To The Gold Coast for Gold Volume I Part 6

These crania were distinctly oval. The facial angle, well opened, and ranging from 80 to 85, counterbalanced the great development of the face, which showed an animal type. A little hair remained, coloured ruddy-chestnut and straight, not woolly. The entrails had disappeared, and the abdominal walls not existing, it was impossible to detect the incisions by which the tanno-balsamic substances, noted by Bory de Saint-Vincent and many others, were introduced. The method appears uncertain. It is generally believed that after removing the entrails through an irregular cut made with the _tabona_, or obsidian (knife), the operators, who, as in Egypt, were of the lowest caste, injected a corrosive fluid. They then filled the cavities with the balsam described above; dried the corpse; and, after, fifteen to twenty days, sewed it up in tanned goatskins. Such appears to have been the case with the mummies under consideration.

The catacombs, inviolable except to the sacrilegious, were numerous in the rockiest and least accessible parts of the island. Mr. Addison found them in the Canadas del Pico, 7,700 feet above sea-level. [Footnote: Tenerife: 'An Ascent of the Peak and Sketch of the Island,' by Robert Edward Alison. _Quarterly Journal of Science_, Jan. 1806.] Hence it has been remarked of the Guanches that, after a century of fighting, nothing remained of them but their mummies. The sharp saying is rather terse than true.

The Guanches were barbarians, not savages. De Bethencourt's two chaplains, speaking in their chronicle of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, tell us 'there are many villages and houses, with numerous inhabitants.'

The ruins still found in the Isles are called 'casas hondas' ("deep houses"); because a central excavation was surrounded by a low wall. The castle of Zonzamas was built of large stones without lime. In Port Arguineguin (Grand Canary) the explorers sent by Alfonso IV. (1341) came upon 300 to 400 tenements roofed with valuable wood, and so clean inside that they seemed stuccoed. They encircled a larger building, probably the residence of the chief. But the Tenerifans used only caves.

The want of canoes and other navigating appliances in Guanche-land by no means proves that the emigration took place when the Canaries formed part of the Continent. The same was the case with the Australians, the Tasmanians, and the New Zealanders. The Guanches, at the same time, were admirable swimmers, easily able to cross the strait, nine miles wide, separating Lanzarote from La Graciosa. They could even kill fish with sticks when in the water. The fattening of girls before marriage was, and is still, a Moroccan, not an Arab custom. The rude feudalism much resembled that of the Bedawi chiefs. George Glas, [Footnote: _The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands_, &c. 4to. London, 1764. I have given some notices of the unfortunate 'master mariner' in _Wanderings in West Africa_, vol. i. p. 79] or rather Abreu Galindo, his author, says of their marriages, 'None of the Canarians had more than one wife, and the wife one husband, contrary to what misinformed authors affirm.' The general belief is that at the time of the conquest polyandry prevailed amongst the tribes. It may have originated from their rude community of goods, and probably it became a local practice in order to limit population. Possibly, too, it was confined to the n.o.ble and the priestly orders.

Humboldt remarks, [Footnote: _Personal Narrative_, chap, i. p. 32, Bohn's ed. London, 1852.] 'We find no example of this polyandry except amongst the people of Thibet.' Yet he must have heard of the Nayr of Malabar, if not of the Todas on the Nilagiri Hills. D. Agustin Millares [Footnote: _Historia de la Gran Canaria_. Published at Las Palmas.]

explains the custom by 'men and women being born in almost equal proportions,' the reverse being the fact. Equal proportions induce the monogamic relation.

Learned M. d'Avezac derives 'Guanche' from Guansheri or Guanseri, a Berber tribe described by El-Idrisi and Leo Africa.n.u.s. This is better than finding it in the Keltic _gwuwrn, gwen_, white. Older authorities hold it a corruption of 'Vinchune,' the indigenous name of the Nivarian race. Again, 'the inhabitants of Tenerife called themselves Guan (the Berber Wan), one person, Chinet or Chinerf, Tenerife; so that _Guanchinet_ meant a man of Tenerife, and was easily corrupted to Guanche. Thus, too, Glas's 'Captain Artemis' was Guan-arteme, the one or chief ruler. Vieira derives 'Tenerf' or'Chenerf' from the last king; and old MSS. have 'Chenerife.' The popular voice says it is composed of 'Tener,' mountain or snow, and of 'ryfe,' snow or mountain. Pritchard [Footnote: _Researches into the Physical History of Mankind_, book iii. chap. ii.] applied the term Guanche to all the Canarian races, and he is reproached for error by M. de Macedo, [Footnote: 'Ethnological Remarks,' &c., by J. J. de Costa de Macedo, of Lisbon, _Royal Geographical Society's Journal_, vol. ii. p. 172. _Wanderings in West Africa_, i. 116, contains my objections to his theory.] who would limit it to the Tenerifans. The same occurs in the Eev. Mr. Delany [Footnote: _Notes of a Residence in the Canary Islands_, &c. London, 1861.] and in Professor Piazzi Smyth, [Footnote: _An Astronomer's Experiment_, p. 190. L. Reeve, London, 1868.] who speaks of the 'Guanches of Grand Canary and Teneriffe.' According to popular usage all were right, 'Guanche' being the local and general term for the aborigines of the whole archipelago. But the scientific object that it includes under the same name several different races.

The language is also a point of dispute: some opine that all the islanders had one tongue, others that they were mutually unintelligible; many that it was Berber (Numidian, Getulian, and Garamantan), a few that it was less distinctly Semitic. The two chaplains of De Bethencourt [Footnote: Bontier and Le Verrier, _Histoire de la premiere Decouverte e Conquete des Canaries_. Bergeron, Paris, 1630.] noted its resemblance with that of the 'Moors' of Barbary. Glas, who knew something of s.h.i.+lha, or Western Berber, made the same observation. But the Genoese pilot Niccoloso di Recco during the expedition of A.D. 1344 collected the numerals, and two of these, _satti_ (7) and _tamatti_ (8), are less near the original than the Berberan _set_ and _tem_.

The catalogue of Abreu Galindo, who lived here in 1591 and printed his history in 1632, preserves 122 words; Vieira only 107, and Bory de Saint-Vincent [Footnote: _Essai sur les Iles fortunees_. Humboldt has only five.] 148. Webb and Berthelot give 909. Of these 200 are nouns, including 22 names of plants; 467 are placenames, and 242 are proper names. Many are questionable. For instance, _sabor_ (council-place) is derived from _cabocer_, 'expression par laquelle les negres de la Senegambie denotent la reunion de leurs chefs.'

[Footnote: Vol. i. part i. p. 223.] As all know, it is the corrupted Portuguese _caboceiro_, a headman.

Continuing our way from Tacoronte we reached Sauzal, beyond which the coach did not then run; the old road was out of condition, and the new not in working order. We offered a dollar each for carrying our light gear to st.u.r.dy men who were loitering and lying about the premises. They shook their heads, wrapped their old blanket-cloaks around them, and stretched themselves in the sun like dogs after a cold walk. I could hardly wonder. What wants have they? A covering for warmth, porridge for food, and, above all, the bright sun and pure air, higher luxuries and better eudaemonics than purple and fine linen. At last some pa.s.sing muleteers relieved us of the difficulty.

The way was crowded with Laguneros, conspicuous in straw-hats; cloth jackets, red waistcoats embroidered at the back; bright crimson sashes; white knickerbockers, with black velveteen overalls, looking as if 'pointed' before and behind; brown hose or long leather gaiters ornamented with colours, and untanned shoes. Despite the heat many wore the Guanche cloak, a blanket (English) with a running string round the neck. The women covered their graceful heads with a half-square of white stuff, and deformed the coiffure by a hideous black billyc.o.c.k, an unpleasant memory of Wales. Some hundreds of men, women, and children were working on the road, and we were surprised by the beauty of the race, its cla.s.sical outlines, oval contours, straight profiles, magnificent hair, and blue-grey eyes with black lashes. This is not the result of Guanche blood, as a town on the south-western part of the island presently showed me. Also an orderly of Guanche breed from the parts about Arico, who had served for years at the palace, was pointed out as a type. He stood six feet four, with proportional breadth; his face was somewhat lozenge-shaped, his hair straight, black like a Hindu's, and his tawny skin looked only a little darker than that of Portuguese Algarves. The beauty of the islanders results from a mixture of Irish blood. During the Catholic persecution before 1823 many fled the Emerald Isle to Tenerife, and especially to Orotava. The women's figures in youth are charming, tall, straight, and pliant as their own pine-trees. All remark their graceful gait.

We pa.s.sed through places famed in the days of the conquest--La Matanza, the native Orantapata, where De Lugo's force was nearly annihilated. Now it is the half-way station to Orotava; and here the _coche_ stops for dinner, prices being regulated by Government. The single inn shows the Pike, but not the subjacent valley. Then to Acentejo, the local Roncesvalles, where the invaders were saved only by St. Michael; and next to La Vitoria, where they avenged themselves. At Santa Ursula we first saw the slopes of Orotava, the Guanche Tavro or Atanpalata; and on the Cuesta de la Villa we were shown near its mark, a date-palm, the cave that sheltered the patriot chief, unfortunate Bencomo. As the fas.h.i.+onables came forth to walk and drive we pa.s.sed the _calvario_ and the _place_ leading to the Villa Orotava, and found quarters in the _fonda_ of D. Jose Gobea. The _sala_, or chief room, some 30 feet long, wanted only an Eastern divan round the walls; it was easily converted into a tolerable place of bivouac, and here we resolved to try country life for a while.

The first aspect of the Orotava Tempe was disappointing after Humboldt's dictum, 'Voici ce qu'il y a de plus delicieux au monde.' But our disappointment was the natural reaction of judgment from fancy to reality, which often leads to a higher appreciation. At last we learned why the Elysian [Footnote: In Arabic El-Lizzat, the Delight, or from the old Egyptian _Aahlu_,] Fields, the Fortunate Islands, the Garden of the Hesperides--where the sea is no longer navigable, and where Atlas supports the firmament on a mountain conical as a cylinder; the land of evening, of sunset, where Helios sinks into the sea, and where Night bore the guardians of the golden apples--were such favourites with the poets. And we came to love every feature of the place, from the snowy Pike of Teyde flus.h.i.+ng pink in the morning sun behind his lofty rampart, to the Puerto, or lower town, whose three several reef-gates are outlaid by creamy surf, and whose every s.h.i.+ft of form and hue stands distinct in the transparent and perfumed air. The intermediate slopes are clothed with a vegetation partly African, partly European; and here Humboldt, at the end of the last century, proposed to naturalise the chinchona.

La Villa lies some two miles and a half from and about 1,140 feet above the Puerto; and the streets are paved and precipitous as any part of Funchal. The population varied from 7,000 to 8,000 souls, whereas the lower town had only 3,500. It contains a few fine houses with huge hanging balconies and interior _patios_ (courts) which would accommodate a regiment. They date from the 'gente muy caballerosa'

(knightly folk) of three centuries ago. The feminine population appeared excessive, the reason being that some five per cent. of the youths go to Havannah and after a few years return 'Indianos,' or 'Indios,' our old 'nabobs.'

At the Puerto we were most kindly received by the late British Vice-Consul, Mr. Goodall, who died about the normal age, seventy-seven: if this be safely pa.s.sed man in Tenerife becomes a macrobian. All was done for our comfort by the late Mr. Carpenter, who figures in the 'Astronomer's Experiment' as 'the interpreter.' Amongst the scanty public diversions was the Opera. The Villa theatre occupied an ancient church: the length of the building formed pit, boxes, and gallery; and 'La Sonnambula' descended exactly where the high altar had been. At the Puerto an old monastery was chosen for 'La Traviata:' the latter was realistic as Crabbe's poetry; even in bed the unfortunate 'Misled' one could not do without a certain truncated cylinder of acajou. I sighed for the Iberian 'Zarzuela,' that most charming _opera buffa_ which takes its name from a 'pleasaunce' in the Pardo Palace near Madrid.

The hotel diet was peculiarly Spanish; already the stews and 'pilaffs'

(_pulaos_) of the East begin in embryo. The staple dish was the _puchero_, or _cocido_, which antiquated travellers still call 'olla podrida' (pot-pourri). This _lesso_ or _bouilli_ consists of soup, beef, bacon, and _garbanzos_ (chick-peas, or _Cicer arietinium_) in one plate, and boiled potatoes and small gourds (_bubangos_) in another. The condiments are mostly garlic and saffron, preferred to mustard and chillies. The pastry, they tell me, is excellent.

In those days the Great Dragon Tree had not yet lost its upper cone by the dreadful storm of January 3, 1868; thus it had survived by two centuries and a half the Garoe Laurel, or Arbol Santo, the miraculous tree of Hierro (Ferro). It stood in the garden of the Marquez de Sauzal, who would willingly have preserved it. But every traveller had his own infallible recipe, and the proprietor contented himself with propping up the lower limbs by poles. It stood upon a raised bank of masonry-work, and the north-east side showed a huge cavity which had been stopped with stone and lime. About half a century ago one-third came down, and in 1819 an arm was torn off and sent, I believe, to Kew. When we saw the fragment it looked mostly like tinder, or touchwood, 'eld-gamall,'

stone-old, as the Icelanders say. Near it stood a pair of tall cypresses, and at some distance a venerable palm-tree, which 'relates to it,' according to Count Gabriel de Belcastel,

[Footnote: I quote from the Spanish translation, _Las Islas Canarias y el Valle Orotava,_ a highly popular work contrasting wonderfully with some of ours. The courteous Frenchman even promised that Morocco would be the Algeria of the Canaries. His observations for temperature, pressure, variation, hygrometry, and psychrometry of the Orotavan climate, which he chose for health, are valuable. He starts with a theory of the three conditions of salubrity--heat-and-cold, humidity, and atmospheric change. The average annual mean of Orotava is 66.34 degrees (F.), that of Southern France in September; it never falls below 54.5 degrees nor rises above 73.88 degrees, nor exceeds 13.88 degrees in variation.]

'in the murmurs of the breeze the legends of races long disappeared.'

Naturalists modestly a.s.signed to the old Dragon 5,000 to 10,000 years, thus giving birth to fine reflections about its witnessing revolutions which our planet underwent prior to the advent of man. So Adamson made his calabash a contemporary of the Noachian Deluge, if that partial cataclysm [Footnote: The ancient Egyptians, who ignored the Babylonian Deluge, well knew that all cataclysms are local, not general, catastrophes.] ever reached Africa. The Orotava relic certainly was an old tree, prophetic withal, [Footnote: It was supposed infallibly to predict weather and to regulate sowing-time. Thus if the southern side flowered first drought was to be expected, and vice versa. Now the peasant refers to San Isidro, patron of Orotava: he has only changed the form of his superst.i.tion.] when De Lugo and the _conquistadores_ entered the valley in 1493 and said ma.s.s in its hollow. But that event was only four centuries ago, and dates are ticklish things when derived from the rings and wrinkles of little-studied vegetation. Already Mr. Diston, in a letter to Professor Piazzi Smyth, [Footnote: 'Astronomical Experiment on the Peak of Tenerife,' _Philosoph.

Trans._, part ii. for 1858.] declared that a young 'dragon,'

which he had planted in 1818, became in 38 years so tall that a ladder was required to reach the head. And let us observe that Nature, though forbidden such style of progression by her _savans_, sometimes does make a local _saltus_, especially in the change of climates. Centuries ago, when the fires about Teyde were still alight, and the lava-fields about Orotava were still burning, the rate of draconian increase, under the influence of heat and moisture, might have been treble or quadruple what it would now be.

[Footnote: The patriarch was no 'giant of the forest.' Its stature did not exceed 60 feet. Humboldt made it only 45 French feet(= 47 ft. ll ins. English) round the base. Dr. Wilde (_Narrative_, p. 40) blames the measurer and gives about the same measurement, Professor Piazzi Smyth, who in 1856 reproduced it in an abominable photo-stenograph, reckons 48.5 feet at the level of the southern foot, 35.6 feet at 6 feet above the ground, and 28.8 feet at 14.5 feet, where branches spring from the rapidly narrowing conical trunk. The same are said to have been its proportions in the days of the conquest. In 1866 Mr. Addison made it 60 feet tall, 35.5 feet at 6 feet from the ground, and 49.5 in circ.u.mference at the base which he cleared. Mr. Barker Webb's sketch in 1830 was the best; but the tree afterwards greatly changed.

Mr. J. J. Williams made a neat drawing in boarding-school style, with a background apparently borrowed from Richmond Hill.]

The Jardin de Aclimatacion, or Botanical Garden, mentioned by Humboldt

[Footnote: Page 59. It is regretable that his forecasts have failed. Neither of the ohinohonas (_C. tanoifolia_ and _C.

oblongifolia_) has been naturalised in Southern Europe. Nor has the Hill of Duragno yet sent us the 'protea, the psidium, the jambos, the chirimoya of Peru, the sensitive plant, the heliconia, and several beautiful species of glyoine from New Holland.']

as far back as 1799, still flourishes. It was founded in 1788-95 by an able _savan_, the Marquis de Villanueva del Pardo (D. Alonso de Nava y Grimon), who to a Government grant of 1,000_l_. added 4,000_l_. of his own, besides 400_l_. a year for an average generation. The place is well chosen, for the Happy Valley combines the flora of the north and the south, with a Nivaria of snow-land above it and a semi-tropical temperature on the sh.o.r.es of the 'Chronian Sea.'

CHAPTER VI.

THE ROUTINE ASCENT OF MOUNT ATLAS, THE 'PIKE' OF TENERIFE.

The trip was so far routine that we followed in the steps of all previous travellers, and so far not routine that we made it in March, when, according to all, the Mal Pais is impa.s.sable, and when furious winds threaten to sweep away intruders like dry leaves.

[Footnote: The usual months are July and August. Captain Baudin, not favourably mentioned by Humboldt, ascended in December 1797 with M. Le Gros and the naturalists Advenier, Mauger, and Riedle. He rolled down from half-way on the cone to the bottom of La Rambleta, and was stopped only by a snow-covered lava-heap. Mr. Addison chose February, when he 'suffered more from enormous radiation than from cold.' He justifies his choice (p. 22) by observing that 'the seasons above are much earlier than they are below, consequently the latter part of the spring is the best season to visit the Peak.' In October, at an elevation of 10,700 feet, he found the cold greater than it was in February. In July 1863 I rode round the island, to the c.u.mbre pumice-plains, and by no means enjoyed the southern ride. A place near Guimar showed me thirty-six _barrancos_ (deep ravines) to be crossed within three leagues.]

The good folk of the Villa, indeed, declared that the Ingleza could never reach even the Estancia de los Inglezes.

Our train was modest--a pair of nags with their attendants, and two excellent sumpter-mules carrying provisions and blankets. The guide was Manoel Reyes, who has already appeared in the 'Specialities of a Residence Above the Clouds.' He is a small, wizen-faced man, quiet, self-contained, and fond--exceedingly fond--of having his own way. By dint of hard work we left the Fonda Gobea at 9 A.M. on March 23, with loud cries of 'Mulo!' and 'Anda, caballo!' and 'So-o-o!' when the bat-beasts indulged in a free fight.

Morning smiled upon our incept. Nothing could be lovelier than the weather as we crossed the deluging Martinianez Fiumara; struck the coast-road westward, and then, bending to the south-west, made for the 'Gate of Taoro,' a gap in the Canada-wall. From the higher level truly charming was the aspect of Orotava: it was Funchal many times improved. Beyond the terraced foreground of rich deep yellow clay, growing potatoes, wheat, and the favourite _chochos_ (lupines), with apple and chestnut trees, the latter of two kinds, and the lower fields marked out by huge agaves, lay the Happy Valley. Its contrast of vivid greens, of white _quintas_, of the two extinct volcanos overlooking Orotava, and of the picturesque townlets facing the misty blue sea, fringed with a ceaseless silvery surf by the _brisa_, or north-east trade, the lord of these lat.i.tudes, had not a symptom of the Madeiran monotony of verdure. Behind us towered high the snowy Pilon (Sugar-loaf), whose every wave and fold were picked out by golden sunlight, azure half-light, and purple shade.

As we advanced up the Camino de Chasna, a road only by name, the _quintas_ were succeeded by brown-thatched huts, single or in clumps. On the left, 3,400 feet above sea-level, stood the Pino del Dornajito ('of the Little Trough'), one of the few survivors in this once wealthy pine-ground. The magnificent old tree, which was full grown in the days of the conquest, and which in the seventeenth century was a favourite halting-point, suffered severely from the waterspout of November 7, 1826; but still measured 130 feet long by 29 in girth. The vegetation now changed. We began brus.h.i.+ng through the arbutus (_callicarpa_), the wild olive (_Olea excelsa_), the Canarian oak, the daphne, the myrtle entwined with indigenous ivy (_Hedera canariensis_); the cytisus, the bright green hyperic.u.m of three species, thyme, gallworts, and arborescent and other ferns in numbers, especially the hare's-foot and the peculiar _Asplenium canariense_, the _Trichomanes canariensis_, and the _Davallia canariensis_; the _brezo_ (_Erica aborea_ and _E. scoparia_), a heath whose small white bells scented the air; and the luxuriant blackberry, used to fortify the drystone walls. The dew-cloud now began to float upwards from the sea in scarf-shape, only a few hundred feet thick; it had hangings and fringes where it was caught by the rugged hill-flanks; and above us globular ma.s.ses, white as cotton bales, rolled over one another. As in the drier regions of Africa the hardly risen sun made itself felt.

At 10.20 A.M. we had pa.s.sed out of the cultivated region to the Montijo, or Monte Verde, the laurel-region. The 'wood' is the remains of a fine forest accidentally fired by charcoal-burners; it is now a copse of arborescent heath-worts, ilex (_I. Perado_), and _Faya_ (_Myrica Faya_), called the 'Portugal laurel,' some growing ten feet high. We then entered upon rough ground, El Juradillo ('the Hollow'); this small edition of the Mal Pais, leading to the Canadas, is a ma.s.s of lava-beds and dry _barrancos_ (ravines) grooved and sheeted by rus.h.i.+ng torrents. The latter show the anatomy of the land--tufas, lavas, conglomerates, trachytes, trachydolerites, and basalts of various kinds. Most of the rocks are highly magnetic, and are separated by thin layers of humus with carbonised plant-roots. Around El Juradillo rises a scatter of _montanetas_, shaped like half-buried eggs: originally parasitic cones, they evidently connect with the main vent. About 1 P.M., after four hours' ride, we dismounted at the Estancia de la Sierra (6,500 feet); it is a pumice-floor a few feet broad, dotted with bush and almost surrounded by rocks that keep off a wind now blowing cold and keen. Consequently, as broken pots and bottles show, it is a favourite resting-place.

After halting an hour we rode up a slope whose obtuser talus showed that we were reaching the far-famed platform, called Las Canadas del Pico. The word, here meaning level ground, not, as usual, a canefield, applies especially to the narrow outer rim of the hollow plain; a bristling fortification of bluffs, pointing inwards, and often tilted to quoins 300 feet high, with an extreme of 1,000. Trachyte and basalt, with d.y.k.es like Cyclopean walls, are cut to jagged needles by the furious north-easter. Around the foot, where it is not enc.u.mbered with _debris_ like the base of an iceberg, a broad line of comminuted pumice produces vegetation like a wady-growth in Somali Land. The central bed allows no short cut across: it is a series of rubbish-heaps, parasitic cones, walls, and lumps of red-black lavas, trachytes, and phonolites reposing upon a deluge of frozen volcanic froth ejected by early eruptions. The aspect was rejoicing as the Arabian desert: I would willingly have spent six months in the purest of pure air.

These flats of pumice, 'stones of emptiness,' loose incoherent matter, are the site of the first great crater. Tenerife is the type of a three-storied volcano, as Stromboli is of one and Vesuvius of two stages. The enormous diameter of this ancient feature is eight by seven miles, with a circ.u.mference of twenty-three--greater even than Hawaii--and here one feels that our earth was once a far sublimer scene. Such forms belong to the earlier volcanic world, and astronomers still suspect them in the moon. [Footnote: Las Canadas was shown to be a volcanic crater in 1803 by Professor Cordier, the first scientific visitor in modern days (_Lettre a Devilliers fils_), and in 1810 by D. Francisco Escobar (_Estadistica_). They make the old vent ten leagues round.] The alt.i.tude is 6,900 feet, nearly double the height of Vesuvius (3,890 feet); and the lines sweep upwards towards the Pilon, where they reach 8,950 feet.

The tints of Las Canadas, seen from above, are the tenderest yellow and a brownish red, like the lightest coat of vegetation turning ruddy in the sun. Where level, Las Canadas is a floor of rapilli and pumice-fragments, none larger than a walnut, but growing bigger as they approach the Pike. The colours are dun (_barriga de monja_), golden-yellow, and brown burnt red like autumnal leaves. There is marvellous colouring upon the bluffs and ridges of the rim--lamp-black and brown-black, purple (light and dark), vermilion-red, and sombre hues superficially stained ruddy by air-oxygen. The picture is made brighter by the leek-green vegetation and by the overarching vault of glaring blue. Nor are the forms less note-worthy. Long centuries of weathering have worked the material into strange shapes--here a ruined wall, there an old man with a Jesuit's cap; now a bear, then a giant python. It is the oldest lava we have yet seen, except the bed of the Orotava valley. The submarine origin is denoted by fossils found in the flank; they are of Miocene age, like those common in Madeira, and they were known as early as the days of Clavijo (1772).

Las Canadas is not wholly a 'dead creation;' the birds were more numerous than on the plains. A powerful raptor, apparently an eagle with black-barred wings, hung high in air amongst the swallows winging their way northwards, and the Madeiran sparrow-hawk was never out of sight; ravens, unscared by stone-throwing boys, flew over us unconcernedly, while the bushes sheltered many blackbirds, the Canary-bird (_Fringilla canaria_) showed its green belly and grey back and wings, singing a note unknown to us; and an indigenous linnet (_F. teydensis_), small and green-robed, hopped over the ground tame as a wren. We saw nothing of the red-legged partridge or the Tetraonidae, reported to be common.

The scattered growths were composed of the broomy _Codeso_ and _Retama_. The former (_Adenocarpus frankenoides_), a leguminous plant, showed only dense light-green leaves without flower, and consequently without their heavy, cloying perfume. The woody stem acts in these regions as the _doornboom_ of South Africa, the wild sage of the western prairies, and the _s.h.i.+h_ (_absinthium_) of the Arabian desert. The Arabic _Retama_, or Alpine broom (_Cytisus fragrans_, Lam.; _Cyt. nubigenus_, Decan.; _Spartium nubigenum_, Alton and Von Buch), is said to be peculiar to Tenerife, where it is not found under one vertical mile of height. Some travellers divide it into two species, _Spartium monospermum_ and _S. nubigenum_. The bush, 9 to 10 feet tall by 7 to 15 inches diameter, is easily distinguished from the _Codeso_ by its denser and deeper green. This pretty rounded growth, with its short brown stem throwing out lateral branches which trail on the ground, flavours meat, and might be naturalised in Europe. From June till August it is covered with a profusion of white blossoms, making Las Canadas a Hymettus, an apiarian heaven. It extends as far as the second cone, but there it shrinks to a foot in height. We did not see the tree growing, but we met a party of Chasna men, [Footnote: A romantic tale is told of the origin of Chasna. In 1496, before the wars ended, one Pedro de Bracamonte, a captain under De Lugo, captured a 'belle sauvage,' who made her escape after a few days. He went about continually repeating, 'Vi la flor del valle' (I saw the valley flower), and died after three months. His soldiers buried him and priests said ma.s.ses for the soul of this 'hot amorist.'] driving a.s.ses like onagers, laden with the gummy wood of the _Tea_ or _Tiya_ pine (_P. canariensis_). The valuable material, which resists damp and decay for centuries, and which Decandolle declares would grow in Scotland, is rapidly disappearing from the Pinals. The travellers carried cochineal-seed, for which their village is famous, and a hive which might have been Abyssinian. It was a hollow cylinder of palm-bole, closed with board at either end; in July and August it is carried up the mountain, where the bees cannot destroy the grapes. We searched in vain for M. Broussonet's white violet (_V. teydensis_), [Footnote: Humboldt's five zones of vegetation on the Pike are vines, laurels, pines, broom, and gra.s.ses (p. 116).

Mr. Addison modifies this scale to vines, laurels, pines and junipers, mountain-brooms and pumice-plains, I should distribute the heights as growing cochineal, potatoes, and cereals, chestnuts, pines, heaths, gra.s.ses, and bare rock.] and for the lilac-coloured _Viola cheiranthifolia_, akin to _V. dec.u.mbens_.

The average annual temperature of Las Canadas is that of N. lat.i.tude 53 degrees, Holland and Hanover; in fact, here it is the Pyrenees, and below it Africa. The sun blazed from a desert of blue, and the waving heat-reek rose trembling and quivering from the tawny sides of the foregrounds. The clouds, whose volumes were disposed like the leaves of a camellia, lay far down to the north-east, as if unable to face the fires of day. And now the great trachytic dome, towering in the translucent air, was the marking feature. Its angle, 35 to 42 degrees, or double that of the lower levels, suggests distant doubts as to its practicability, nor could we believe that it rises 3,243 feet above its western base, Las Canadas. The summit, not including the terminal Pilon--a comparatively dwarf cone [Footnote: There is a very bad sketch of the Pike in Mr. Scrope's popular work on _Volcanoes_ (p. 5); the eruptive chimney is far too regularly conical.]--is ribboned with clinker, and streaked at this season with snow-lines radiating, like wheel-spokes from a common centre. Here and there hang, at an impossible angle, black lava-streams which were powerless to reach the plain: they resembled nothing so much as the gutterings of a candle hardening on the outside of its upright shaft. Evidently they had flowed down the slope in a half fluid state, and had been broken by contraction when cooling. In places, too, the surface was streaked with light yellow patches, probably of sun-gilt _tosa_ or pumice.

On our right, or to the north-north-east of the Pike, rose La Fortaleza, _alias_ the Golliada del Cedro. The abrupt wall had salient and re-entering angles, not unlike the Palisades of the Hudson River, with intercalated strata and a smooth glacis at the base, except between the east and north-west, where the periphery has been destroyed. It is apparently basalt, as we may expect in the lower levels before reaching the trachytic region. The other notable features were Monte Tigayga, with its vertical cliff, trending northwards to the sea; the gap through which the Orotava lava-bed burst the crater-margin; the Llano de Maja ('Manja' in Berthelot), a strip of Las Canadas, and the horizontally striated Peak of Guajara (8,903 feet).

Riding over the 'pumice-beach of a once fiery sea,' whose glare and other accidents suggested the desert between Cairo and Suez, we made our way towards the Rastrojito. This 'Little Stubble' is a rounded heap of pumice, a southern offset of the main mountain. On the left rose the Montana Negra (Black Mountain) and the Lomo de la Nieve ('Snow Ridge),'

a dark ma.s.s of ribbed and broken lavas (8,970 feet), in which summer-snow is stored. A little black kid, half wild, was skipping over the rocks. Our men pursued it with the _garrotes_ (alpenstocks), loudly shouting,' Tio Jose!': 'Uncle Joseph,' however, escaped, running like a Guanche. Here it is allowed to shoot the animals on condition of leaving a s.h.i.+lling with the skin. The latter is used in preparing the national _gofio,_ the Guanche _ah.o.r.en,_ the _kuskusu_ of north-western Africa, the _polenta,_ or daily bread, of the Neo-Latins.

Climbing the Rastrojito slopes, we sighted the Pedras Negras: these are huge travelled rocks of basalt, jet-black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture, and showing debris like onion-coats about their base. The aspect was fantastic, resembling nothing so much as skulls 10 to 15 feet high. They are doubtless the produce of the upper slopes, which by slow degrees gravitated to the present pumice-beds.

The first step of the Pike is Las Canadas, whose glacis forms the _c.u.mbre_, or pumice-plains (6,500 feet), the long dorsum, which shows far out at sea. Bending abruptly to the east, we began to breast the red pumice-bed leading to the Estancia de Abajo or de los Inglezes. 'El es Inglez porque subio al Pico' ('he is English, because he climbed the Pike'), say the people. This ramp, whose extreme angle is 26 degrees, bordered by thick bands of detached lava-rocks, is doubtless the foundation-matter of the Pike. Hence the latter is picturesquely termed 'Hijo de las Canadas.' [Footnote: Especially by D. Benigno Carballo w.a.n.guement in his work, _Las Afortunadas_ (Madrid, 1862), a happy t.i.tle borrowed from D. Francisco Escobar. Heyley (_Cosmography_), quoted by Glas and Mrs. Murray, tells us of an English amba.s.sador who, deeming his own land the 'Fortunate Islands,'

protested against Pope Clement VI. so ent.i.tling the Canaries in a deed of gift to D. Luis de la Cerda, the 'Disinherited' Conde de Claramonte. The latter was deprived of the Crown of Castile by his uncle, Sancho IV., and became the founder of the Medina Celi house.]