Alfred Diston

“ They are a very untrustworthy people, fierce and vindictive in the extreme: but fortunately the use of the knife is almost unknown to them, their favourite weapon being the long pole or Garote, so generally borne throughout the Island; this they wield with great address, seizing it by the middle with both hands, and striking or parrying with much skill and force.
The principal produce of Lanzarote, like that of Fuerteventura, is Barrilla, made by burning the ice-plant or glass–wort, which thrives best in the arid sandy soil of these two Islands. ”

“ The natives of Fuerteventura are bony, well-set men, but spare and dry and very swarthy. They are excessively dirty in their persons and habits. are possessed of much strength, and can bear great fatigue, but will work no longer than necessary to satisfy present wants, and are besides incorrigibly dishonest.
In soil and produce, Fuerteventura differs in no essential point from Lanzarote, except that water is even yet scarcer than there, only one spring being known in the whole island ”

“ When gracefully put on by a well-made and well-dressed female, it is in the highest degree becoming: and being closed over the face in such a manner as only to leave an aperture large enough to discover a pair of piercing black eyes, shaded by the long projecting point of the Mantilla, gives to the whole appearance of the wearer a sort of mystery well calculated to attract attention and curiosity. ”