Ecuador, a republic of South America, so named from its position on the equator, lies between N. and S. lat., and in about — W. long. Its general outline is cuneiform; bounded on the west by the Pacific, it is inserted like a wedge between Colombia and Peru. But its only certain limits are those defined by the ocean, where it has a seaboard of some 400 miles; most of the frontier east of the Andes has never been determined, and no two maps agree in the limits they assign to the state in this direction. In 1832, however, Colombia's claims to the plateau of Pasto were recognised, and since 1876 the same state has held the river Putumayo; the whole of the Marañon valley is occupied by Peru, and the actual possessions of Ecuador are now separated from those of Colombia on the north-east by the rivers Coca and Napo, while the little river Masan, a tributary of the Napo, is looked upon as marking the Peruvian frontier. Thus narrowed, the territory of the republic embraces some 100,000 sq. miles, or about half the area of Spain, and barely two-fifths of that usually assigned to it; but to the state proper must be added the Galápagos Islands (q.v.), which have an area of 2940 sq. miles. The population was calculated in 1893 at 1,204,000, of whom 200 belonged to the Galápagos; in these returns the savage and heathen Indians (Infieles) of the eastern province are not included, their number, though estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000, being really unknown. The principal cities are Quito, the capital (60,000 inhabitants), Guayaquil, the chief port (40,000), Cuenca (30,000), Riobamba (18,000), Latacunga (15,000), and Ambato (12,000), the last three names associated with earthquakes of unusual force; good authorities, however, question the accuracy of these returns of population.
Ecuador may be regarded as consisting of three divisions—the lowlands west of the Andes, the mountainous plateau of the interior, and the less elevated forest country to the east. Besides the main range of the Andes, forming the backbone of the country, there is an outer range extending for about 40 miles, with peaks rising to 15,000 feet; from the cordillera proper numerous long spurs, attaining a height of 14,000 feet, are thrown out towards the east, between which rise great affluents of the Amazons, while the coast-range possesses only short and very precipitous spurs, contributing to the comparatively unimportant Pacific streams. The plateau is cut into eight subdivisions by short and broken cross ridges; on one of these tablelands lies Quito. For the heights of the principal peaks, see ANDES; but it should be noticed that the parallel structure commonly ascribed by geographers to this section of the cordillera has hitherto had an exaggerated importance attached to it, and, as a matter of fact, scarcely exists. Only the vaguest knowledge of the country is possessed even by its own people: one authority still ascribes to the crater of Altar the only real glacier known to exist in the Ecuadorian Andes, whereas Mr Whymper in 1880 found larger glaciers on the principal mountains he visited; while another describes the floods that almost certainly result from the liquefaction of the glaciers that repose upon the sides of the heated cones, as 'the rivers of mud and water which have so often been vomited from the crater.' The principal mountains of Ecuador either are or have been volcanoes.
Tunguragua (16,690 feet) broke out in 1887; Pichincha is by no means extinct; Cotopaxi (q.v.) and Sangai (17,465) are constantly active. In mineral wealth Ecuador has been ranked amongst the poorest states of South America; gold, however, is obtained in the beds of the Amazonian tributaries, and the ore is mined at Zaruma, in the south-west; silver, quicksilver, iron, copper, zinc, asphalt, and petroleum occur, as well as an inferior graphite, and fine veins of anthracite have been found in the mountains. Of the coast-streams the principal are the Guayas, or Guayaquil River, and the Rio Esmeraldas; east of the Andes the most important rivers are the Napo, with its affluents the Curarai and Coca, the Tigre, and the Pastassa, all flowing into the Marañon. Colonel G. E. Church, in a report (printed 1883) to the United States government, estimates that at least 2500 miles of the river-system on the Amazons side are suitable for steamboat navigation, and probably as much more for boats, besides some 500 miles on the western side.
Ecuador is an agricultural country. The dry winds which leave the African coast become saturated as they pass over the Atlantic and up the Amazons; and their moisture is almost ceaselessly precipitated as they approach the snowy peaks of the Andes, producing a dense growth of vegetation on the eastern foot-hills. On the other side also, where the rain-clouds of the Pacific are caught, the gorges of the western spurs become very hot-houses, and most of the land is covered with darksome forest. Natural sabanas or open plains are, however, found on the western lowlands, such as are not met with to the east. Here, in the most prodigal luxuriance of tropical vegetation, valuable trees and plants wage endless war for existence against the stifling embraces of mosses, orchids, parasites, and creepers. With increasing elevation, the sugar-cane haciendas and the cacao and orange groves give place to fields of inferior wheat, barley, clover, lucerne, beans, and in some places maize and agave plants; until in the higher stretches of the sierra nothing is met with but lichens and the bare páramo grass. The agricultural implements employed are often of the rudest, including in the mountains wooden ploughs, and in the lowlands the machete or cutlass; American machinery, however, is imported for the sugar-mills. Sarsaparilla, balsams, caoutchouc, vegetable ivory and wax are collected, and coffee, rice, cotton, tobacco, &c. are grown, but in smaller quantities; while the trade in cinchona, for which bark the world was first indebted to the province of Loja, promises soon to be a thing of the past, owing to the reckless destruction of the trees. The coast rainy season usually extends from December to May, but on the Amazons slope, as already noticed, it rains nearly all the year round. The plateau region and large tracts to the east are comparatively healthy, in spite of the absence of all sanitary measures in the towns and wretched villages; the valleys on the Pacific side are commonly full of disease. In the interior there is a very small thermometric range, and in temperature a perpetual spring reigns in the uplands; to which much-admired equality of climate, which renders it certain that to-morrow will be like to-day, Mr Whymper attributes the incomparable laziness and procrastination of the Ecuadorians. The fauna is rich: the mammalia include the jaguar, puma, ounce, ocelot, deer, tapir, peccary, capybara, and several species of monkeys and bats; fish abound, both in the rivers and along the coast; and among reptilia are the boa constrictor, turtles, and alligators, which swarm in the streams, especially on the Pacific side. Chiefly, however, is Ecuador the paradise of birds and insects. The former range from the condor to the humming-bird, and include parrots, partridge, pheasants, snipe, wild turkeys, geese and ducks, herons, and pigeons, as well as the flute-bird and many other song-birds; of the insects, besides butterflies innumerable, mosquitoes, scorpions, the tarantula spider, the microscopic 'red tick,' and the maddening Pium-fly are met with, whilst a recent traveller in the sierra remarks emphatically that there 'every kind of domestic insect pest known in England exists with the addition of further infinite varieties.' The live-stock includes cattle, sheep, horses, mules, donkeys, and llamas; but cattle do not thrive in the Amazons section—chiefly, according to Colonel Church, from the immense number of bats which bleed or otherwise irritate them.
The whites have been estimated, in round numbers, at 100,000, the mixed races at 300,000; the rest are pure Indians, with a small proportion of negroes. The whites, who are the landholders and merchants of the country, are hospitable, courteous, and generally intelligent, but extravagant and innocent of habits of industry; the half-breeds are the true savages of the country, the christianised Indians, who belong to the Quielua group, being as a class docile and contented, although the law which permits the Indian who cannot otherwise satisfy his creditor to sell himself into slavery has reduced great numbers to the unhappy conditions of serfs. The uncivilised tribes inhabit the vast Provincia del Oriente, east of the Andes; their chief stems are the independent and warlike Jívaros and Záparos. The state form of religion, to the exclusion of every other, is the Roman Catholic, the establishment including an archbishop of Quito and six bishops; and in no country in the world have the Jesuits had such a paramount influence as in Ecuador, or employed it, on the whole, so well. There are numerous convents, monasteries, and seminaries, and in 1887 the pope sanctioned the organisation of a central theological university. Education is compulsory, but still at a low ebb. Quito, however, possesses a university and an institute of sciences (1884), with three faculties, and there are affiliated universities at Azuay and Guayas; and since the restoration of the church party to power, public instruction, considering the difficulties the government have had to grapple with, has made creditable headway, hundreds of primary schools, in particular, having been established throughout the country. Technical schools and literary societies also have been founded. The manufactures are limited mostly to timber, coarse cloths, kerosene, ice, and the preparation of spirits from the sugar-cane, and of flour or starch from the yuca or cassava root. Guayaquil is famed for its hammocks and Panamá hats, made from the fibre of the 'pita' plant (see AGAVE). Commerce is sadly handicapped by the want of roads. Up to 1895 only about 70 miles of railway were open, but there are 1300 miles of telegraph. A few steamers are in use, but around Guayaquil rafts also are much employed to-day as in Pizarro's time; and, generally, communication is carried on by means of tracks almost impassable in the rains, and goods are conveyed by mules. East of the cordilleras, moreover, the line of route is often not marked by even bare tracks; the road must be forced through pathless forests, along the rough beds of the rivers, and over swollen streams, either bridgeless, or spanned by the frail erections that existed when Humboldt visited the country. Nevertheless, the chief towns have been connected by telegraph, and there are even telephones in Quito and several of the provinces. Hitherto the trade returns have been often incomplete, but since 1890 the exports have ranged in annual value from £1,200,000 to £2,300,000, and the imports from £1,200,000 to £1,700,000. Nearly two-thirds of the exports, of which the principal were cocoa, coffee, vegetable ivory, caoutchouc, and hides, come through Guayaquil. The exports to Great Britain vary from £72,500 to over £200,000, and the imports, chiefly cotton goods, from £250,000 to over £300,000. The trade with the United States is about equal to that with Britain; and the exports to France and to Germany in some years greatly exceed those to England.
Constituted as an independent state on the dissolution of Bolívar's Colombia (q.v.), the Republic of the Equator has, in little more than half a century, passed through a succession of violent political changes that would render its history equally difficult and profitless to follow; in his report to congress in 1888 the Minister of the Interior sorrowfully confesses, 'our historical tradition is—revolution.' The turbulent career of the despotic little republic, with its complicated series of presidents, supreme chiefs, provisional commissioners, and dictators, has been almost one long insurrection, amid which the nearly equally constant loss of territory has passed unheeded by the factions and their leaders. The latest revolt was stamped out only in 1886. Under its last constitution the executive is vested in a president, elected for four years, with a vice-president, a cabinet of four ministers, and a council of state; the legislative power is intrusted to a senate and house of representatives. The state forms three military districts, containing seventeen provinces, which are administered by governors, and subdivided into cantons. The standing army was limited in 1884 to 1600 men, and there is a navy of one steel transport and three gun-boats. Of the financial position of the country it has always been difficult to obtain exact and trustworthy information, although evidence has at all times been forthcoming of its chronic and apparently hopeless embarrassment. The annual revenue is from £600,000 to £700,000; the expenditure sometimes considerably exceeding the revenue. The liabilities of the republic in 1895 were stated at £1,850,000 of external debt, and £800,000 of internal debt—which is a modest estimate, even disregarding unpaid interest; from time to time it is announced that the country is not yet in a position to make any practical offer to its foreign creditors.
See Velasco, Historia del reino de Quito (Quito, 1789; French by Ternaux-Compans, Paris, 1840); Humboldt, Voyage aux Régions équinoxiales, especially the 'Vues des Cordillères'; Villavicencio, Geografía de la República del Ecuador (New York, 1858); Hassaurek, Four Years among Spanish Americans (Lond. 1868); Kolberg, Nach Ecuador (3d ed. Freiburg, 1885); Stübel, Skizzen aus Ecuador (Berlin, 1886); Simson, Travels in the Wilds of Ecuador (Lond. 1887); Whymper's Travels amongst the Andes (1892); Teodoro Wolf, Geografía y Geología del Ecuador (1893); and the Foreign Office reports of Great Britain and the United States.