Nach Ecuador Reisebilder

Abstract

THE Archbishop of Quito proceeded to Rome in 1869 to attend the meeting of the Vatican Council, and he bore with him a commission from Don Garcia Moreno, President of Ecuador, to obtain powers to establish a Polytechnic School and College for the Republic. As a result he sent to Quito, in 1870, two Germans and one Italian, members of the Society of Jesus, who should lay the foundation-stone of the establishment, and in 1871 Joseph Kolberg, the author of this quarto volume, followed. The murder of President Moreno in August, 1875, gave a death-blow to the new institution. During the five years of his sojourn in the country Kolberg had been in the habit of sending home notes of his various tours, sketches of the manners and customs of the people he met with, and this in a somewhat methodic manner, as might be expected from a professor of the higher mathematics. These notes and sketches were published from time to time in a publication called Stimmen aus Maria-Loch, and they embraced among others an account of the voyage out, of a visit to Chimborazo, and an account of the catastrophe of Havra (1868), and incidental to these latter chapters the author introduces a theory of volcanic eruptions which he evidently thinks the best fruit of his visit to Quito. All these varied sketches and others on the natural history and geography of the country were, at the “request of friends,” re-published in one handsome illustrated quarto volume, which was indeed to have been dedicated to President Moreno, but is now dedicated to his memory. The first edition was edited by the author's friend, R. Cornelly, S.J., and was published in 1876. The present edition, which has been corrected and enlarged throughout, has been published under the author's own superintendence. Some of the wood engravings are new and interesting; others, such as those representing the flying-fish and the Coral Island, have well served their generation.