Las Palmas

“ A strip of parched garden, where a few dusty palms grew, ran down to the road, across which the square block of the Metropole cut the shining sea. Steamers' lights swung gently against the dark background of the Isleta hill. Beyond the Metropole a white belt of surf ran back to the cluster of lights at the foot of the mountain that marked Las Palmas. One heard the languid rollers break upon the beach and the measured crash of surges on the reefs across the isthmus. ”

“ Perhaps a mile above Sangre de Cristo, and directly opposite Romero's weed-grown cemetery, stood the pumping-plant of Las Palmas, its corrugated iron roof and high-flung chimney forming a conspicuous landmark.
Luis Longorio had just awakened from his siesta when José gained admittance to his presence. The general lay at ease in the best bed of the best house in the village ”

“ Las Palmas is close to the river, and my troops are in Romero, directly opposite. Mexico is not at war with your country, and when I am in citizen's clothes I am merely an ordinary person. I have made inquiries, and they tell me Las Palmas is beautiful, heavenly, and that you are the one who transformed it. ”

“ Las Palmas is divided into two halves, northern and southern, by a grim black wady, like the Madeiran ribeiras, [2] the 'Giniguada,' or Barranco de la Ciudad, the normal grisly gashes in the background curtain. The eye-striking buildings are the whitewashed Castillo del Rey, a flat fort of antique structure crowning the western heights and connected by a broken wall with the Casa Mata, or platform half-way down: it is backed by a larger and stronger work, the Castillo de Sant' Ana. The next notability is the new theatre, large enough for any European capital. ”

“ It was a clear, moonlight night when Pancho Brown, Mrs. Hatherly, and Erminio Oliviera, the Estremedura's captain, sat in big cane chairs on the veranda of the Hotel Catalina, Las Palmas. The Catalina is long and low, and fronted with a broad veranda, a rather more sightly building than tourist hotels usually are, and its row of windows blazed that night. They were, most of them, wide open, and the seductive strains of a soft Spanish waltz drifted out with the rhythmic patter of feet and swish of light draperies, for the winter visitors had organised a concert and informal dance. ”

“ The modern development of Las Palmas is largely due to the foreign merchants, and especially to the British who control the greater portion of the local commerce. La Luz, the port, is connected with Las Palmas by a railway 4 m. long; it is a free port and harbour of refuge, officially considered the third in importance of Spanish ports, but actually the first in the matter of tonnage. It is strongly fortified. ”

“ And he added, "We have only got the climate." So might a man say, "I've not much ready money, but I've a million or two in Consols." I understood it by-and-by. And after all Las Palmas is not all the island, nor is its evil-mannered port. The country is a country of vines behind the sand and cinder ramparts of the city, and if one sees no running water, or sees it rarely, the hard-working Canarienses have built tanks to save the rain, and they bring streams in flumes from the inner hills that rise six thousand feet above the sea. ”

“ Indescribable was the want of hospitality which characterised the Hispano-Englishmen of Las Palmas. I have called twice upon a fellow-countryman without his dreaming of asking me upstairs. Such shyness may be understood in foreigners, who often entertain wild ideas concerning what an Englishman expects. But these people were wealthy; nor were they wholly expatriated. Finally, it was with the utmost difficulty that I obtained from one of them a pound of home-grown arrowroot for the sick child of a friend.
On the other hand, I have ever met with the greatest civility from the Spanish Canarians. ”

“ We coasted along the yellow lowland, with its tormented background of tall cones, bluffs, and falaises; and we anchored, at 4 P.M., in the roadstead of Las Palmas, north of the spot where our s.s. Senegal whilom broke her back. The capital, fronting east, like Santa Cruz, lies at the foot of a high sea-wall, whose straight and sloping lines betray their submarine origin: in places it is caverned for quarries and for the homes of the troglodyte artisans; and up its flanks straggle whitewashed boxes towards the local necropolis. The dryness of the atmosphere destroys aerial perspective ”

“ By some mystical means, the mates had charmed away from our Las Palmas visitors at small cost or none an unusual supply of cigars and cigarettes. These brightened up the melancholy purser, who was now approaching the end of his employment. There were still, however, many things to amuse his leisure. How often the table talk had come to the subject of hell and its occupants! The latter seemed to be–after the landlubbers–shipowners, ship’s chandlers, ship’s tailors, and Customs men. ”

“ But for them and for cruelty to animals Spain and Spain's dependencies might make a better harvest out of travellers. One may indeed imagine after all that nothing but accident or a sense of desperation might land and keep one at Las Palmas. I would as soon stay there for a long time as I would deliberately get out of a Union Pacific overland train at Laramie Junction and put down my stakes in that dusty and bedevilled sand and alkali hell. And yet there is the climate at Las Palmas. And out of it are the sand-dunes and Confital Bay. ”

“ Las Palmas, a town of 28,600 inhab., of a S. Spanish type like Santa Cruz (comp. p. 35) , the seat of the bishop of Gran Canaria, situated in 28° 6′ N. lat. and 15° 12′ W. long., is the busiest and wealthiest town in the whole archipelago. The houses of the well-to-do townspeople, built of pale-grey tufa or blue lava-basalt, often enclose beautiful patios filled with plants, which are watered by means of pipes conducted from the roofs. On the hills at the back of the town, which have been fortified since the Spanish and American war, are sprinkled many gaily painted country-houses. ”

“ As other ranches grew under the hands of such unregenerate owners, so also under "Old Ed" Austin's management did Las Palmas increase and prosper. The estate took its name from a natural grove of palms in which the house was built; it comprised an expanse of rich river-land backed by miles of range where "Box A" cattle lived and bred. In his later years the old man sold much land, and some he leased; but when he handed Las Palmas to his son, "Young Ed," as a wedding gift, the ranch still remained a property to be proud of, and one that was known far and wide for its size and richness. ”

“ We caught the next lurching motor back to Las Palmas, and sank gasping but grateful into deck chairs under the awning of the dream ship.
Such a home as ours spoils one for roughing it. The infinite peace and quiet and privacy of it make one detest all the more the bustle and turmoil of ordinary travel. People have said to me: "But how can you live in such restricted quarters?" My answer is: "Very easily, thank you."
For six mortal weeks we waited at Las Palmas, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the weather-prophets concerning the West Indian hurricane season ”

“ And after all, some day, no doubt, the English will buy or steal a Canary Island. There is a lingering suspicion among us all that no island ought to belong to any other nation, unless indeed it is the United States. With an enterprising people these cinder heaps would be less heavily taxed and more prosperous. For the prosperity of Las Palmas itself is much a matter of coaling. ”

“ It is worth knowing, for we of the dream ship did both these things, and from that hour suffered no further molestation.
Unless you are a coal magnate, a ship's chandler, a banana agent, or a consumptive, it is hard to find a reason for living at Las Palmas. It is a dreary sort of place built on, and occasionally smothered by, sand blown across the ocean from the Sahara, hundreds of miles distant, and the only diversion appears to be dances and roulette at the Club Náutico. ”

“ I left Santa Cruz and Las Palmas, after two short visits, with the conviction that both are on the highway of progress, and much edified by their contrast with Funchal. The difference is that of a free port and a closed port. In the former there is commercial, industrial, and literary activity: Las Palmas can support two museums. In the latter there is neither this, that, nor the other. Madeira also suffers from repressed emigration. The Canaries wisely allow their sons to make gold ounces abroad for spending at home. ”

“ In it he bumped over the badly laid tram lines from the Isleta to the city, and then left the city by the Telde road.
Las Palmas is the meeting place of all West Africa, and if one is there long enough, one expects to meet sooner or later every man who has business or other interests on the Coast. Carter waved his hand to a Haûsa constabulary officer in the gateway of the Catalina, and to a Lagos branch boat skipper who was standing on the steps of the Elder Dempster office. ”

“ This young architect built with so light a hand that the masons struck work till he encouraged them by sitting beneath his own creation. The same, they say, was done at Belem, Lisbon. The interior is Gothic, unlike all others in the islands; and the piers, lofty and elegant, imitate palm-fronds, a delicate flattery to 'Las Palmas' and a good specimen of local invention. ”

“ But Santa Cruz, the modern capital, has provided herself with a larger and a better house; ergo Las Palmas, the old capital, must fain do the same. The metropolis of Grand Canary, moreover, claims to count more noses than that of Tenerife. To the west of the older theatre, in the same block, is the casino, club, and ball-room, with two French billiard-tables and smoking-rooms. The old hotel attached to the theatre has now ceased to exist. ”

“ It is a beautiful island, fertile and populous; and until recently the seat of government, which has been transferred to Teneriffe. It has a range of mountains, some peaks of which are over six thousand feet high. Many streams flow from these hills, which in the rainy season become raging torrents. Las Palmas, or the Palms, is a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, formerly the capital of the islands; but Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, as it is called to distinguish it from another Santa Cruz in the island of Palma, has wrested from it this distinction ”

“ Not fifty yards from the big old fort at the back of the town the cliffs are all full of people as a sandstone quarry is sometimes full of sand martins. The caves with doors pay taxes, it is said, but those with no more than a sack escape anything in the shape of a direct tax. To escape taxes altogether in any country under Spain is impossible. The octroi or fielato sees to that.
For the most part Las Palmas to English people is no more than a sanatorium. They come to the Islands to get well and go away knowing as much of the people as they knew before. ”

“ But then the wilderness is broken by patches of wonderful green—the green of banana fields. Wherever a little water can be induced to flow in artificial channels there are all manner of beautiful things to be seen. I have picked a date and mustered enough Spanish to buy me a pair of shoes in the "city" of Las Palmas—a dirty city it is with strange smells; but we are well outside of it. Between Las Palmas and its port there is a little English colony. This hotel is so English that they give me my bill in £ s. ”

“ My first walk at Las Palmas was through the port to the Isleta. I went with a Scotchman who talked Spanish like a native and astounded two small boys who volunteered to guide us where no guide was needed. The begging, as in all Spanish places, is a pest, a nuisance, a very desolation. "Give a penny, give a penny," varied by a tremendous rise to "Give a shilling," is the cry of all the children. Among Spaniards it is no disgrace to beg. ”

“ The nights are long, warm and sticky, and sickly sweet; the darkness is so soft and so thick as to seem well-nigh palpable; the sky hangs low, and velvety, sewn thick with huge stars.
It was on such a night that O'Rourke arrived. On the way to his hotel he kept his eyes open for members of his corps, but saw none of them.
He was disturbed; Las Palmas is not a metropolis so great that forty fighting men can be set down within its boundaries without creating comment. ”

“ With a shovel of ashes and a watering-pot one could easily make a copy in miniature of the island, and at the first blush it seems when one lands at Las Palmas that one has come to the cinder and sand dumping ground of all the world, an enlarged edition of Mr Boffin's dust heaps, a kind of gigantic and glorified Harmony Jail. There is no more disillusioning place in the world to land in by daytime. The port is under the shelter of the Isleta, a barren cindery satellite of Grand Canary joined to [Pg 195] the main island by an isthmus of yellow sand-dunes. The roads are dust ”

“ We again passed the hospital and ascended the new zigzag to the right of the Giniguada. The torrent-bed, now bright green with arum and pepper, grows vegetables, maize, and cactus. Its banks bear large plantations of the dates from which Las Palmas borrows her pretty Eastern names. In most places they are mere brabs, and, like the olive, they fail to fruit. The larger growths are barbarously docked, as in Catholic countries generally; and the fronds are reduced to mere brooms and rats'-tails. The people are not fond of palms ”

“ The Turcos sighed regretfully; from what they said O'Rourke gathered that it had been a joyous conflict, lasting many hours, fought freely and fairly throughout the many narrow thoroughfares of Las Palmas; it was not often, averred the Turcos ruefully, that one came upon so satisfying a fight in times of peace. They licked their lips reminiscently, as men who remember a favorite dish. ”