
still working there at the time) a party of some twenty picked officers on
horseback arrived at my mountain home to arrest me, bringing with them a
warrant.
But I was waiting for them, for one of my Indians had warned me
of their approach. When I showed myself at the door of my hut with my Winchester,
they halted about fifty yards away and saluted. One of them dismounted and
came over to me. With profuse apologies for disturbing me, he handed me the
warrant. There is no necessity for me to relate what I told them. The result
was satisfactory, for the party rode off at once, only too glad to see the
last of Salinas.
Shortly afterwards the invading army began commandeering
horses from the Córdovez ranches. So "Papa" made me captain of thirty
or forty Columbian horse wranglers, one of the toughest crowds I ever saw.
Thanks to the fearless devotion to duty of my command, our reputation soon
spread abroad, until nobody wearing a uniform of any description dared show
his face within the limits of the Córdovez property. Of our many
adventures among the rock-bound fastnesses above the clouds I have no time
to speak. One of our greatest successes was when we rounded up a party of
horse-thieves and stampeded them in the dark until they piled themselves
up on a barbed-wire entanglement which we had erected for the occasion.
When there was no more fun to be had, I resigned my Captaincy
and went back to Salinas, much to the disappointment of my Pastuzos (as the
natives of Pasto in Colombia are called) who wanted me to return with them
to their home town; they would make me a Colonel, start a Revolution, and
run me for President. I am afraid I missed a career when I declined, for
those fellows would have followed me anywhere.
Naturally my efforts resulted in my being unpopular with
Alfaro's Lieutenants in general, and the Governor of Guaranda in particular.
As a matter of fact, before I left Salinas for the last time, old Córdovez
used this
as an argument in favour of my leaving the country, not that I
cared much for
that kind of pressure.
Next I come to the point where I arrived at Riobamba after
leaving the Salt Mine to look after itself.
When I arrived there I was faced by two things—my
unpopularity with the Córdovez family, and my unpopularity with the
Government. My relations with "Papa" were considerably strained, so much
so that I took my empty trunk and stayed at a "hotel" (a worse dwelling-place
than my hut in Salinas). As for the Government, it was then that I realized
that I was constantly exposed to the risk of being molested by some of the
hordes of independent and quite unreliable minor officials of state as a
result of my having dabbled in politics with such distinction.
So I sat down to think it over, and made the decision that led me into the heart
of the unknown world that lies behind the Andes. I resolved then and there that,
instead of returning to Guayaquil and shipping for the States, I would go up to
Quito, cross the eastern cordillera into
the valley of the River Napo, make my way down that river to the Marañon,
and so on down the Amazon to Pará, whence a steamer would take me to New
York. I had finished with Ecuador.
So I rode out of Riobamba on a hired mount along the desert trail which leads to
Ambato, from which the carretera starts for Quito.
Through the boulder-strewn valley of Riobamba I went, the dumping-ground
of Sangai, Cotopaxi and Tungarahua, from which steam and smoke still continue
to spout. I stayed the night at Ambato where I shared a room, in the approved
Ecuadorian fashion, with a man and his wife.
In those days, before the light railway from Guayaquil to Quito was built, a
stage-coach ran from Ambato to the Capital along the
carretera, on which were built, at
ten-mile intervals, relay stations.
The coaches themselves were built along the lines of the old Deadwood Coach
and were pulled by six mules, four wheelers with a pair of leaders. Three
had been broken in to harness, while three were fresh from the ranch, the
latter being hitched up blindfold. Everybody mounted, while the muleteers
stood by to give us a good send-off. The two drivers climbed to their seats
and the word was given. The ponchos were snatched away from the wild mules'
heads, the drivers cracked their whips, stamped and whistled, and the
stable-hands standing round hurled rocks at the leaders. We shot away like
an arrow from a bow. Except for a few bad stretches, the animals kept at
a run for the whole ten miles, until we reached the first station. Then the
whole comedy was played over again, and so on until we made Quito at the
end of a tumultuous day.
One of the first things I did on my arrival was to call
upon our Minister, Mr. J. D. Tillman, a typical member of our fine diplomatic
service. I was carrying a letter of introduction from the Hon. Warner Miller,
and Mr. Tillman did everything he could for me, not only then, but afterwards.
Among many other things he introduced me to President Alfaro, whom he requested
to furnish me with a passport which would see me safely beyond the jurisdiction
of the Republic. For Mr. Tillman's courteous assistance I have always been
grateful.
Here I may mention that the American population of Quito
consisted, apart from the Minister himself and his wife, of a certain Mr.
Solomon Sturman, the owner of a small general store, but reputed to be one
of the wealthiest men in the city, and the source from which the Government
obtained most of its ready cash, and a Mr. Budzikowski, a boiler-maker from
Poland via New
York, who mended watches in a shop he had in the main street.
Sturman must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds,
and had muscles on him like an ox. The first time I was in his store, he
rolled up his sleeve and asked me what I thought would happen to the man
whom he hit. Next day I learned that the Government had lent him a permanent
guard of four soldiers with fixed bayonets to escort him between his store
and the hotel where he took his meals, on account of his being threatened
by a hundred-pound Italian shopkeeper whom he had once robbed.
After a few gay months, I became tired of waiting to put my resolution into
practice, and one day applied for my passport at the
Palacio. I was duly presented with
a magnificent document, and returned to Mr. Tillman's office to say "Good-bye"
and write my farewell letter home.
I have the letter still. I append a few quotations from
it, as showing how little the happy-go-lucky boy who wrote it knew what he
was attempting. It is the best possible insight into my state of mind on
that last day in Quito.
