Henry Grey Bennet

“ In the short space of a few leagues I counted no less than seven cones of extinct volcanoes, and the country is covered with scoria, exhibiting no appearance of culture, and hardly any vegetation; it is more broken into ravines and more intersected by lava torrents than on any of the other sides of the island. Numerous peaked and conical mountains rise upon the slope of the chain, and the whole country is covered by scoria, and is one continued stream of lava. The Montana Roxa itself is a singular example of the dislocation of strata so commonly found in countries of volcanic formation ”

“ That the ascent must be hazardous in a storm of hail and snow there can be no doubt, but to cross Salisbury plain may sometimes be dangerous. Yet stripped of poetical terrors and divested of the eloquent description of some writers, there is perhaps no mountain in Europe, the ascent of which does not furnish more difficulties than the Peak of Teneriffe. ”

“ Barrow and Sir G. Staunton, has advanced an opinion, that between Laguna and Matanzos there are no signs of volcanic formation. That the currents of lava occur but seldom is most true; but the mountains in the vicinity of Laguna are all volcanic, and one has a visible crater; besides, the assertion would prove too much; for it would go to maintain that the Campagna Felice, as well as the plains of Catania, were not created by the ash and pumice eruption of Vesuvius and Ætna. The bed of soil is here very deep. ”

“ Some of the stems are as thick as the arm of a man, joined together in bunches or tufts like the common heath. The form of this forest is oblong, it covers the flank of those hills which I have already denominated the central chain, from their summit to half their elevation from the plain. The soil here is deep, and formed of decomposed lava, small ash, and pumice. I examined several channels in the strata or ravines worn by the rains, and there was no appearance of any other rock. ”

“ The descent down the cone is difficult from its extreme rapidity, and from the fall of large stones which loosen themselves from the beds of pumice. Having at last scrambled to the bottom, we pursued our march down the other course of the lava, that is to say down its westerly side, having ascended its eastern. The ravines and rents in this stream of lava are deeper and more formidable; the descent into them was always painful and troublesome, often dangerous, in some places we let ourselves down from rock to rock. ”

“ The slope from the central chain is here gradual, intersected by ravines and streams of lava. The soil famed for its fertility and which produces the Teneriffe wine, is composed of lava and ash in a state of decomposition. Headlands, some of them from two to three hundred feet in height, project into the sea between San Ursula and Orotava, forming perpendicular cliffs. At the western extremity of the island from Punta di Teno to Puerto de los Christianos, the strata rise in a broken ridge to the Peak, the land ascending gradually from Punta de Teno by a chain of small peaked hills ”

“ Leaving behind us this range of green hills, the track still ascending leads for several hours across a steep and difficult mass of lava rock, broken here and there into strange and fantastic forms, worn into deep ravines, and scantily covered in places by a thin layer of yellow pumice. The surface of the country, for miles and miles around, is one continuous stream of lava ”

“ Leaving the town of Orotava, after a steep ascent of about an hour through a deep ravine, we quitted the cultivated part of the slope or valley, and entered into a forest of chesnuts; the trees are here of a large size. This forest of chesnuts is mixed with the erica arborea, or tree heath, which shrub rises to the height of 18 or 20 feet. ”

“ After a laborious not to say hazardous ascent of about an hour, the pumice and ash giving way and the mule sinking knee deep at each step, we arrived at about five in the afternoon at the other extremity of the stream of lava, which descending from the summit of the second region of the peak divides at the foot of the cone into two branches, the one running to the north-east and the other to the north-north-west ”