Richard Francis Burton

“ Somewhat like Madeira, it has a longitudinal spine of mountains, generically called Las Cañádas; but, whilst the volcanic ridge of the Isle of Wood runs in a latitudinal line, the Junonian Cordillera has a whorl, the ancient as well as the modern seat of eruption. Around the island appeared to be a rim, as if the sea-horizon formed a raised saucer--a common optical delusion at these altitudes. ”

“ 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 Cañáda-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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first step of the Pike is Las Canadas, whose glacis forms the Cumbre, 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. ”

“ Around the foot, where it is not encumbered with débris 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. ”

“ Lawrence River, have apparently been borne down by subsequent lava-currents, which, however, lacked impetus to reach the lower levels of Las Cañádas.
Springing from boulder to boulder, an exhilarating exercise for a time, over a 'surface of horrible roughness,' as Prof. Dana says of Hawaii, we halted to examine the Cueva de Hielo, whose cross has long succumbed to the wintry winds. The 'ice-house' in a region of fire occupies a little platform like the ruined base of a Pompey's Pillar. This is the table upon which the neveros pack their stores of snow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This, as we noticed in Madeira, is not in flakes, nor in hail-like globes: it consists of angular frozen lumps, and the selvage becomes the hardest ice. Some have compared it with the Swiss 'firn,' snow stripped of fine crystals and granulated by time and exposure. In March the greatest depth we saw in the gullies radiating from the mountain-top was about three feet. But in the cold season all must be white as a bride-cake; and fatal accidents occur in the Canada drifts. ”

“ This 'bad country' is contradictorily described by travellers. Glas (A.D. 1761) makes it a sheet of rock cracked cross-wise into cubes. Humboldt (1799) says, 'The lava, broken into sharp pieces, leaves hollows in which we risked falling up to our waists.' Von Buch (1815) mentions 'the sharp edges of glassy obsidian, as dangerous as the blades of knives.' Wilde (1857) tamely paints the scene as a 'magnified rough-cast.' Prof. ”

“ The upper Piton is unfitted for retaining water, which must percolate through its cinders, pumices, and loose matter into many a reservoir formed by blowing-holes. Snow must also be drifted in and retain, the cold. Moisture would be kept in the cavern by the low conducting power of its walls; so Lyell found, on Etna, a bed of solid ice under a lava-current. Possibly also this cave has a frozen substratum, like many of the ice-pools in North America. ”

“ In the latter a M. Auber spent four hours without making much way; in parts he came upon scatters of Guanche bones. Mr. Robert Edwards, of Santa Cruz, recounted another native tradition--that before the eruption of A.D. 1705 there was a run of water but no cave. Mr. Addison was let down into it, and found three branches or lanes, the longest measuring 60-70 feet. What the neveros call el hombre de nieve (the snow-man) proved to be a honeycombed mass of lava revetted with ice-drippings. He judged the cave to be a crater of emission ”

“ I can hardly rest satisfied with Von Buch's description. 'Teyde is a pointed tower surrounded by a ditch and a circular chain of bastions.'
The word Teyde is supposed to be a corruption of Echeyde, meaning Hades: hence the title Isla Infierno, found in a map of A.D. 1367. The Guanches also called it Ayadyrma, and here placed their pandemonium, under Guayota, the head-fiend. The country-folk still term the crater-ring 'la caldera de los diablos en que se cuecen todas las provisiones del Infierno' (the Devil's caldron, wherein are cooked all the rations of the infernals) . ”

“ It is a shelf in the pumice-slope, 9,930 feet high, and protected against the cold night-winds of the north-north-east, the lower or polar current, by huge boulders of obsidian, like gigantic sodawater-bottles. The routine traveller sleeps upon this level a few hundred yards square, because the guides store their fuel in an adjacent bed of black rocks. Humboldt miscalls the station 'a kind of cavern;' and a little above it he nearly fell on the slippery surface of the 'compact short-swarded turf' which he had left 4,000 feet below him. ”

“ The little shelf, measuring about 100 to 300 yards, at the head of the fork where the north-eastern and the south-western lava-streams part, is divided by a medial ledge. Here we saw the parent rock of the pumice fragments, an outcrop of yellowish brown stone, like fractured and hardened clay. The four-footed animals were sent back: one rides up but not down such places. ”

“ When sitting down it is advisable to choose a block upon which dew-drops pearl. A few minutes of rest upon a certain block of marl, whose genial warmth is most grateful, squatting in the sharp cold air, neatly removes all cloth in contact with the surface. ”

“ An enthusiast, following Humboldt (p. 87) , describes the 'joyous and melodious notes' of the bird as 'the purest incense that can ascend to heaven.'↑ The author came out in 1856 to make experiments in astronomical observations. Scientific men have usually a contempt for language: we find the same in Our Inheritanse, &c. (Dalby & Co., London, 1877) , where the poor modern hierogrammats are not highly appreciated. But it is a serious blemish to find 'Montana Blanco,' 'Malpays,' 'Chahzorra' (for Chajorra) , and 'Tiro del Guanches.' The author also is wholly in error about Guanche mummification. ”

“ His soldiers buried him and priests said masses for the soul of this 'hot amorist.'↑ Humboldt's five zones of vegetation on the Pike are vines, laurels, pines, broom, and grasses (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, grasses, and bare rock.↑ There is a very bad sketch of the Pike in Mr. ”

“ It is strange to note how much more was seen by ancient travellers than by us moderns.
↑ 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 Riedlé. 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. ”