Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/teneriffeastrono00smyt_0 J^Twto- St&'eoqi", TENERIFFE, AN ASTRONOMER’S EXPERIMENT OE, SPECIALITIES OE A RESIDENCE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. BY C. PIAZZI SMYTH, F.R.S.S. L. & E., F.R.A.S. CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF TEE ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE IN MUNICH AND PALERMO; PROFESSOR OF PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, AND HER MAJESTY 8 ASTRONOMER FOR SCOTLAND. JUustratcb farit^r LONDON: LOVELL REEVE, 5, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1858. \_Tke right of translation is reserved.'] “ they (telescopes) cannot be so formed as to take away “that confusion of Rays which arises from the Tremors of the “ Atmosphere. The only Remedy is a most serene and quiet Air, “ such as may perhaps be found on the tops of the highest Moun- “ tains above the grosser Clouds.” — Newton’s Optics, 1730. TO THE EIGHT HON. SIE CHAELES WOOD, BAET., M.P., Jirst ITorb of tty §tbntiralfg, WHO, BY HIS ENLIGHTENED PATRONAGE, AT ONCE CONVERTED INTO AN ACTUAL AND SUCCESSFUL FACT, A THEORETICAL IDEA, LONG THOUGHT WELL OF, BUT NEVER PREVIOUSLY CARRIED INTO PRACTICE, THIS BOOK, RECORDING THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE EXPERIMENT, Jueapttffttllg BY HIS OBEDIENT SERVANT, C. PIAZZI SMYTH. Edinburgh. December, 1857. PREFACE. JN the month of May, 1856, H. M. Lords Com- missioners of the Admiralty, advised by the Astronomer Royal, were pleased to entrust me with a scientific mission to the Peak of Teneriffe. Their Lordships most liberally placed 500^. at my disposal for defraying the necessary expenses; and left me, within bounds of such expenditure, as untrammelled by detailed instructions, as any explorer could desire. No sooner was the authorization known, than numerous and valuable instruments were kindly prof- fered by many friends of astronomy; and one of these gentlemen, Robert Stephenson, M.P., — who had indeed fully appreciated the scientific question in 1855, and even asked me to accompany him to the Canaries in that year, — immediately offered the use Vlll PREFACE. of his yacht “ Titania and by this, greatly ensured the prosperity of the undertaking. The object mainly proposed, was, to ascertain how far astronomical observation can be improved, by eliminating the lower third part of the atmosphere. For the accomplishment of this purpose, an equatorial telescope and other apparatus were conveyed in the yacht to Teneriffe, in June and July 1856. There — with the approval of the Spanish authorities, (always ready in that island to favour the pursuits of scientific men of any and every country), the instruments were carried up the volcanic flanks of the mountain, to vertical heights of 8900, and 10,700 feet, and were observed with during two months. On my return from this service in October, I had the honour of presenting to Government a short report on what had been done; following it, in the spring with copies of the original observations, as well as the results deduced. These were afterwards communicated by authority to, and read before, the Royal Society on the 2nd of June, 1857 ; when they were proposed for printing in the Philosophical Transactions. PREFACE. lx Being then asked by various friends to prepare some account of the personal experiences under which the said observations were made, as likely to subserve many purposes not reached by the numerical state- ments of the Memoir, — I have endeavoured, in the following pages, to throw together those parts of my journal which seemed best calculated to bring out the specialities of scientific life, on a high southern mountain. Readers who would study the history, statistics, or physics, of Teneriffe, will find them treated of at length in the several admirable publica- tions by George Glas, Yiera, Yon Buch, MacGregor, and Barker- Webb cum Berthelot; here, I have only attempted an humble record of particular labours, with due regard to the objects for which they were undertaken. These objects, I am happy to say, have been so warmly appreciated by my intelligent and scientific publisher, Mr. Lovell Reeve — that although the book threatened to be very costly, by reason of the nature of the illustrative plates, he was prompt in relieving me of every attendant risk and expense. X PREFACE. THE ILLUSTRATIONS. Anxious as myself to put all the actual facts of Nature in the elevated regions that were visited, as completely as possible before the public, Mr. Lovell Reeve has been earnestly at work for some time past, and with the gratuitous and continued assistance of Mr. Glaisher of the Greenwich Observatory, has succeeded in maturing plans for illustrating the letter-press with a series of photo-stereographs, the original negatives of which were taken by myself. This method of book illustration never having been attempted before, may excuse a word on this part of the subject. By its necessary faithfulness, a photo- graph of any sort must keep a salutary check on the pencil or long-bow of the traveller; but it is not per- fect ; it may be tampered with, and may suffer from accidental faults of the material. These, which might sometimes produce a great alteration of meaning in important parts of a view, may, however, be elimi- nated, when, as here, we have two distinct portraits of each object. Correctness is thus secured ; and then if we wish PREFACE. Xl to enjoy the effects either of solidity or of distance, effects which are the cynosures of all the great painters, we have only to combine the two photo- graphs stereoscopically, and those bewitching qualities ■are produced. Stereographs have not hitherto been hound up, as plates, in a volume ; yet that will be found a most convenient way of keeping them, not incompatible with the use of the ordinary stereoscope, open below and well adapted for Mr. Reeve’s new form of the instrument , — The Booh Stereoscope , — constructed by Messrs. Negretti and Zambra, to fold up in a case like a map, without detriment to its stereoscopic action. I have only further to observe, that while Mr. Reeve has been organizing his application of the manufacturing principle to the printing of photo- graphs — Mr. Glaisher has personally superintended the chemical part of the process, in the hands of Mr. Melhuish, of Blackheath, in order to ensure permanence in the pictures so multiplied. Edinburgh , January 1858. ERRATA. Page 37, last line , — insert “as” at end of line. „ 54, fifth line , — for “ 70,” read “ 40.” ,, 64, last line , — for “strong,” read “ stony.” ,, 65, second line , — for “a thousand,” read “five hundred.” „ 94, last line , — for “fee,” read “ feet.” ,, 155, sixteenth line , — for “ lunologists, ” read “ selenologists.” teneriffk SECTION or PEAK OF TENER1FFE FROM SOUTH TO NORTH Nti. Uiataxa 20,000 S.W. clouds SECTION OF PEAK OF TENF.RIFFF. FROM NF.AR1.V WEST TO EAST. CONTENTS PART I. THE VOYAGE AND THE CLIMB. CHAP . PAGE I. SAILING IN THE TRADES 3 II. SANTA CRUZ 24 III. OROTAYA 43 IV. BEGIN THE ASCENT 60 V. ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA 73 PAKT II. ON THE CPA TER OF ELEVATION. I. SECURING THE STATION 93 II. SOUTH-WEST ALARM 110 III. TERM-DAY WORK 124 IY. THE GREAT CRATER 143 V. SOLAR RADIATION 161 VI. WHIRLWINDS AND VISITORS 180 VII. DROUGHT AND LIGHT 195 VIII. END OF GUAJARA 208 XIV CONTENTS, PART III. ON THE CRATER OF ERUPTION. CHAP. PAGE I. SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE 225 II. EARLY EXPERIENCES 'AT ALTA VISTA . . . 241 III. BRINGING UP THE TELESCOPE 258 IV. BATTLE OF THE CLOUDS 278 V. SUMMIT OF THE PEAK 294 VI. AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS 317 VII. THE REITERATED QUESTION 333 VIII. THE ICE CAVERN 348 IX. LAST OF THE MOUNTAIN 372 PART I Y. LOWLANDS OF TENERIFFE. I. SEASONS AND PLANTS 397 II. DRACCENA DRACO 410 III. ADIEU 428 LIST OF PHOTO-STEREOGRAPHS Inserted at PAGE 1. CULMINATING POINT OP THE PEAK OP TENERIFPE, 12,198 FEET HIGH, SHOWING THE INTERIOR OP THE TERMINAL CRATER OP THE MOUNTAIN . Frontispiece 2. VOLCANIC “ BLOWING CONE” IN OROTAVA, ON THE NORTHERN COAST OP TENERIFFE 27 ... 3. PEAK OP TENERIFFE FROM OROTAVA, ON THE NORTHERN COAST 63 ... 4. TENT SCENE ON MOUNT GUAJARA, 8903 FEET HIGH . 103 ... 5. SHEEPSHANKS TELESCOPE FIRST ERECTED ON MOUNT GUAJARA, THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE IN THE DISTANCE 131 ... 6. CLIFF AND FLOOR OF THE GREAT CRATER — EIGHT MILES IN DIAMETER, AND 7000 FEET ABOVE THE SEA — UNDER MOUNT GUAJARA .... 145 ... 7. SECOND MATE OF YACHT OBSERVING RADIATION THERMOMETERS ON MOUNT GUAJARA . . . . 173 ... 8. TRACHYTE BLOCKS ON GUAJARA 193 .. 9. MASSES OF LAVA SLAG AT ALTA VISTA . . . . 215 .. 10. SPECIMEN OF THE MALPAYS OF BLACK LAVA, NEAR ) ^ ( ALTA VISTA ) \ 11. CLOSE VIEW OF ALTA VISTA OBSERVING STATION, FROM THE EAST — ALTITUDE 10,702 FEET . . 283 .. Described at PAGE 316 55 63, 403 134 131 144 172 . 167 . 250 248, 297, 363 . 284 XVI LIST OF PHOTO-STEREOGKAPHS. Inserted at PAGE 12. ALTA VISTA OBSERVATORY, FROM THE NORTHERN LAVA RIDGE 303 ... 13. ENTRANCE TO THE ICE CAVERN, IN THE MALPAYS OF THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE, AT THE HEIGHT OF 11,040 FEET 321 ... 14. EUPHORBIA CANARIENSIS ON THE SEA-COAST OF OROTAVA 339 ... 15. YOUNG DRAGON-TREES AND DATE PALM IN A CACTUS GARDEN NEAR OROTAVA 357 ... 16. YOUNG DRAGON-TREES (DRACCENA DRACO) NEAR OROTAVA 373 ... 17. DRAGON-TREE WALK AT A PALAZZO NEAR OROTAVA 391 ... 18. COCHINEAL GATHERERS AT OROTAVA 405 ... 19. THE “GREAT DRAGON-TREE” AT THE VILLA DE ORO- TAVA 419 ... 20. TRUNK OF THE GREAT DRAGON-TREE 427 ... MAP. Described at PAGE 285, 325 351, 363 406 406, 413 414 414 406, 414 419 427 MAP OF THE ISLAND OF TENERIFFE, WITH GEOLOGICAL SECTIONS OF THE PEAK Xlll PART I. THE VOYAGE AND THE CLIMB. B CHAPTER I. ' SAILING IN THE TRADES. NCE within the parallels of the Trade-wind, every other natural phenomenon is found to give way before that grand commotion of the atmosphere. Therein does nature constantly seek — according to Lieutenant Maury’s happy generalization — to restore to the air that moisture which was forcibly abstracted by the cold of the Polar circle ; in order to be enabled, on passing into the opposite hemisphere, to distribute genial showers. The region of these winds appears eminently one of mechanical energy; for, driven by all the tropical power of the sun, its “cumuloni” clouds are ever hurrying along overhead, while the swell of the ocean hastens after them below ; growing as it goes, and curling into foam, agitating and suf- fering agitation in a continually increasing ratio. So we found it on board Mr. Stephenson’s good yacht Titania, as she winged her speedy way to b 2 4 SAILING IN THE TRADES. TenerifFe, with her important freight of astronomical instruments, in the latter end of June and beginning of July, 1856. Her beautifully-formed iron hull bounded over the waves as lightly as a pleasure skiff, and with far greater velocity. But how she did roll ! in manner not disagreeably, — for a delicate digestion was not disturbed, — yet that the quantity was most notable, let twenty measured angles, of 15° to 20° each, per minute, sufficiently testify. This rolling, be it understood, was but an expres- sion of the disturbed state of the sea at the time ; and, to a certain extent, would have been a necessary expression for any vessel in the same latitude and longitude ; though each, according to its size and rig, would have a scale of its own. The Titania’s scale we came to understand before long ; and found its variations minutely sensitive to all the water changes, which the sailors described technically — as, long roll, cross swell, or head sea. We had now indeed, at last reached a part of the ocean, where the waves were gradually settling into a more regular and equable movement. But they ran higher than ever, were crested with foam, and gave the horizon a serrated look. Every now and then too, a billow, greater SHOALS OF MEDUSAS. 5 than his fellows, rushed by, — in the manner of the giant rejoicing to run his course, — and presently broke in a broad white sheet, like snow sparkling in the sun. On such a surface, and under such circumstances, there was little display of animal life. Animals, as well as men, appear only to flourish with a certain degree of quiet. In the zone of calms between the southern and northern Trades, I had been struck, during former voyages, with the abundant manifestations of organic existence. So now, when every living thing seemed to have vanished from the face of the ocean, — we remembered that it was on the 3rd and 4th of July, or immediately before entering the Trade- wind region, that five whales had been seen sporting around the yacht, and that we had then passed through an enormous shoal of medusae. The least diameter we could assign to the collection was from thirty to forty miles ; and at the rate of one to every ten square feet of surface, — which seemed to be a very moderate estimate, there must have been some 225,000,000 of them, even in the surface stratum. Probably there might well have been so many to fur- nish food for their giant destroyers ; but for numbers of victims, the whales were infinitely outdone by the 6 SAILING IN THE TRADES. medusae. They were in the form of hollow gelatinous lobes, arranged in groups of five or nine, with an orange vein down the centre of each lobe. They moved slowly by sucking in water at one end of the lobe, and expelling it at the other — a principle of locomotion which, from time to time, inventors have proposed for steam -boats ; but in the medusae was attended, doubt- less, with the means of straining the water of all its dia- tomaceous particles. Examining in the microscope a portion of one of the orange veins, apparently the stomach .of the creature, it was found to be extraor- dinarily rich in diatomes ; and of the most bizarre forms, as stars, Maltese crosses, embossed circles, semi- circles, and spirals. The whole stomach could hardly have contained less than seven hundred thousand; and when we multiply these by the number of lobes, and then by the number of groups, we shall have some idea of the countless millions of diatomes that go to make a feast for the medusae; some of the softest things in the world thus confounding and devouring the hardest, the flinty-shelled diatomaceae. When still off the coasts of France and Portugal, in the earlier part of our voyage, something new or strange, was diversifying every hour. The sailors most SWIMMING CRABS. 7 heartily entering into onr wishes, improvised nets, rigged out buckets at the end of boat-hooks, and with these and other ingenious pieces of machinery, were very successful in fishing up curious things. Amongst others, they caught certain swimming crabs, with paddles in the place of claws; paddles — as they ap- peared, under a high magnifying power, of a rich and tawny yellow colour, with a pattern resembling bunches of hair-brown coral strewed over them, and a blue-grey thread wandering here and there. While we were still speculating on the use to decorative art that might be subserved by this microscopic adorn- ment, its fairy painting became confused and nearly obliterated before our eyes, by the death and incipient decomposition of the creature. From the sea we turned to the sky, for in these regions the forms of the clouds were so varied as to be objects of never-ending interest; and the yacht’s deck was a famous place for meteorological observation. The delicate cirri, and not much denser cirrostrati, after exhibiting all their phases of beauty, passed at length gradually, and before our eyes, into a peculiar cloud, which may be called cirro-cumulo-stratus. It is a long, thin, cirrostratus, high in the air, and having a growth of compact little knobs and towers, 8 SAILING IN THE TRADES. and, as it were, trees of vapour on its upper surface. Thus garnished, it is a cloud often mistaken for dis- tant land, is eminent for its picturesque qualities, and indicates a strong tendency, or an approach to electric discharge. Some action of this sort was evidently going on in the atmosphere ; and amongst the other clouds, there presently began to form the portentous “ lightning- cumuli,” remarkable, even at mid-day for the flesh- tint of their lights, and the steely-blue of their shadows. After sunset, their small-featured, but dense and grandiose masses appeared in dark relief against the western sky. At the same moment in the east, — these electric clouds being the only ones there, able to reflect back any of the faint illumination thrown on them from the opposite quarter, — they seemed to glare out of the darkened heavens, like some pale spectre of momentous size ; and to shake their un- earthly light over the waves, from the distant horizon down to the very bows of the yacht. At midnight followed grand displays of lightning ; awful had we been in the immediate neighbourhood, for the forks were most vivid, and sometimes darted in a group of seven or eight at once. At those instants, so great was the blaze of light, as to reveal LIGHTNING FLASHES. 9 a whole perspective world of cloud-land behind the flashes ; sombre mountain ranges of cumulostrati, pierced with dark and long banks of cirri. The instant that the lightning gleam had gone, all this celestial diorama sunk down to a mere murky sky, with a suspicion of being streaked with clouds some- what darker than itself. But the interest of the scene was still kept up by the ever-heaving and rest- less sea, which, breaking against the sides of the yacht, fell back in luminous foam, scintillating with stellar-looking points ; and once the captain exclaimed, “there’s a shark,” as some large monster dashed on through the waves by our side, in a perfect path of light. This used to be the state of things in that pleasant, and then somewhat idle region, to the west of the Iberian Peninsula. One of those days, nearly calm, was studiously spent by a big three-masted vessel on the horizon in forging its way over towards us. By six o’clock p.m. she had got upon our track, though con- siderably astern ; and then rounding to, she showed her great broadside like a man-of-war commencing an engagement ; but her intentions were peaceable. The huge Austrian merchant-ship, laden with corn from the Mediterranean, had toilsomely crossed the 10 SAILING IN THE TRADES. waters to the little English yacht, solely to ask the longitude ! The sunset was gorgeous that evening ; bathed in golden light, and with massive banks of rich purple cloud, that, continually varying their outline, or rear- ing upon one end, and dropping jets of rain, clearly visible in the distance — appeared like huge saurian monsters contending in the air. A great change came on that night. The sky first grew heavy, then entirely overcast ; a breeze from the N.E. began to spring up ; hour by hour it improved ; and, when the curtain of the next morning was drawn, everything told that the Trades were fairly entered, in the high latitude for them of 39°. Meanwhile the clouds had broken, the old varieties were gone, and a new species, of very uni- form character, was arranging its masses in long N.E. and S.W. cumuloni, and yet not cumulous, sort of striae. The wind continued to freshen until it became a gale ; but always from the same quarter ; and always were the same long lines of cloud above us. They were evidently low, say 3000 to 5000 feet above the sea ; coarse and puffy as to their character, and with no difference between their upper and lower outline. Half fog, half cumulus, they were pulled CLOUD OF THE TRADE-WIND. 11 out into thin long lines — lines interminably long — for day after day we were sailing under them, and never came to their termination. Ever were they observed ranging N.E. and S.W. ; and so parallel, and yet so long, that their zones were seen morning, noon, and night always radiating out of the N.E., and converging into the S.W., points of the horizon. Nor did we cease to distinguish them thus, until they finally coalesced into a general unbroken sheet about the island of Teneriffe. What, then, were these clouds, but a mechanical effect and a sign of the Trade-wind ; the cloud material drawn out into streaks by the action of the wind, just as it occasionally pulls into strings, the foaming scum of the waves. Turner gained great fame, in one of his paintings of a storm at sea, by showing such parallel lines of froth along the whole length of a great wave ; but here were lines of aerial foam that stretched from the coast of Portugal, right away down the Atlantic, to the Canarian Archipelago. This sailing in the Trades — with one unvarying form of cloud overhead, and that not very pic- turesque ; and with a constant, everlasting blow of wind, never rising to a storm, never sinking to a 12 SAILING IN THE TRADES. breeze, without lightning, and without rain — is some- what monotonous in itself, and makes an uninte- resting time to many. But it was an opportunity most precious to me, professionally, for trying some not unimportant experiments in mechanics and astronomy. As thus : — The general question of the angular motions of a ship at sea, while curious to all, has an important bearing with regard to nautical astronomy, the pal- ladium of navigation. On shore, the astronomer is always contriving the firmest foundations for his telescopes, and even accuses stone walls of trembling. How then is he straitened on board ship, when his foundation there, does not vary only by two or three- tenths of a second in the course of several months, but by the amount of, it may be, 321° (three hundred and twenty-one degrees) in the course of a minute ; this being the number of rolls, multiplied by their mean angular value, as actually found on board the Titania by measurement. Such an amount of movement must prove a com- plete bar, and in fact always has, to any sort of observation, but such as can be carried out by Had- ley’s quadrant — an instrument in one respect inde- GALILEO S PROBLEM. 13 pendent of a ship’s motion. It is excellent so far as it goes, hut still leaves many most important phenomena quite to the mercy of the waves — viz., any that require a high magnifying power, or that need a fixity of position in the telescope, and artificial referring-points for horizontality and verti- cality. Herein is included such a wide range of subjects, important to science, and useful to the sailor, — that remedies have continually been attempted from the days of Galileo down to our own, but as yet with utter want of success. The fine old Italian fancied that he had discovered an easy method of determining longitudes at sea, by the simple observation of the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites ; and he proceeded to bargain with the King of Spain, then the strongest naval power, for a mag- nificent reward, in return for so many telescopes to be made by himself. On shore his tubes proved perfectly equal to their work, that of showing the J ovian satel- lites clearly and distinctly; but, on a ship’s deck, alas! no mortal man could use them. Galileo’s difficulty is still unsolved ; an observing chair, or stand, on which a telescope may be placed, is still a desideratum for the sailor. Not a few such machines have been attempted in times past on the 14 SAILING IN THE TRADES. principle of a pendulum ; and the inventor of one of them (Nairne), in the days of Captain Cook, was re- warded by Government. Prematurely ; as he failed in practice; and for the reason Sir John Herschel has well pointed out, in the “Admiralty Manual for Scientific Inquiry viz., that “ free suspension tends rather to perpetuate than to eliminate disturbances.” The dinner-tables on board the yacht, hung from pivots, were on a plan once proposed for observers, and answered wonderfully for mere dining purposes. Bottles and glasses remained steadily in their places, even when the tables seemed occasionally to swing so low, as to be pointing downwards nearly to the carpet under our feet. But it cannot be too distinctly understood, that keeping a dinner-service from falling, or its liquid contents from outpouring, is a perfectly dif- ferent thing to preserving a platform truly level, as regards either the horizon or the direction of gravity. The latter is what is needed for astronomical observa- tion ; and that a swinging body does not procure it, even when a glass of water is kept from spilling, may be powerfully demonstrated, by attaching the said glass to a string held in the hand, and swinging it, — not only through large arcs, in imitation of the rolling of a ship, — but round and round, through the SHIP CLINOMETER. 15 whole 360°. Let this he tried by any one, and no water will be spilt ; the dinner requirement will have been accomplished ; hut, oh ! for the astronomical one ; as the surface of the water, during the experi- ment, will have successively deviated from the horizon through every possible angle. With a clinometer of new construction, first tried during this voyage, we applied measure to the case ; and found that when the deck inclined 18 times per minute, through an average angle of 15°, — the tables in question rolled 42 times in the minute, through about 7°. The tables were heavy, with their hanging weights (several hundred weight), and their pivots were endued with much friction ; but still their oscillations, as pendulums, during the rolls of the ship were perfectly sensible. These, sometimes opposing, and sometimes combining therewith, tended greatly to increase the confusion of the movement. With the barometer, a small weight in lighter gymbals, the vibrating effect was still more prejudicial. Hence, again, the propriety of Sir John Herschebs views, of trying to modify the evils of free , by some- what stiff suspension. Yet the evils are thereby only modified, by no means removed ; as every increase in the stiffness of the suspension, in proportion as it 1G SAILING IN THE TRADES. checks the oscillations of the table as a pendulum, must communicate the roll of the ship. The only complete and radical cure, then, is to be sought for in something altogether different from the much-tried pendulum principle. Such means of rectification appear to exist in the force which keeps the axis of the earth in a constant position, as it annually revolves about the sun : viz., the rotation of a heavy body round a free axis. Models of an apparatus on this plan were shown at the French Exhibition, and are described in the “ Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts ” for the years 1855 and *56. Suffice it now to say, that on July 3rd, on board the yacht Titania, in lat. 41°. 16'. N., long. 10°. 51'. W., with the rolls of the vessel amounting to 25 per minute of 10° each, and the pitches to 27 per minute of 3° each, we tried the largest apparatus of this description yet manu- factured. The only available place on deck for the erection of the instrument, was at the vessels extreme stern, with a look-out over the quarter; just where most up and down motion occurs, and with full effect of rolling. This, however, was well for testing to the uttermost the new principle, which had this feat FREE-REVOLVER STAND. 17 set before it — to enable an observer, without using his bands, to keep a telescope constantly directed on a dis- tant object in spite of the waves. A sort of observing box had been provided, which, while allowing inser- tion of the observer’s head and hands, as well as affording a free opening for vision, kept out the rude- ness of the wind. But the essence of the means to ensure the all-important steadiness, was a wheel one foot in diameter, eleven pounds in weight, suspended and balanced in gymbal rings; as well as capable of being put into rapid rotation by two trains of wheels, acting on either side of its axis. The captain called up the sailors to drive those wheels. Two strong men at each handle, and the striking together of hundreds of steel and iron teeth many times in a second — as the axles spun round with a velocity almost unprecedented in practical mechanics — soon produced a thrilling sound that called up every one to see what was going on. They found it of course a most unnautical proceeding. Presently, on the wheels being throwm out of gear, and the gymbal rings undamped, the sound died away, though the revolver went on spinning. Then following with my head the small apparent motions of the eye-piece, I looked in, and had the c 18 SAILING IN THE TRADES. satisfaction of finding the horizon of the sea remaining steadily in the field of view. All the rolling of the vessel could avail nothing against the power of the free- revolver principle. Adjusting the balance, and then bringing the sea-line on the wire of the telescope, — it actually remained bisected for a considerable length of time ; and the captain, the first and second mates, and many of the crew, were invited to look at it one after another. They saw, and readily confessed the fact, of the useful thing that was now accomplished for the first time at sea ; and throwing their prejudices behind them, they took kindly to the scientific inno- vation. The sailors worked with enthusiasm. When- ever the driving handle moved in the direction for pulling, they fastened on a rope to it, and clapping their feet against the timbers of the yacht, pulled away as only sailors can pull. They pulled till the multiplying wheels, with their innumerable striking teeth, shrieked again in their velocity of rotation. Some splendid spins were thus obtained, which gave to the table, with nothing visibly supporting it, a firmness like a rock. Touch it, then, incautiously — and it resisted like a wild beast ; but press judiciously on THE CRASH. 19 the gymbal rings — and the table was adjusted more accurately than by any tangent screw. The action improved with every increase of speed which we could bring the wheel up to ; and every additional trial saw it revolving a greater number of times in a second. Annoyed only at not being able to get up the full velocity at once, and not understanding the mecha- nical difficulty of causing an eleven-pound wheel to revolve one hundred times in a second — as indeed few persons do, or have any idea of, without trying, — the willing hands put out more strength still. Then came a sudden crash, and in a moment the men lay flat along the deck; the strong steel driving axles, each an inch in diameter, had broken. So the observation of Jupiter’s satellites, and sundry other intended crucial experiments, were deferred to a future voyage. On July the 7th we had passed the parallel of Madeira, and were approaching the Canary group at the rate of nine or ten knots an hour. The forms of the waves, I marked in my journal as grand; the colour of the water, as a fine deep Prussian blue, — a change from the cobalt blue of the first part of the voyage; and their material as endued with an ex- traordinary power to froth and effervesce — for a bucket c 2 20 SAILING IN THE TRADES. drawn upon deck, went on sparkling for a long time like champagne. A land bird, probably from the Salvages, perched for a time on our rigging ; and the question was thereby prominently brought before us, when shall we sight the Peak ? From how many persons have I heard of the 90 miles, or 1 00 miles, and even 140 miles from which they had seen this lofty mountain ; or of the two or three days that they have been sailing past, ere it was finally lost below the horizon ! What a termination to a voyage, the high cone of the Peak ! What a land- mark ; how easy to make a port so defined ! Such are the theoretical ideas on the navigator's problem ; but how different the reality, as will presently be seen. The lines of cumuloni, which had long been grow- ing broader and denser, overspread the whole sky in the course of the day; and, with a perfectly cloudy evening, a wild windy atmosphere, and huge boiling waves all around, what hope for us to see the Peak from any extraordinary distance ? Nay, at night we even began to be anxious about our position, it was so long since we had got any observation ; and here we were still scudding along over the tops of the waves, with a velocity equal to their own. On, how- LAND IN SIGHT. 91 & JL ever, and still on we went all the night through, in the direction concluded for Teneriffe, and surely by sunrise we must see the great Peak. Before sunrise there was a report of land ! On deck stood the captain closely scanning a range of rocks and breakers, some eight miles to the S.W. Every now and then, as the yacht rose on the now giant waves of the Trade-wind, we saw the surf beating on these rocks with terrific distinctness. But what their summits were like could not be told, being lost at a small height above the sea in the sheet of the Trade-wind cumuloni, that stooping low, en- veloped them almost as a mantle of fog. What with the roaring gale, the densely-clouded sky, and its con- comitant low-toned colours, as well as the cold watery look of the rocks and everything about them, one was inclined to ask, what had this at all to do with Teneriffe ? The “ Island of the Blessed,” the site of the Elysian fields, according to poesy, the hot and sunburned African isle of travellers, beaconed with a cone 12,000 feet high, as a landmark for all wandering sailors ! Yet this little fragment of misty-looking breaker-coast — a bit that could, without blame, be mistaken for innumerable parts of the Scottish or almost any coast — was all we had to 22 SAILING IN THE TEADES. judge by, of our proximity to the burning mountain of tropical Africa. The captain believed the rocks to be at the N.E. point of Teneriffe, and at nearly the distance, and in the direction he wished them at that moment. But with the frankness and honesty of a really able seaman, he confessed that they might be on the N.E. coast of Grand Canary. Currents, he said, which sometimes do, and sometimes do not, run with great violence in these parts towards the east, — wreck- ing Atlantic vessels on the African coast, and giving their crews as slaves to the Bedouins, — might have been setting the yacht eastward since the last astro- nomical observation had been obtained. But if that be so, he added, “ by keeping on so many more miles on our present course, we shall see a distant headland come out immediately behind these rocks ; while, if it is really Point Anaga, in Teneriffe, the rocks will gradually trend into a long-continued coast line.” An hour more, and this nice question in practical navigation was settled. The captain was right ; we were rounding the north-eastern cape of Teneriffe. We then edged in a little more towards land. As the day advanced, the clouds rising in altitude dis- played the steep slopes and cliffs of Anaga. Nearer POINT ANAGA. 23 and nearer we passed in review one headland after another; the colours next began to be distinguishable, and very red, brown, and yellow colours they were. A little longer, and having got somewhat under the lee of the land, the force of both wind and sea was immediately moderated. Now, with hut gently rolling motion, we began to perceive the terraced garden-walls on the cultivated slopes ; to admire the wild grandeur of many a mountain glen opening down toward the sea ; and presently to make out the solitary euphorbia bushes overhanging the rocks ; while in the distance appeared a long low line, which the telescope soon split up into the houses and steeples of Santa Cruz. On the hill summits, the wind was playing wild work with the clouds. Our old friends, the cumuloni, were being dashed against the rocks, and the tops of the ragged rocks ; torn piecemeal, and then hurried over the edge into dissolution ; much after the well-known scene of misty drapery on Table Moun- tain, at the Cape of Good Hope, during the prevalence of a “ black south-easter.” With Teneriffe, however, more in the heart of the Trade-wind, its clouds were more abundant, while the extent of high country to catch and bewilder them was greater, and in its form, 24 SAILING IN THE TRADES. infinitely more picturesque. Suddenly a gap appeared amongst the driving masses, and lo ! there was the Peak of Teyde whitening in the morning sun. In a few minutes the vista closed again ; but it had crowned the truth of the captain’s navigation, and at the same time left indelible traces on our minds of some of the characteristics of this great volcano ; its long external slopes of gentle ascent, the sharp-pointed though obtuse-angled peak, and the light bright colour of its pumice-strewed soil. This unveiling for a moment of the chief glory of the island, showing it for an instant as a reward after the toil of the voyage, and then shrouding it in mist and in mystery, as one advances nearer to the coast, — leaving it to faith and perseverance of the “ excelsior” vein, on landing, to push through the entangling luxuries of a southern clime, and re-dis- cover the great Peak in a new world above the clouds, — this momentary manifestation of a higher and purer sphere, — is by no means so accidental an affair as might be thought at first, and is therefore no unfre- quent phenomenon to vessels entering these roads. It has been described by Darwin, in his “ Naturalist’s Voyage,” with beautiful point; and appears to depend physically, on a certain line of separation between the FIRST VIEW OF THE PEAK. 25 land-cloud and the sea-cloud, which is more or less constant through half the year. Hence, conversely, for the same period there is given to observers on the Peak, raised high above these lower strata of mist, and looking down through their narrow partition, the vision of a certain strip of ocean, and that only, some five or six miles beyond the Santa Cruz anchorage ; everywhere else, they see only broad plains of barren cloud, spread far and wide below them. The dis- covery of the reason was the result of subsequent experience. At the instant of the phenomenon ap- pearing to us, the effect on the feelings was such, that there could have been few persons with whom the leading idea would have been the physical expla- nation. CHAPTER II. SANTA CRUZ. TT^TTH the wind still mangling the clouds on the serrated crests of Anaga, and ruling supreme over the dark and mist-covered sea to the N.E. ; but, nevertheless, with an admirably warm and bright day about us, we rowed ashore through the numerous vessels in the bay. They were rolling to an extent, that from at first seeming dangerous, grew at last to be positively absurd ; so intent did they seem to be on first giving us a peep down their hatchways, and then trying to show the state of preservation of their keels. This was the effect of the swell from the eternal Trade-wind outside, prodigious in amount for a harbour, or a place where ships lie at anchor ; but being here glassy and harmless, we rowed pleasantly over it — -now catching a sight of the shore-line, with white surf breaking along its rocks ; and now seeing all apparently submerged under a wave close by, up to the tops of tfre highest steeples of the town. IPTwto- Ster'aogr'oiphf 2 . VOLCANIC “BLOWING CONE” IN OROTAVA, ON THE NORTHERN COAST OE TENER1FFE . THE MOLE. 27 At the mole, what a scene ! — what a place for my wife to land at ! for there, though the structure is cairied out into deep water, the swell is not so inno- cuous. Crowds of boats are about, and the place is alive with men, mules, and merchandize of import and export. Every few seconds comes a great wave, heav- ing up all the boats one after the other, and then letting them down crushing and grinding together ; while the turbulent billow, rejoicing in the mischief it has done, rushes along in its appointed course, half deluging that side of the mole. Scarcely have things recovered from this visitation, when on comes another great wave rearing out of the vasty deep, and tries to outdo its fellow, or overtake it before reaching the line of sandy shore — where little boys, as brown as a berry, are bathing in noisy crowds. This sort of ocean game keeps on all day, and day after day, in this most open and exposed of roadsteads. How the island must rue the loss of its ancient port of Garachico, filled up by a red-hot lava stream in 1705. Our boat was small and frail, but the Spaniards adroitly eased it on its way, as their surrounding launches rose and fell, swashing up and down with every surge. At length we almost touched the wall, 28 SANTA CRUZ, and seizing the instant of being on the point of a wave — we stepped lightly ashore, in a land that told abundantly, though the sea outside had not done so, of a southern latitude and a tropical sun. The scene that had suddenly burst on us, — who had been under- going the dismal winter of 1855 and ’56 in the British Isles, and had had nothing but heavy rains up to the last day of June, — was chromatically in another hemi- sphere. It would have been a paradise to a painter from the raw and gloomy north, — colours so dazzlingly rich, yet so harmoniously combined, and such ideal forms met the eye on every side. Men and women and children were there, of whom literal portraits would he perfect pictures — rich, too, in the poetic element. The peculiar tint of the Spanish complexion is an easy one to introduce and to harmonize amongst other colours ; witness the predilection of even land- scape painters for brown trees, brown grass, brown everything. How, too, the hue is set off here by the white garments, glowing in the bright sunlight, and the rich red scarf that the poorest porter wears about his waist. Entering, in the course of the day, a Scotch merchant’s establishment in the city, we saw a roll of the most gorgeous scarlet satin — the purple of SOUTHERN HEAD- GEAR. 29 the Roman emperors — laid out before some peasants ; poorly enough clad generally, but by no means dis- posed to forego indulgence in a piece of finery, manu- factured perhaps in Glasgow or Macclesfield, but never there exposed to public gaze. How every painter, and eke every tee-totaller too, should thank the men who live on barley and water and silk-finery, in place of spending their means on rich food and strong drink, practically synonymous with riotous and un- lovely living. Carefully let us pick our way amongst the troops of loaded mules, and the crowds of scarfed men and hatted women, erect in their gait, and brilliant in their coloured garments. The matrons amongst them seem generally to wear a dark or scarlet shawl on their heads, with a black hat above. This shawl is allowed to droop in graceful folds down the back, and the young damsels similarly display a white or yellow kerchief, but are more commonly seen without the hat. The “head” drapery, indeed, pendant behind, would appear to be a necessary adjunct of female dress in Teneriffe — no doubt because in this burning climate, it protects the spinal marrow of the wearers from the hot and piercing rays of the sun. With all these distracting novelties, so particu- 30 SANTA CRUZ. larly interesting after a long voyage, let us be wary that we impale ourselves not on the horns of the oxen that tranquilly, rather than lazily, wend their way along through the 'crowds of porters, and drag behind them liliputian sledges, with box or barrel placed thereon. What classical models of symmetry are these little oxen ; from top to toe they are all of one fine tawny colour. None of those clown-like piebald marks that badge the domestic animals of our Saxon country, preventing a sculptor from fully per- ceiving the play of the muscles, no such rude blotches, appear in these exquisitely natural-looking creatures. In uniformity of colour, and that a tint greatly to be admired, they have all the lordly air of unenslaved denizens of the forest; uniting therewith a tender and honest expression in the full liquid dark eye and pendant eyelids, which so took the fancy of the Greeks. A camel, that presently comes swaying along with a grand piano slung on one side, and a heavy bag of sugar to balance it on the other, appears rather out of his element. So he is, too, for though this eastern end of the island, that looks towards Africa, and in the parallel of the Great Desert be it remembered, is hotter and drier than the western portion — it is yet far GROVE OF BANANAS. 31 from reaching the tension of the continental Sahara. We have here light and heat in perfection, but happily for man, and his comforts, some little moisture also. Hence, when walking at mid-day in one of the basalt-paved streets, each glittering stone sending back the full rays of a vertical sun, and the gleaming houses on either side affording a steady white-hot glare of unmitigated sunshine — what words in a northern language can express the delightful emo- tions, when at the open gateway of one of the semi- Moorish abodes we look in upon a grove of bananas ! Throwing a tender green shade over the interior court, their grand and delicately-structured leaves rise up aloft, catch the fierce rays of the sun before they can do mischief, receive them into their sub- stance, make them give out the most varied yellow greens ; pass them on from leaf to leaf subdued and softened; pass them on to the oleander’s fountain of rose-pink flowers, to the dark green of the orange, the myrtle, and the bay ; and leave just light enough at last in the green cavern below — to show the bubbling of some tiny fountain, the welling heart of this fairy oasis. Our fashionables who visit Italy and Spain in winter only, how little do they know of the province of the sun. 32 SANTA CRUZ. Save us, however, from too long a continuance of it. For when we saw English gentlemen domiciled in the Canaries going about like young girls with green silk umbrellas over their heads, and defending their eyes with great blue goggles, that must have marred to the wearers all pictorial characteristics in every landscape, — when we found them so list- less at home as to let flies walk uninterfered with about their noses while conversing with us, — we felt thankful, indeed, for our present stamina. Hardened in the cold of British winters, we found now, for a time at least, in lat. 28°, that we still enjoyed, in spite of an almost tropical sun, the ability to roam about as freely as in England; studying all the aspects of nature, as well in her scenes of bright magnificence, as in her secluded realms of gloom and grandeur. • So high an authority as Humboldt has stated (“ Personal Narrative,” Bohn's edition, vol. i., p. 48), “ That from every traveller beginning the narrative of his adventures by a description of Madeira and Teneriffe, there remains now scarce anything un- told respecting the topography of the little towns of Eunchal, Santa Cruz, Laguna, and Orotava.” TOPOGRAPHY OF THE TOWN. 33 Coming half a century after the subject was thus pro- claimed to be utterly threadbare, I did not expect that anything still remained, which could be usefully noted by a casual visitor. Yet, when that great traveller himself goes on to say of the “ little” town of Santa Cruz, “ On a narrow and sandy beach, houses of dazzling whiteness, with flat roofs, and win- dows without glass, are built close against a wall of black, perpendicular rock devoid of vegetation,” that, “ reverberating the heat, unduly increases the tempe- rature ;” and when we found, on the contrary, that in the Santa Cruz of 1856 are lordly mansions with glazed windows, and ascertained it to be a large town, with gardens interspersed; separated too from the beach, which lies altogether in front of it, and at a lower level ; when we found the town to spread backward from the shore over an extensive, slightly inclined plain, that stretching away at the same gentle angle of not more than five degrees, and for several miles from the sea, — is nowhere terminated and backed by a “ black, perpendicular wall of rock,” — other ideas came over us. We could not then but suspect, that Humboldt’s description applies so little to the present time, either as to social features or natural topo- graphy, that there is room enough still for another 34 SANTA CRUZ. wanderer, and perhaps many another, to add his mite towards elucidating the very interesting characteristic features of the capital of Teneriffe. In search, however, for the “ black, perpendicular cliffs,” we strolled through the town, away from the sea; saluted an occasional palm-tree, that soul-mov- ing emblem of the East and the South; and dis- cussed the merits and promises of pumpkins and fig-trees, in those gardens where we could look over the stone walls that bounded them. We wandered away till the gardens of the town, and the villas of its citizens, passed into the cactus plantations of outside farmers ; and seeing these gradually rising in the distance into the terraced lands of genuine country peasants — we agreed to leave further exploration in that direction, until we should be driving there, as drive we did two days after, with four horses at full speed, on our way to Laguna and Orotava. So we turned again, and perambulated the town in other directions. We examined the shops, and stood asto- nished before one filled with bamboo instruments, the like of which we had never seen before in all our born days ; yet surely we had dreamed of them, or were dreaming then. The olive-cheeked damsel, with blue-black hair and dark-beaded eyes, in charge AESTHETIC DECORATION. 35 of these mysteries, immediately volunteered an expla- nation ; and, with a little clever pantomime, quickly demonstrated, that the cabalistic implements were nothing but “ distaffs,” and were in general use amongst her countrywomen. In the churches we could not admire their pictures ; but the “Correggiosity” of the Spaniards in decoration was not a little remarkable. The greater part of the building was kept in gloom, deepened by sombre colours; while towards the altar there was one vast blaze of gilded ornamentation. Not vulgarly laid on in flat, meaningless surface, was this profusion of the precious metal ; but, wreath- ing and twining, it appeared like an inextricable mass of tropical foliage; yet subdued, methodised, and con- ventionalised with infinite tact, to permit an orderly and harmonious effect in conjunction with archi- tecture. Was it from having made the whole region about the altar, from floor to roof, a mass of red bur- nished gold, that the rearers of this temple had ex- hausted their scale of glorification; and, to distin- guish anything more glorious still, must take a lower tint on their pallet ? or, was it that the remembrance of Mexican mines and ores of Peru have left an 36 SANTA CRUZ. ecstatic halo in the Spanish mind about the idea of silver? We know not, hut so the fact was, that we found the altar composed of silver, while the chapel, nay, the whole end of the church, was of gold. Not so much did we approve the woodwork of buildings, whether sacred or profane ; interesting re- miniscences though it gave of the old arabesque. Certainly descended from the stock of the Alhambra, are all the window and door frames of Santa Cruz de Tenerife ; hut at this distance of time, the style, sadly debased, reflects on its parentage ; hinting that it was hut curious ornamentation, or luxurious trifling, and not high art at all. That which was the carver's work formerly, or at least was concealed by, and glorified in, the art of the carver, is now hut a sedu- lously-wasted piece of joinery. A door that might be made in a single panel, in two, or in four, shows here in fifty or more panelled frames. No angles or pro- portions of beauty seem to have incited, only the idea of intricacy and multiplicity. A fisli-slice, M. Gautier would say, is nothing to it ; and all that has been gained, is, an infirmly-trussed bit of carpentry, with innumerable joints. Had the material been still, as of old with the Moors, the knotted root-stocks of the olive, this lili- DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. 37 putian panelling would have been highly com- mendable ; but when the material of all Santa Cruz carpenters is now, the broad and honest plank of American deal, what need is there to fritter its length away, in panels only three or four inches square ? Other features of the buildings, however, called forth much admiration. For, comparing the general archi- tecture of this town of the Spaniards, with Cape Town in nearly equal southern latitude, and not far from the same longitude; and where two Saxon nations have followed each other, reproducing in a hot and thirsty African land, — one the marsh-built structures of Amsterdam, the other, houses appropriated to a region of snow and mist, — we could not fail, despite its unmechanical carpentry, in giving the palm to Santa Cruz. The Moorish arrangement of a dwelling appears pre-eminent in suitability to a burning climate ; for it affords in the interior court, such charming retreats, for man and choice plants from dusty winds and the blinding light outside. Nowhere else than in the shade and shelter of a whole environing house, in these lands swept by the constant Trade-wind, could such masterpieces of vegetation be produced, 38 SANTA CKUZ. certain that we saw, when treading the interior gal- leries of verandahs, in many of these delightful man- sions. How different though, and how primitive, are the residences of some of the lower classes, under sheets of lava, which form a substratum for all the country around ; and after passing under the town, are broken down just as they enter the sea. Of but a few feet in thickness, these beds expose at this point the clay which they formerly overflowed, and often caused to bear crimson testimony to the once glowing heat of their melted stone. Now, sea spray acting on the whole, washes out the soft material here and there, and forms a long row of caverns. Roofed by pro- jecting sheets of basaltic lava, they enjoy in front a magnificent prospect of bright blue sea, the shipping in the bay, and distant purple peaks of the picturesque island of Grand Canary. In his own hot and dry climate, with his all-defending cloak to wrap himself in, the Spaniard cares little about the artificial agremens of his sleeping-room; so no wonder, if in this island, where the climate is warmer and drier still, these lava-covered halls are numerously tenanted. Wending our way next along rocky descents to- HAUL OF FISH. 39 wards the sea, the ice-plant ( mesembryanthemum crys- tallinuni) with its succulent leaves, frosted with ruby and diamond-like drops, appeared in abundance. Con- triving to grow on mere heaps of rubbish, the inha- bitants find the succulent creeper a cheap and easy means of manufacturing soda. That throwing this plant into the fire, should turn it into stone, is, say the more thinking among them, one of the greatest wonders in the world. Near the mole a net was being drawn ashore, and, as more and more of it was brought to view, a sudden storm of vociferation and malediction arose. The fishermen had caught sight of their enemy, a great ray ( Vteroplatea Canariensis ), with a sting like a stiletto. The huge square, flat mass began to flounder in the utmost agitation, as if anticipating its fate; and was no sooner on terra firma, than men and boys of all ages rushed at it with sticks and oars, and im- plements of all sorts ; using them in such style, that one could soon examine the creature’s dreaded weapon of offence with perfect sang froid. Hammer-headed dog-fish were numerous ; and being taken out care- fully one by one, and having had their heads well knocked against a stone, were thrown into a heap to go to some oil-preparing works ; a large assortment 40 SANTA CRUZ. of eatable fislv, between mackerel and herrings, still remained behind. Enough, however, of mere gazing about a strange town. The Peak, with which our professional work is connected, is staring at us all this time; some might say it is rather peeping; for, seen from Santa Cruz, only the upper fortieth part in height of this 12,000 foot mountain, a portion merely of its miniature ter- minal cone, rises above sloping hills to the west of the town. There is just enough seen to testify to, and no more ; and the position is curiously undigni- fied for so mighty a volcano. Often one has difficulty in distinguishing it from little parasitic craters, red and yellow, seated on the intervening ground; and such small affairs, that one might think them the work of recent navvies. On visiting them, they come out grandly enough ; but in this land, distance does not so much beautify far off things in the clear, trans- parent air, as make them appear close, and be thought small. The Peak is visible from here, certainly, but that is all; it is thirty miles away, and cannot be con- sidered as belonging to this end of the island. The English Consul and merchants are most obliging, as far as lies in their power, but that does not include the RETURN ON BOARD. 41 Peak. For the ascent of it, they can give no better advice, than that we should betake ourselves to the town of Orotava, close under the highest part of the volcano, and from there arrange our mountain operations. Santa Cruz, the capital for government and for commerce, has at least answered our purpose for report- ing ourselves to the Spanish authorities, and request- ing their countenance to our mission. With their accustomed liberality in this island, its dignitaries have made us as free to wander wherever we like, as the natives themselves. Orotava, they say, we may visit when or how we will, by sea or by land, to stay as long or as short a time as we please. On this permission we act at once ; yet, before we can leave our hospitable friends, the sun has set. Darkness, indeed, is descending over land and sea — and the clouds on the craggy hills are accumulating again, after their partial rout by the heat of day — as we row back from the mole once more to our floating home. The swell comes rolling in grandly from the open ocean. For a moment the dark line of a wave, seen high against the sky, threatens to submerge us; and then up we are mounted on its back to view the red fires of fishermen, in their Neapolitan-looking 42 SANTA CRUZ. boats, similarly rising and falling, and throwing lurid reflections among the billows. The yacht is descried at last ; and there it is rolling away from side to side as actively as for a wager ; as if it had not had the luxury of a really good roll all day long ; or as if it did not know that it was going to have full opportunity for the enjoyment every day, for at least three months to come. I knew it, however, and considered the sub- ject anxiously, for the captain was to make metereo- logical observations on board, coincidently with the mountain party aloft ; and the angular motions of a vessel at sea, are capable, we had found, of sensibly influencing the height of a barometer, in a manner not hitherto taken into account. CHAPTER III. OROTAVA, T 4 p.m., on July the 10 th, my wife and I rode into Orotava. We knew that we were now com- paratively close to the Peak, but it was concealed from view by strata of mist, descending so low as 3000 feet, and extending over the greater part of the sky. The air was nearly calm ; for the N.E. Trade-wind, the tyrant of Canarian seas, cannot blow home to this huge mountain, that, unlike the lower crests of Anaga, towers high above the influence of polar currents. The streets were trafficless, and quiet reigned everywhere. The only noise, beyond the clattering of our horses* feet on the pavement as we passed along, was the pushing open of a trap in each wooden window, to allow of the protrusion of some curious head ; and then the falling* to again of the little panel when curiosity was satisfied. Our two atten- dants, the Spanish grooms, running alongside the 44 OROTAVA. horses, after having, in pride of their city, taken us up and down as many of the streets as possible — con- cluded by a grand career through the principal square, and a spirited entry into the courtyard of the inn, awakening all the echoes of the place. This could not be the inn ! but “ Si, senor,” they answered, it was the inn, the hotel, the grand hotel, and that whereat we were expected ; and away they vanished with our tired steeds. We seated ourselves in a corner of the court; we noted the vesicular basalt wherewith it was paved; we observed the several stories of verandahs surround- ing the enclosure ; the strong featured furrows of its red-tiled roof gleaming against the sky, and project- ing far over the walls ; while at one corner a belvedere tower rose quaintly, and not unpicturesquely, above the whole. All this time not a sound was heard, not a form was seen to move, save a chance butterfly tumbling in by accident over the housetops, and hastening out again as fast as it might. By what name can we call this silent inn — this inn of the dead — this most dead and death-like inn ? One began to realize prematurely the feelings of the last man. How needlessly, for there all the time, concealed by the darkness of his cool retirement, is the young pro- THE ACTING VICE-CONSUL. 45 prietor, placidly smoking his cigar, and contem- plating us, never imagining that he has anything more to do. In half an hour we were visited by the acting Vice-Consul. The journals of all ascenders of the Peak invariably bear thankful testimony to the abundant services and effective agency of the con- sular authorities in Orotava ; and we were to expe- rience the same assistance on a yet more extensive scale. Mr. Goodall, the present officer, proved ex- actly the man we desired ; of few words, he listened to others, observed for himself, disappeared with his cigar ; and, before it was burnt out, had arranged his plans, and begun to put them into execution. The reception of the yacht was the first thing considered. So next morning, when her flowing sails and raking masts were seen in the offing, an experienced pilot was ready to go on board and bring her to the anchorage. What an anchorage, though ! The water was inconveniently deep, and not 200 yards off was a black beach bristling with rocks, and over- hung with precipices ; while every moment the great surges rolled in from the ocean, and broke in a perfect avalanche of foam. Such a position on the British coast would have been dangerous indeed. WTio could 46 OROTAVA. tell, but what a wind would not spring up before the morning, and from a quarter most devoutly unde- sirable. That may be in England, said the Islenos ; but here, in Teneriffe, our wind in the summer season is no affair of chance, and you are as safe as in a closed dock. Now, too, they added, you are anchored fast, and have no wind at all, so you can't help your- self, and must remain where you are ; no wind, either, will you have until to-morrow morning at sunrise, and then a nice little breeze from the S.W. will enable you to put to sea in gallant style. So the captain philosophically made the best he could of it ; and while instruments and packages were being handed over one side into large native boats — on the other side the urban aristocracy were crowding on board to see his far-famed yacht. I do not know that they were quite competent to appreciate the beauties of her build, but they admired the splendour of her internal decorations mightily, and stood in mute astonishment before a fire-place in the main cabin. This was a puzzle, and perhaps not altogether a fair one. The inhabitant of a city without chimneys is not bound even to expect a fire-place on board ship ; and that which obtained in the yacht, one must confess. SAILOR ASSISTANTS. 47 with its white marble and inlaid porcelain, had not much of a Vulcan ian look, in spite of the iron bars and the brass wire screen. Hence, when a knot of the most learned had examined, and discussed, and concluded that the thing must be a “ bird-cage,” — if they did not make a very fair first approximation, — they certainly produced a useful hint on meaning and appropriateness in decorative ornament, for many of our manufacturers at home. With the instruments and camp equipage, were landed the carpenter and the second mate of the yacht, William Neal and William Corke. They were obligingly picked out from the whole crew by the captain, following strictly Mr. Stephenson’s liberal instructions, as likely to be the most serviceable men ; and they entered heartily into the unknown work before them. In a marvellously short time they had packed up their hammocks and necessaries ; and pre- sently stood on the beach of Orotava in the blue uniform of the Royal Yacht Club, the observed of all observers. These lookers-on were many indeed, being half the children and all the idlers of the town, who from this moment began to dog our steps wherever we went, notwithstanding some interference from the alcalde 48 OROTAVA. iii our behalf. The maimed and halt, too, trooped down to the inn ; and, when kept forcibly out of its court, the poor creatures would seat themselves per- severingly in the grand square opposite ; and when- ever we looked out of the windows, it was to behold a waving of diseased arms and leprous legs. In a large, unoccupied billiard-room we arranged our numerous packages ; and were happy to add to our councils Mr. Charles Smith, a former graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge; resident in Orotava for twenty years; and while keeping up his mathematical lore, adding practical science thereto, and, above every- thing else, a specialty for all that appertains to ascents of the Peak. Long and earnestly we discussed the best methods of carrying out the objects of our expedition. The main purpose thereof — to ascertain the degree of im- provement in astronomical vision with the elevation of the observer — appeared to demand, that two or more stations should be occupied at different heights, but was indifferent to the full extent of the sky being visible at each place. Other, and not unimportant objects of research, imperatively required full vision of the whole hemisphere of the sky, down to, and DISCUSSION OF PLANS. 49 below, the horizontal line. The difficulty of compassing all these requirements, was not a little augmented by the amount of mere locomotion, that would be neces- sary on the sides of a mountain — of whose vastness and ruggedness, I was assured over and over again, that I could form no idea without actually ascending. One person even insisted that there could be no living at all at a great height up its flanks, because the heat of the sun was there so terrific by day, and the cold so in- tense at night. But he being soon answered, that such effects were in themselves an infallible proof of the greater lustre with which the stars would be found to shine, the cherished end of our journey to ascertain, and to measure, — we recontinued the course of our discussion. No station in or about Orotava, nor within 4,000 feet of altitude from the sea level, could be thought of for a moment ; for the local cloud of the Trade-wind was now established in permanence for the summer ; and rendered all the country below its level as cloudy and as untoward for any astronomical observations, as the very climate of Scotland itself. Again, the sum- mit of the Peak could not be occupied ; for not only was it unattainable to mules, — by reason of the rug- gedness of its rocky slopes, — but the abundant escape E 50 OROTAVA. of hot vapours, from the highest crater of this yet unextinct volcano, would be quite enough, we agreed, if tried at the place, to spoil any accuracy in telescopic vision. On the sides of the Peak, a station practicable so far as related to the conveyance of instruments, might be found : but no one could say whether there might not be escapes of volcanic breath in the neigh- bourhood ; and all were certain, that the great cone towering above, would cut off a large portion of sky, fatally for many subsidiary observations with which we were charged. What high point is there then, at a distance from the Peak, and from all influences of Plutonic heat, and commanding a full view around on every side? “Guajara,” shouted Mr. Smith; “that is the mountain for you : it is 10,000 feet high, four miles to the south of the Peak ; and, excepting that, is the highest land in the island.” The maps were con- sulted. “Are you sure Guajara is 10,000 feet high?” “ No, not certain, but it has the credit of being so ; and even if, as is usual in such cases, a fraction of its height should be removed by instrumental measure- ment, I know well that it overtops all other moun- tains in the Island, but the Peak itself. There too,” he added, “ high above all the clouds, you will have CHOICE OF GUAJARA. 51 an intensely blue sky overhead, a dry air around, and a spring of water not a quarter of an hour’s walk below you; by no means an unimportant conside- ration even for an astronomer.” Then Guajara for ever ! and now let us see about the baggage. Here are tents, camp furniture, and hut building materials, with carpenters’ and masons’ tools; meteorological instruments, physical apparatus, and of photographic chemicals not a few : there are also the Sheepshanks telescope, and the great Pattinson Equatorial. Hola, poco a poco ! you don’t think of ever getting up those awful big boxes of that mighty Equatorial ! And why not ? Why not, indeed, but you don’t know the mountain ! The distances are too great for men, and no mule could carry one of those chests. Then two mules can carry it between them, as in the Sicilian Lettiga. Such a thing was never seen in Teneriffe ; and the mules here are so decidedly more than proverbially obstinate and vicious, — that it is as much as one can do to get them along in the good old-fashioned ways, without any attempt to impose an innovation upon them. They would not submit to it any how; and besides that, the road is often, nay continually, so narrow and so crooked, that there would not be room enough for two mules and the E 2 52 OROTAVA. box, on shafts between them, to turn the corners. Oh, you don't know the mountain ! Then, if mules cannot convey the boxes, they must be taken up by relays of men. Well, perhaps sixty or one hundred men might do it in several days, if we can prevail on the hardiest men of Icod el Alto to come ; and if you level and broaden the road for them all the way ; but as it is now they could not carry the boxes at all; they must employ poles, and if you place them cross-ways, the roads are not broad enough; if length- ways, they cannot turn the corners. Only listen to what the best port ado res will say : here are some who have just crossed over the central ridge of our island from the south coast, and report that there is now such fine, dry, and bright weather up above the clouds, while we are living down here in gloom and in steam. The manly bronzed muleteers were brought in, and on being told that the big boxes were to be taken up the mountain, appeared sure that their contents must be something as light as bonnets ; but on half-a-dozen of them trying to lift one, they groaned and vociferated and stamped at the very idea ; the “ Caballero," they said, could know nothing about the mountain. Certainly I knew nothing of it in the way that all ENGAGE CARRIERS. 53 the peasants of the island did, and that was the im- portant way for present purposes. The sooner then, that I acquired such knowledge the better; for thereby alone could I stand on an equal and respected footing with those to be employed on the service. The distances were too great to permit valuable time to be wasted in going backwards and forwards empty- handed, and that was not the way to prove the qua- lities of a mountain-road for heavy transport. On Monday, therefore, I determined to start with all the people and all the boxes that mules could carry, and the work on Guajara should then be commenced. So the huge Equatorial chests were definitively pushed on one side, while all the other and more compen- dious packages were arranged in a single stratum on the floor; in order that the different carriers, whom Mr. Goodall was rapidly engaging, might come and feel the weights, choose the loads for which thej* would be responsible; and cogitate on the manner in which they would make them fast, on the backs of their unhappy mules. The number of animals required, was quite unprecedented for journe} r s up the Peak ; but the acting Vice-Consul assuring us that they would be all forthcoming on Monday morning, and that he himself would be there to see — we made 54 OROTAVA. a truce with anxieties, and strolled through the town. Not fifty yards had we traversed over the basaltic paved streets, when lo ! at the end of one of them ap- peared a “ volcanic blowing cone.” Some 7 0 feet high, it towered above the surrounding houses, and exhibited a beautiful parabolic figure, like the Hindoo temple of Bindrabund on the Jumna, so admirably pictured by the younger Daniell. Composed of hard lava, and with an upper aperture still yawning, whence the burning breath of fires below once issued in fury and with destruction, — and may do so again in spite of the huge cross planted on its summit, — what a history this “ fumarole” revealed. And when several similar cones appeared rising amongst the houses in various directions, one could not but recognise an eminently characteristic feature of the town, thus built, like Herculaneum of old, not only at the foot of a great volcano; but exactly in the line of its shortest road to the sea, into which its lavas have poured, and will certainly pour again. We must have a photograph of this cone ; so back we go for the camera, and returning with it ready charged with a collodion plate ; we present, fire, — and VOLCANIC CONES. 55 immediately have secured the cone and the distant hills capped by cloud and terraced with gardens on their flanks; while besides the Spanish cottages and the basalt pavement in the foreground, we have a curious damsel peeping out of a hanging trap-door in one of the wooden windows. ( See Photo-stereograph , No. 2.) Again we return to the charge; and on another plate — public curiosity being now more fully awakened — we have not only the inorganic elements of the scene, but three children’s heads peering over each other, like the knobs on a mulberry; a father, son, and two daugh- ters standing in their doorway, and a timid young woman, with a white handkerchief thrown gracefully over her head, peeping round the corner of the street. A third plate in the camera ; we right about face, and take another of the volcanic blowing cones, and a whole street filled with wondering spectators. In developing this picture, we were much struck by the appearance of one of the houses, rising in height above the rest. The whole front face of it seemed to be made of vertical bars, and the wings on either side being similarly furnished, one was reminded of the dens for the one big and the two little elephants in Womb well’s menagerie. Some wild beast must be confined there, was the sentiment as we gazed through 56 OIIOTAVA. the wet plate at the exquisite perspective of vertical bars, a subject that photography so loves to reproduce. We revisited the place, and found indeed a very good den for giraffes and possibly for elephants ; but the only occupants were three large crosses. Very famous crosses they are ; the patron crosses of the city. Orotava was in early days named after one of them, “ The Port of the Holy Cross but the success of one brought the others into the field, with great confusion of th z fetes which were in- stituted and are still held in honour of each. Attempts are being made to amalgamate these holidays of the different crosses; but with more than, vested rights to combat, the reformers have made no sensible progress as yet. Large wooden crosses are affixed here to private houses, as well as public buildings ; and every now and then in the streets, they meet you face to face. There is a huge one nailed on our inn, and at this moment a stealthy cat is using it, as a means of climbing into the window of an upper story. What a cat ! and what creatures seem all the Spanish cats ! The dogs, mangy and famished, are bad enough ; but the cats, — oh ! may we be preserved from them. A type of the whole class attends our meals ; its hair RAVENING CATS. 57 dishevelled, its skin hanging loosely about its hones ; with its tail cut short, and its ears cropped, it looks at you as though it were contemplating to get at your very life-blood. You give it food, and it rushes at the morsel franticly and unthankfully. At the same instant its kittens rush too, all mangy and unkempt, from corners where they had lain concealed; then begins a most disreputable scene, mother and children clapperclawing each other, mewing and howling and tearing the food out of each other’s mouths. The serving boy comes in to change a course, and disperses the ravening crew by running at them with a jug of water; but the moment he has left the room, back they gallop furiously from their hiding-places, and plunge headlong promiscuously into a dish, which the youth, not being Briareus-handed, could not carry away with the plates. After a disturbed night, Sunday comes on, calm and quiet and genially warm. Every now and then a gentle breath of air rustles the leaves of broad poplars that border the grand square. A fine palm tree in the distance, waves slowly its long magnificent fronds ; while ever and anon, borne on the wings of the south wind, comes floating a melancholy yet musical sort of jangle, of richly-toned church bells. Throughout the 58 OROTAVA. day we can just hear the deep far off booming of the surf, on its rock-hound coast; and still, ever and anon, comes that most melancholy yet musical, tangled jangle of hells. Those Spanish church hells! one cannot fancy them pulled by man’s methodical hand ; they must be hung on the branches of some broad- spreading tree, and swept all together by the passing of a sudden wind, like the plaintive strings of an ^Eolian harp. The sun is about to set. Do our ears deceive us ? No ! it is a military band, and there come the soldiers, a very French-looking edition of soldiers indeed. They enter the Grand Square, march round its open area, and draw up in a circle at one end. Fashion- ables, like evening moths, begin to flutter around the centre of attraction. Gentlemen in the latest cut of English habiliments appear, and walk by themselves. Then come ladies, also by themselves, two and two, with dark tresses, black eyes, and the gauzy grace- ful folds of the deservedly immortal mantilla. They whisper their pretty sayings only to each other, though exhibiting the inimitable working of their fans to everybody. Little young ladies also come out, dressed in the most absurd degree of the British boarding- school miss ; and what with their tiny bonnets on the SUNDAY F^TE. 59 back of their heads, their short petticoats sticking out behind, and their laced-up silk boots, one cannot fancy them descended from those ideal beings so aristocra- tically veiled in the mantilla. The band plays, the promenaders promenade per- severingly, and the poorer children also congregate on the square. Round-headed things, of a bronze com- plexion, and lightly clad, they seem to enjoy them- selves infinitely more than their young betters, stuck out so preposterously with the expensive fashions of another land. Not the least joyful too of the whole, are a couple of coffee-eyed imps who dance unabashed before the whole assembly, in a dress consisting of nothing but portions of a brown shirt, that barely hang piecemeal about them. Day is closing, the band plays its concluding piece, with much the feeling of “ God save the Queen,” and is marched off the ground. The gentlemen then ven- ture to approach nearer to the ladies of their respective acquaintance ; in the dusk of the evening, daring to offer them an arm, and to see them safe home. The streets grow silent, night comes on apace, and before nine o^clock has arrived — we see nought but the stars that shine tranquilly down, on the Grand Square of Puerto de Orotava. CHAPTER IY. BEGIN THE ASCENT. ITH more than twenty horses and mules at day- break on the 14th of July, clattering on the flinty pavement, and with as many men shouting to their respective animals, and disputing among them- selves for the lightest loads — there was no more sleep from that early hour, for any one in the inn. Well did the muleteers understand the art of making fast on pack-saddles a large variety of goods. We distributed rope liberally amongst them, they twining it ingeniously over the burdens and around the bodies of the creatures; then taking a bend of it under the belly, they inserted a tough curved stick, and twisted ferociously, until every turn of the rope became perfectly taut ; or the mule, as it falsely seemed, lifted almost bodily off his four legs, would have shrieked if he could, at the vehement stricture of all his internal organs. Such of the men as had completed these arrange- START FOR THE MOUNTAIN. 61 ments, wanted to start off at once, and we had much difficulty in restraining them. Certain ideas, were in our mind, of keeping them altogether in the ascent of the mountain, overlooking their proceedings, and making a lightly loaded mule occasionally change burdens with one more heavily laden. We should not perhaps have made such strenuous attempts as we did towards this end, had we been fully aware of the utter impos- sibility of putting it in force throughout the whole day’s journey ; or had we been as well informed, as the experience of three months subsequently made us, of the honesty and perfect trustworthiness of these carriers. With merely a general impression that they are to make the best of their way over the long rugged heights, they start off, in the ordinary course of traffic in the island, with an overwhelming load of heterogeneous and uncounted goods; and there is seldom a complaint of the loss or non-delivery of any of the items. Five horses led by five men now trotted up, for the sailors, ourselves, and Mr. Andrew Carpenter, a nephew of the acting Vice-Consul, who was to act as our inter- preter. Before mounting, we looked closely to the supply of water ; so many barrels for the men on the journey ; and so many for ourselves at night, in case 62 BEGIN THE ASCENT. we should not find the reputed spring on Guajara, or in the event of its proving dry. This being a mid- summer precaution of Africa by no means to he trifled with. Under dreadful penalties too, was the man in charge of our water mule, warned to keep always close in front of us ; for it would be no local act of dishonesty at all, were any of the thirsty guides, when once on the journey, to get the animal into a quiet corner, and drink out of the tabooed casks to his heart’s desire. The long procession, and such queer-shaped pack- ages as most of ours were, drew many an early-rising spectator about us to behold. Mr. Goodall and Mr. Smith were there to assist. The latter mounted his horse and accompanied us some distance from the town. The ascent begins at once, in the very street, nay, at the sea-beach, or possibly far under the surface of the sea ; for everything indicates that this whole island of Teneriffe is, even in its entirety, but the summit of a half-risen mountain. The whole surface of the country ascends at an angle of from 5° to 12° for several miles in distance; and though this be but a moderate angle indeed for the side of a mountain, it is so unconscionable for inhabited lands, that winter rains are threatening every year, to Stereagrcvplz/ 3 ■ PEAK OE- TENERIFFE FROM OROTAVA.OET THE NORTHERN COAST. DESTRUCTIVE TORRENTS. 63 wash away all the softer soil. Only by paving every pathway, and intersecting every garden with walls and ramparts of solid stone, can the descending waters of a short but heavy rainy season, be prevented from cutting grooves from top to bottom of the mountain. (See Photo-stereograph, No. 3.) Presently we came to an open stony tract. “ Here,” said Mr. Smith, “ before 1829, lay some of the most fertile and charming vineyards of TenerifFe; but they were all carried awa^ in the great flood, or rather cataract, that rushed from the mountain on the night of November 6, of that year.” A lamentable scene of desolation it appeared to us, and in an island that could ill afford to lose any of its hardly won territory. A long description is to be found in the first volume of a great work on the “ Canaries,” by Barker- Webb, and Berthelot; yet we must regret, as the storm was one of unique force and anomalous character, that observations of the strength, direction, and variations of the wind ; heights of the barometer, and the quantity of rain in different parts of the island, — did not take the place of passages so little instructive in physical research, — as, “ at the sight of this terrific disaster, in the memories of the good in- habitants of the village, I interrogated Providence, 64 BEGIN THE ASCENT. and demanded of Him, if this destiny was not an error.” We are still ascending; there is little wind in the early morning air, the sea is heavily, the mountain and sky above our heads are hut thinly, clouded; while low slanting beams of the sun, striking through mist openings in the East, lend a variety together with a vague magnificence to the long per- spective of cultivated slopes. These are backed by rocky ridges, gleaming here and there with bright lines of lava dykes, and pointed in many places with the so frequently double head of a volcanic crater. Now, as we bring up the rear, we can see the whole of our lengthy cavalcade, like some huge serpent, wreathing along upwards and downwards and from side to side, as the lesser irregularities of the ground demand. Crimson silk scarfs and white garments of Spaniards come out brilliantly from the yellow- brown of the soil ; and somehow or other, our biggest sailor, mounted aloft on his horse, seems always going over just the highest part of an intervening ridge, in the deep purple-blue of his Royal Yacht Squadron guernsey, looming powerfully against the mist of the morning. Between garden-walls, by a narrow and strong PARASITIC CRATERS. 65 pathway, we wound along, and passed on our right an interesting volcano, about a thousand feet high ; and presently another, almost the same size, on our left. From a distance, we understood them well ; and saw in each, the red mound, with a vast hollow at the top, breaking through its surrounding wall on one side, towards the sea ; and thence pouring a long stream of thick, viscid material, that hardens as it flows. But on coming close, the real vastness of their size prevented our seeing more at once, than so moderate a portion, as not to be very distinguishable, by form alone, from any Neptunian hills. Yet these two vol- canoes are but mere small warts, upon the flanks of the monster we are scaling ; and it has many such excrescences, some much larger, others smaller. Perhaps this gradation of scale has led certain geologists, thinking of the chain of parasites, and those two immortal lines, “ Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum to call such features, “ parasitic ” craters ; and by that one name to fix what they are, and thereby, though not intentionally, to stop further inquiry into their real nature. F BEGIN THE ASCENT. If the name could do that, there would he much in a name ; hut some few persons who will not he so guided, demand, that besides the existence of a scale from great, to little, and to lesser, as well as the posi- tion of one on the top of the other, — there he also proved to obtain the remaining characteristic quality of parasites, viz., that of small ones living on the sub- stance of large ones ; or, as the poet expresses it, “upon their backs to Lite 'em.” This has not been done, and, most probably, cannot he done ; because, ac- cording to much that has been ascertained of volcanic action, all the several crater vents have their origin by ducts from one and the same central cause ; and in place of a parasitic nature, have rather the aspect of the many heads of a hydra, or the crowd of snakes all springing equally from the blood of Medusa, not from each other. By half-past seven we had attained the perpendi- cular elevation of 1800 feet, and still the only road was a narrow rough-paved footpath, bounded by solid stone walls, or by natural ramparts of rock. Surfaces of this material sometimes took the place of artifi- cial pavement. Rude as such they were, though not more so than to be expected on a mountain side ; and they hardly justified the frightful account of a gallant MURAL CULTIVATION. 67 French traveller, concluding with, “ that if a cava- lier was to fall from his horse on these sharp-edged rocks, he would break both his arms and his leg’s.” The inequalities of this road would be made nothing of by a Cape waggon, — the angle of ascent would even be smiled at ; but where would there be room for the wheels, to say nothing of the long train of oxen? “ Give me room to drive,” I was inclined to sigh in Archimedian strain, “and in one of those South African vehicles I will easily carry up all the much-dreaded boxes of friend Pattinson’s Equatorial.” But where was there room enough? Not in the narrow pathway we were pursuing, without pulling down the side walls all the way along, and rounding many a sharp angle ; and not in the open country on either hand, with- out having to cut through artificial banks of earth and stones, to an impracticable extent, at every few yards. We gazed in despair at this so-called open country ; as far as we could see in every direction, it appeared like a transverse section of a gigantic honeycomb, so intricate was the interlacing of its horticultural system of fortification, against the sweeping vengeance of winter torrents. Here were new experiences in- deed ; the soil, the climate, the plants were African ; F 2 68 BEGIN THE ASCENT. but this universal mural cultivation, which enclosed every few paces of ground, was something entirely opposed to the agricultural system of any great continent, spreading out unlimited extents of un- cared-for wilderness, before its colonial hunters and shepherds. So much were we taken up with these ideas of the shop, as not to remark the botanical changes which were going on ; until suddenly we found, at a height of 1900 feet, that the gardens on either side, in place of oranges, lemons, figs, and peaches, were now chiefly filled with pear-trees. Two thousand feet, and lovely wild plants of the hypericum, in full and abundant bloom, with their delicate young pink leaves and rich yellow flowers, were intruding in every corner, — 2400 feet, and a few heaths were caught sight of; 2800 feet, and English grasses began to appear. We turn about at 2900 feet, and behold ! we are even with the clouds ; which, but scanty this morning, disperse in our immediate neighbourhood, when we seem just about to enter them. Several miles off to seaward, however, there is the ominous front of a stratum, some thousand feet higher, and of immense thickness. Its massy rollers surge up one behind the ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 69 other, and threaten to break in upon the land. But for all that, they do not on the whole, sensibly pass their boundary. A long pull now followed under the hot sun, blazing in a sky of unbroken blue ; and by nine o'clock, reaching a hollow at the height of 3900 feet, the whcle party halted, to rest the animals and take breakfast; with the ocean of white clouds far below us, and concealing all the lower country from our view. In a ravine on the left, we found a delicious shadow under a part of its Eastern bank, somewhat steeper than the rest. Large heaths, ferns, and occasional laurels waved immediately before us, while a passing flock of milch goats furnished all that was necessary to complete our meal, and to produce even exhilaration under such health-inspiring circumstances. A horse, being much longer than a man, in devouring his food, we had time enough to examine into some curiosities of the long, strange chasm, whose cool shade we were enjoying. Much had we noted its appearance during many parts of our ascent in the last 1000 feet. Deep and broad and terrifically wild it was, with its blue basalt rocks, here worn smooth, and there broken and tossed about in chaotic masses. 70 BEGIN THE ASCENT. Were there any traces of ice-action ? would ask an Agassian geologist. W ell, frequently there were groovings visible, but only in the centre of the ravine ; and on a space of rock not more than two feet broad. Quite close to our impromptu breakfast-parlour, lay one of these grooved channels; it appeared even a good specimen of glacier polishing down and scratching, and some of the contained crystals were cut clean through, level with their matrix. A portion of the surface so marked was rent by many cracks, and I tried to knock out an apparently isolated bit ; but in its adamantine strength, it laughed at the efforts of my puny hammer. The chasm had been but of moderate size, until the terrible deluge of 1829, when in a few hours it became a broad gulf frightful to see. In some places the depth was increased, as well as the width ; and there, we have no groovings. The principal effects were sideways, and by means apparently of undermining the strata of rock, which is here wholly composed of basaltic streams of lava, lying one over the other. Much of the material thus loosened was carried down the mountain, and spread over the vineyards below; other portions, for the water broke up and prepared, far more than it could carry away, were left behind ICE AND WATER ACTION. 71 almost in situ . These latter are still to be seen, like the Titanic stones half-finished in the ancient quar- ries of Baalbek ; for no subsequent flood has reached their level ; and in the dry atmosphere of this height, above the lower clouds, there is little decay. Mon- strous blocks we thus found, rough, angular, and with all their natural cleavage as sharp, as on that awful night, when they were forced up from their beds in the wild hurly-burly of the headlong waters. Speculations are often made on the ages in geology, based on the length of time, that water must require to cut through a channel of given depth, when the material is of extreme hardness, and the observed rate of increase, something nearly insensible. On these grounds some myriads of years would have been re- quired, to cut out the hollow where we breakfasted. But Nature does not by a red-tape routine, restrict herself to one only mode of working, but rather varies her plans, as she finds most effective in each case ; wearing down a soft rock, and breaking up a hard one. Such had been eminently the case here, where one night in the natural method, had done the work of ages on the theoretical. Such was the case also on the sea-coast to the west of Orotava, during a storm of last winter. There, in two or three days, and per- 72 BEGIN THE ASCENT. haps chiefly in a single tide, the sea, — urged on the land by an impetuous N.W. wind, — rose to an un- precedented height, washed for several hours into the Grand Square of the town, and carried away part of the neighbouring coast. On visiting the scene of destruction, and removal, for that was also well effected, — we found a fine bay, eating some distance into the land, and bor- dered by magnificent basaltic cliffs, much like the Salisbury crags of Edinburgh. They had this advan- tage perhaps, that they were quite new, and perfectly un-weatherworn, for their material was as hard blue whinstone as may be found anywhere. Whole cen- turies will make no sensible progress in filing them down, or trying to decay them away. Water then may evidently, from these Teneriffe experiences, cut out as extensive valleys in hard rock as ice; and that without acting, as some contend, solely as a carrier of hard, rasping materials. But the physiognomy of these two classes of excavations will be very different; roughness and angularity, as our refreshment ravine showed, being produced by the breaking up and washing out of water ; smooth- ness and general rounding off, by the action of ice. CHAPTER Y. ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA, OON after 10 o’clock, a.m., we were again mean- dering in long broken line on our upward way, with the clouds below, and a brilliant sun shining above. It was splendid climbing; a mountain ascent made very easy, was this riding up the gentle slope. Here we were, already at a height considerably above the top of Table Mountain, — to compare one of the islands with the continent, of Africa, — whose vertical precipices begin at half its height. But on Teneriffe, for upwards of 6000 feet, are still no greater ave- rage angles than 12° to contend 'with; and in most places so much soft soil, that after a shower of rain, there would be little difficulty in turning furrows with the plough, over a considerable part of the surface. At lOh. 50m. we had reached a height of 4700 feet, and the first specimen was met with, of an in- teresting leguminous plant, to which we were after- wards to be greatly obliged, the “ codeso” of the 74 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. natives ; the “ adenocarpus franhenoides ” of botanists. With closely packed composite leaves of light and warm green, a yellow flower, woody stem, branches like a miniature cedar tree, and with the bark of ages hanging about it, this specimen of the “ legumineuses frutescentes ” of the French savants, bore a certain act- ing resemblance to the “doorn booms,” or thorny acacias of South Africa, whose place it appeared to supply. At llh. 10m. the height of 5280 feet was attained, and a solitary pine-tree was seen, the last unhappy member, at this spot, of forests which once girdled the mountain. Some heaths and a few ferns were also observed, but the aromatic codeso chiefly occupied the zone. The summit of the Peak was now detected gazing at us through the sunlit air, hazy with in- tense illumination; and at llh. 50m. our anxious looks were rewarded by a specimen of the “ retama ” (cytisus nubigenus), that unique mountain broom, the like of which none of the other Canary Islands, nor any of the African isles, and in fact not another spot in the world can show. Spanish broom grows in the gardens below, and, with Scottish broom, will grow almost anywhere amongst the habitations of men, if seeds only be sown ; but he who would behold the FIRST RETAMA BUSH. 75 retama , must ascend more than a mile vertically into the air. We were travelling now over pretty rough ground, immediately along the edge of a deep gorge, display- ing in section several cataracts of lava. On a portion of the opposite side was a steep slope of volcanic rub- bish, loose, cindery, and one would think in such constant motion that no plants could retain a footing thereon. Nor can any of them whatever do so, except this admirable retama , and that rejoices in the site, and flourishes. How wonderful the adaptations of Nature to the necessities of different regions. For here, where the ceaseless motion of the sliding particles composing a hillside, destroys every other living thing; where the aridity of the soil during many months is only surpassed by the aridity of the air, which is drier than that of Sahara, — Nature has produced a plant, that on the mere remembrance of winter rain, long since evaporated, can furnish no contemptible supply of wood; and with its richly-stored white flowers, arranged in close rows along its smaller branches, affords illimitable honey-making materials to all the bees of the country. At 6560 feet, the lessened slope indicated that we were entering the circle of the Canadas. We could not 76 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. see very far around, for the surface was rough, and we were winding along in single file by narrow sinuous paths, amongst rocky hillocks, the results of con- fused lava streams. Here the interstices began to he strewed with a new material, a light sponge-coloured pumice-stone ; while alternating bushes of codeso and retama , at considerable distances from each other, formed the sole vegetation. At Oh. 45m. p.m., and at a height of 7150 feet, a gust of south wind in our faces, together with less un- dulation of surface, and a full appearance of the Peak now rising up grandly on our right, left no doubt that the ascent of the northern slope was finished ; and that we were travelling over the basin of the ancient crater, a crater whose vast dimensions (eight miles in diameter) can hardly be paralleled save in the moon itself. Here, the surfaces of pumice-stone soil, widened out; the rocks, red and jagged, became fewer; the codeso disappeared ; high land was seen on our left, and presently, — as we entered on quite an African -looking desert of white sand and yellow stones, — a fine range of blue mountains was seen to the south-east and south. What mountains are they, what can they he ? Why, they are merely the opposite sides of this ENTER THE GREAT CRATER. 77 gigantic crater we are crossing ; and the highest of them and one of the most distant, is that “ Guajara ” on whose summit we hope to arrive before night. Long and depressing is now our weary way, stretch- ing over to the eastern side of the crater, across its pumice-strewed floor. One o’clock, p.m., and our elevation is not improved; 7127 feet, says the sym- piesometer, or 23 feet lower than our last observation. Hence mountain climbing is over for a while, and with it have evaporated much of the exhilaration and energy, which the presence of distinct objects to be overcome, invariably excites. We have now trans- cended all the strata of clouds, and have entered a most moon-like region. The flaming sun set in the middle of the sky above our heads, within seven degrees of the astronomical zenith, showers down his merciless rays, through the thin transparent air, on every side. The sympiesometer acquires a tempera- ture of 100° as it hangs on my back. Light and heat revel everywhere ; there is no need of volcanic assistance. In spite of orders, in spite of vociferations, the line of mules and men will become broken ; divers of them will keep falling behind; the binding-ropes 78 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. of their burdens become slack in the drying air, and must, they say, be tightened; while somehow the water-mule is always with the stragglers. Men are caught and denounced in the fact of drinking at our barrels, but claim them as theirs, by virtue of some changing of loads on the journey. A drum- head court of inquiry is instantly held ; the expedi- tionary barrels, intended for Guajara, are recognised beyond a doubt. With their mule they are made to journey ever after, between two of the riding horses ; and if anything goes wrong with the pack-saddle, we wait and assist personally at its rectification. A small supply of water I have all the time, in a double tin-box under lock and key; but that will not last the party long, if other sources should fail; and not a drop of moisture have we seen yet, in all this dry and weary land, since we left Orotava in the morning. Two o’clock, and we are pacing under the eastern wall of the great crater. First come the sides of steep hills of loose brown burnt stones, in a state of slow but continued descent. In every one thousand square yards, or perhaps more widely separated still, is a retama bush, but not a particle — not a glimpse of any other specimen of vegetation. Undisturbed by man, this region shows you the history of whole genera- PROGRESS OF RETAMAS. 79 tions of the plant : — First, the little tender seedling, yielding in the direction of its growth to the slow grinding avalanche of clinkery minerals ; underneath which, however, it has contrived to establish a root of most precocious length. Then comes the ambitious young bush in youthful vigour, curving back its stem to regain ground that was lost in its infancy, and vertically over the root, sending up to the blue vault of heaven, a rich fret-work of filamentous shooting branches. Next see the full- grown plant, with a hemispherical mass of flowers throwing a grateful shade over the thirsty soil ; and with dignity maintaining its original place, while all the surface of the hill, by little and little, goes crum- bling and scraping and sliding down past it. Time passes over its boughs ; one by one they drop off, and as dead limbs immediately begin to share in the downward motion of the outer particles of the hill. Last scene of all, a short stump of root- stem is left, to point out where the bush once displayed its beauty, while all its old component members, are found further and further below; and decayed, in proportion to the number of years that have elapsed, since their vital principle fled. The gradual dissolution of the numerous twigs, the 80 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. progressive disappearance of all but the mass of harder wood towards the centre of the thickest stems of a dead branch, and the degree of bleaching, followed by reduction to fibre of that part, seemed to give a very tolerable measure of the comparative length of time that such weathering had been going on. So we com- pared the general state of decay of old branches, with their distance from the parent stocks, and obtained unexpectedly coincident rates of descent for the hills of rapilli ; very slow certainly, but not a little sure and regular. These cindery ridges gradually passed, as we travelled on, into horizontally stratified cliffs, the strata admirably distinct for miles ; sometimes many hundred feet in thickness, sometimes thin as ribbons ; while here and there a dislocation and discoloration occurred, as they were traversed by dykes, proceeding in radial lines from the Peak, the centre of the basin. One remarkable dyke particularly drew our attention, exhibiting as it did magnificent blades or plates of greenstone, rising some thirty to forty feet above the soil on either side, and stretching from bottom to top of the crater-wall. Occasionally I left my steed, and climbed the slopes on foot, to break off and secure specimens of the most characteristic rocks, all felspa- VOLCANIC DESERT. 81 tliic ; but found, that with so large a cavalcade, and under the anxious circumstances of a first ascent for ultimate astronomical purposes, I could do but little in this way. The real business of the expedition being astrono- mical; the mules with their unaccustomed loads of scientific instruments had to be looked to circum- spectly ; if too far out of reach, they would lie down and roll ; if too close, they would kick out at you or at each other. Fatigue and heat, with hunger and thirst, were beginning to tell on both quadrupeds and bipeds. But on, and on, all must go ; for this crater plain is no place to bivouac in. Cold enough at night, — stormy beyond measure in winter, — this elevated region, by day and in summer, exhibits to a wayfarer only the desolation of light ; but that is more than sufficient to parch the tongue, to pain the eye, to give the full idea of a desert. For us, the air is filled with scorching solar rays; from the sand, from the rocks, from the Peak some three miles on our right, and from the cliffs so close on our left, the light and heat rebound. In this glaring atmosphere, as slowly and heavily we labour along, and with shaded eyes peer into the volcanic perspec- tive, — now is seen some desolating flood of lava, — now G 82 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. a gleaming plain of cindery dust of pumice; here level as a lake, there teeming with thousand groups of reddened slags, like so many chemical prepara- tions, simmering in the mighty sand-bath of the mountain's laboratory. Next, in hot mid-distance, a low eruption crater rears its dark and fissured head over the wilderness of lava crags between. Then anon you pass under a group of monstrous chimney apertures ; that gape, all together, from a red protruding mass hanging threateningly over your path ; and lead you to imagine that here, but lately, the expiring forces of the once too dreadful volcano, had united themselves for one more effort ; and at this very spot, had vomited forth for the last time their fiery breath. These are the invariable elements before us, in this glittering desert of light: where a happy green plant, a leaf, or a blade, is found, — never. As we proceeded, the perspective of the small, on the floor of the large, crater continually altered. In one position it showed a single cone, in the top of which there would only be room for the smallest pit ; but a little further on, that appearance was discovered to be merely the effect of the pointed, highest part of its wall, overtopping the rest ; for presently the general “ CANADAS.” 83 shape of its whole mass, was that of a broad double- headed cone. These heads continually widened as we progressed, until they were at length separated by more than their own height; and then the whole interior of the hill lay open before us, with a breach which might be easily entered on the eastern side. The pumice flat over which we were now pursuing our way, was frequently contracted to a narrow passage, between vertical walls of the great environing crater, on our left ; and on our right, the frontal ridges of lava streams, that have rolled down from the central Peak in some distant age, violently surging on thus far towards the circumference. These mere edges of the streams are, in themselves, quite a range of hills ; and are extraordinarily rough, being a mere congeries of great sharp-angled loose blocks of red- dish stone, with little or no debris amongst them. Here and there, at distant intervals, the grey retama has taken root ; hut no other plant is seen or makes any practical part of the vegetation. To travel over such a surface with mules, would be impossible ; and happy it is therefore for travellers, that the lava streams have not butted up close to the crater wall, but have always left between it and them, some G 2 84 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. small space,, which has been afterwards silted up with fine pumice. These flat strips of ground more or less broad, are called “Canadas,” with reference appa- rently to their valley position between the ridges on either side. In winter the snow drifts deep in some of them. Then they form a very treacherous, often fatal, road ; but unfortunately the only one, from the northern side of this part of the island to the other. Occasionally, magnificent blocks of rock, ten to twenty feet cube, are standing isolated on the white sand ; and appear to have fallen from the crater cliffs above. With a few such stones, we were continually thinking, what a wind-proof residence could be made on the top of Guajara. Meanwhile the afternoon hours were rapidly ad- vancing. The sun that had long been lost in the region of the zenith, was beginning to shine into our eyes from the west ; our shadows were growing particularly long ; and the mules, who had known no rest or stoppage since breakfast in the ravine, were becoming very much fagged. The whole train by this time had got into hopeless disintegration ; there were only five or six animals and men in a connected line at any point ; the different groups were generally MOUNTAIN PASS. 85 out of view and call of each other ; we had even lost sight of the dust-pillars of some of them, but were almost choked in the clouds of our own. A delicious story is now told us of a fountain, or rather a water hole, which exists a little further on ; they even point out on the mountain-side a clump of rocks, rather bigger than the average, but just as brown and barren, — where they assure us that several persons would be able to get a drink ; and presently these assertions are held to be corroborated, by the appearance of two diminutive figures near the said rocks. But we are rigorously deaf to any such be- guilements, and declare that there shall be no stopping until we reach the spring of Guajara ; now however not so very far distant. The mural cliffs on our left, had been continually becoming grander and more imposing; and at last when we reached something of a bay or recess below, and a depression at the top, we were informed that this was the pass of Guajara. Here accordingly began the work. We had now indeed to leave the crater floor, on which we had been travelling so long, and by clambering up the face, endeavour to reach the summit of its lofty volcanic wall. The slope was veiy steep, and the road or path 86 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. ascended only by acute zigzags. While climbing this ridge, the various groups of our cavalcade were again within eye-shot. The poor tired animals with their heavy loads did wonders ; some of the Spanish boys too exhibited marvellous alacrity and endurance, despite the hot and arid air. At length the summit of the pass was gained, and winding round one of its heads towards the right, we came to a few hand- breadths of moistened ground. This was the long- expected spring, and here a half-hour's rest was awarded, before the last short, tough pull up to the top of Guajara. The moisture in question evidently exudes from under a large face of rock, and has a tendency to soak on towards a magnificent ravine below us. This cleft begins at the head of the pass, and all at once plunges down with precipitous gorges, widening and deepen- ing as it goes, and with many branches from the right and left. It runs towards the south, and is one of the many radiating fissures in the great crater wall, which are probably due to the violence of former up- heaval. Looking down into the blue depths, we see a large species of hawk sailing in mid air ; and further down still, are some gaunt old pine trees projecting from a rocky shelf ; but on our own level, vegetation is very scanty. THE SPRING. 87 Presently, with a hissing whistle as they darted through the air, a flock of half-a-dozen pigeons just grazed our heads in their flight, and then curving upwards, flew away to the eastern mountains. At the sight, our interpreter, from a state of melancholy exhaustion, was instantly roused into ecstatic atten- tion. Ci Oh,” he said, after an interval of breathless suspense, u they have gone away quite now ; they came here to drink, as this is the only water-place in all the country, but they were frightened at finding the spot pre-occupied.” Poor little pigeons ; for then he went on to detail what capital sport it was to lie concealed with a “ musket” in an arbour of stones near this same water-hole, and shoot the said pigeons when they came to drink. Contrasting the case of these few miserable little birds here, with the uncounted variety of animals, graminivorous and car- nivorous, that would be visitants at any similarly unique watering-place in South Africa, a vivid idea was gained of the respective zoologic riches of island and continent. Time however being precious, neither art nor science could be indulged in then. The pigeons* visit was in itself a sign of evening, and the place where we then were, had almost lost the sun. The mules demanded our first attention, as their loads had to 88 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. be adjusted; and each animal was to be allowed a short opportunity, of moistening its lips in the muddy water, that slowly oozed into the holes which their masters had industriously been digging, in the line of humid earth. The moment the specified time was exhausted, we mounted again, and then began half-an-hour of good hard work, as we pushed up the southern side of Mount Guajara, amongst loose lava stones; and amongst patches of dead-wood of codeso , often sorely entangling the horses’ legs. Presently, in our winding ascent, we found ourselves for a moment on the northern face of the mountain, and the great Peak burst suddenly into view ! The sun was setting between it, and a high precipitous head of Guajara, filling all the air and crater plain beneath, with a flood of yellow light. The view was worth a day’s toil to gain ; but could not, when gained, be in- dulged in for more than a moment. We struggled on therefore into the shadow on the southern side again, still upwards, and always upwards. Before long the angle of ascent decreased, the ground flattened out, the distances appeared on every side, and we found our- selves, a few minutes after sunset, on the summit of. Guajara. ENCAMP ON THE SUMMIT. 89 An instant to look around, and then we find the air rapidly growing chill. Each Spaniard as he comes up with his mule, discharges its load anywhere amongst the rocks, and hastens away; striving, if haply he may reach the comfort of the spring below, before the shades of night descend. Ere many minutes have elapsed, each man has come and gone, disappear- ing ominously one after the other, below the moun- tain's edge. We take another hasty survey. The light is faint in the western sky ; but the moon rising in the east, encourages our little party, consisting of my intrepid wife and myself, Mr. Stephenson's two sailors, the Vice-consul's nephew, and two Spanish guides. The situation does at first look somewhat desolate, but recalling geodetic experiences, I set the hands upon certain packages, and before a couple of hours are passed, two tents are erected, and a hot tea pre- pared, served out and done abundant justice to. The yacht carpenter, declaring that he is a regular washerwoman in the matter of tea, does not object to having his basin filled again and again. The air is fortunately nearly calm, and how clear ; the moon is intensely bright, and yet the stars are also abundantly visible. By and by Jupiter rises, and 90 ARRIVAL ON GUAJARA. appears to our northern eyes, as a brilliant luminary, that could never have been recognised before. The day had been one of great toil, but this display of the nocturnal sky, showed that it had been all in the right direction; and here we were, within twenty-four days of leaving England, bivouacking at a height of nearly 9000 feet, on a mountain only 28° from the Equator. PART II. ON THE CRATER OF ELEVATION. CHAPTER I. SECUftlNH THE STATION. /AN tlie morning of July the 15th, I rose by break ^ of day to examine the mountain top, on which we had effected our lodgment in the dusk of the previous evening. The prevailing colour of every- thing about, was light yellow; the soil, something like a mixture of powdered clay and sand, plentifully strewed with blocks of trachyte. These exhibited generally some appearance of stratification; and the ground about them was thinly, or rather distantly, dotted with alternate bushes of codeso and retama ; both of them very stunted, and oftener dead than alive. So far, there was nothing very different in the physiognomy of the place, to what any ordinary hill- top, — even the top of a very petty hill, of rounded outline and sober unimposing aspect, as well as quiet Neptunian formation, — might present. Yet not more than ten paces towards the north, there commenced 94 SECURING THE STATION. the edge of a tremendous precipice, in its several ledges more than 1500 feet deep, running along all that side of the mountain, and forming in fact part of the internal wall of the great crater. The sudden discovery of this characteristic feature of a volcano, and in such close proximity to our tent, was calculated to make one tread the ground with more reverence. We felt inclined even to speculate on whether from the great Peak — the cone of eruption, rising up in dark and solemn grandeur in the centre of the pit before us — or from some of its subsidiary craters, we might not be made acquainted in the course of our stay, with a few other Plutonian features, and of an active character, for having presumed to pitch our tent on the very lip of this volcanic lion. These however were eventualities so remote, that they quickly vanished before the practical require- ments of the occasion ; and these had reference mainly to meteorological causes. We had been most provi- dentially befriended on our first night, by a calm atmosphere ; but how long was that state of quiet to endure? In our present inexperience of the moun- tain, we could not depend on anything ; and well I knew, from seasons spent on ranges 5000 and 6000 fee high, that when the wind does blow there with a iEOLIAN CHANCES. 95 will, it can — despite the greater rarity of the air — produce far more destructive effects than down below ; so much does its velocity increase with height, if we are thereby approaching the middle of an aerial current. The wind was blowing violently enough at the sea level, when we entered the Canarian Archi- pelago, a few days previously. And if by ascending therefrom 9000 feet into the atmosphere, as we had now done, we should be approaching the centre of that aerial stream, — whose lower films, though retarded by friction against the earth, yet lashed up the waves into fury, and made the masts of the yacht bend like whip-sticks, — why then we should certainly find Mount Guajara, a rather untoward region, for carrying out any very precise astronomical observations. Reasoning from what I had already found to pre- vail in a similar latitude in the southern hemisphere, and applying it to the northern latitude of Teneriffe, the S.W. wind, which blows there in the winter, must have a depth of far more than 9000 feet, and would therefore produce a fearful climate on the mountain at that season. But the N.E. wind, which prevails during summer, ought, from the same precedents, to have a depth of only 5000 or 6000 feet. Whence it must result, that the head of Guajara, situated above 96 SECURING THE STATION. the strength and clouds of the lower, hut not quite in those of the upper current, should then have placid weather, and enjoy its season of rest and quiet. This was theory ; a theory that I had some confidence in, and which was somewhat confirmed at that moment by the calmness of the air about us, simultaneously with the immense quantity and rapid motions of the Trade-wind clouds, spread over the sea in all direc- tions at a far lower level. Yet other persons, claiming equal right to an opinion, had threatened us with continued cloud, with driving sleet, and violent gales ; some said from the north, some the west, and some the south. This was the state of the question, when we opened our aerial campaign on the 15th of July; and, consi- dering all our responsibilities, the first thing to he done, was, to secure the station. A mistake at the beginning, such as an unfixed tent being blown over the crater precipice by these threatened S.W. squalls, would have ruined our whole expedition ; so I paced the top of the mountain over and over, arranging the best method of proceeding. The guy ropes of each tent had already been carefully fastened to large rocks as well as to pickets ; and my wife's tent I had had constructed in Edinburgh on the following MODEL TEXT. 97 plan, for promoting both cleanliness and safety. Safety, in that the manner in which tents are gene- rally blown away by a storm, and the inmates ren- dered most miserable and left most helpless, — being by the wind getting in under the walls, and then turning the thing inside out, like an occasional acci- dent to an umbrella, — this source of weakness was now avoided, by making a canvas floor ; and form- ing it in the same piece with roof and walls. In such case the wind, by getting underneath, cannot enter the interior; and besides that, if all one’s heavy baggage is brought into this tent, it is so securely ballasted thereby, as to be independent of the usual pegs ; and though it may be blown down, that is the whole mischief. Cleanliness, at least in a hot, dry, and dusty country, — because such a tent, carrying its own floor, can at once be put down in the sand, which then forms a soft understratum, but cannot enter the interior in the usual way, and begrime everything therein. This was all well enough for a beginning; but when O O O J the wind blows permanently with Alpine violence, neither canvas nor rope can withstand it, without the protection of stone walls, — a literally overwhelming H 98 SECURING THE STATION. fact this, abundantly confirmed by Lieutenant Drum- mond, when trying his well-known light, on the mountains of the Irish Trigonometrical Survey. Such defences in solid stone, then, were to be erected here ; but as they could not, with our small party, be instan- taneously raised, and as the opinions of informants differed, with regard to the quarter from whence we should first be invaded, — it became necessary to feel the pulse of the atmosphere, and to try to judge from its varied and multitudinous throbbings, in what mad freak the winds were going to break out next, at the end of the existing calm. Anxiously therefore I watched the break of day, the tints of colours on sky and sea, on clouds and distant mountains; and noted with pen and pencil every possible circumstance that could indicate, whether this was an exceptional or a normal occasion. As the dawn advanced, and the illumination became strong in the east, the colours appeared somewhat weak and. sickly ; dull, strontian yellow in the light, and the shadows a poor gray. As sunrise drew nearer, a blush of rose-pink surmounted the yellow, and suddenly the upper limb of the solar orb itself, flashed over the edge of the horizon, and across a plain formed by upper surfaces of the Trade-wind cloud. FIRST SUN-RISE. 99 Though there was much in all this to excite one, and though the picture was heightened in the fore- ground, by the Spanish guides in slouched hats and long blanket cloaks, standing over a fire they had made under a rock, — yet the impression was rather unsatisfactory on the whole. There was an appear- ance of a dust, or dry haze . spread through the atmosphere, that marred the colours, as well as lights and shades of distant objects. So presently, when the sailors appeared, we set to our more me- chanical work, and ranged all our packages in the form of a square fence, enclosing, or rather standing on, the very summit of the mountain. Into this enclosure the sailors' tent was first brought, for it was rather a frail and primitive affair, standing much in need of protection. Its construc- tion the previous evening did them infinite credit, seeing that their materials were only a few of the small beams prepared in Edinburgh for general pur- poses, and some pieces of old canvas in which some of our boxes had been wrapped. These beams were, on their second erection, so cleverly arranged by the carpenter, in the form of an angular roof with braces ; that after they had been covered by the mate with canvas, they were found quite strong enough to bear H 2 100 SECURING THE STATION. the yacht hammocks being slung up on either side. With these inseparable companions, swinging in ship- shape style above their heads, some planks for a floor, and the tool-chest for a table, — the sailors, though raised 9000 feet above the level of their proper ele- ment, did not look by the second night, at all in the state of castaways on a lee shore. Hard work however was before them ; the walls, the walls — every spare minute must be given by every man on the mountain to this sacred labour, which may or may not, presently prove the salvation of the party. First, towards the S.W. corner, we began our masonry; in the shape of a dyke about three feet thick, and of as large blocks of trachyte as we could move. The interpreter was fortunately skilled in this dry-stone building, and the Spaniards were consummate artificers; for it was precisely what they had executed in the vineyards below. The sailors also took zealously and kindly to the unsailor-like work of carrying stones. Before long, all the good blocks within and around the enclosure were used up, and to save time in going backwards and forwards, a barrow was needed. No sooner was the want appa- rent, than some of our generally serviceable beams were sliced up by the handy carpenter, and put METEOROLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS. 101 together with a few screws into the desired shape. The Spaniards excelled in the extraordinary dimen- sions of the stones which they occasionally brought up, the sailors in the superior number of moderate-sized ones, which they furnished, with the assistance of their ingenious barrow. At breakfast-time, I unpacked the simpler meteoro- logical instruments. The state of the barometer was lamentable ; the one day of solar roasting which it had experienced in coming up the mountain on the maters back, had blistered its varnish, and fearfully twisted its mahogany legs. A little mercury had escaped, but this loss was immaterial ; and the instru- ment was soon properly suspended, and showing a height of mercurial column of a little less than twenty-two inches. In this there was not anything very remarkable ; for therefrom, either the hill was not quite so high as expected, or the barometer was standing particularly high, and was in so far a sign of good weather. The temperature was pretty con- siderable, viz., 71° Fahrenheit, or not very different from what had been experienced below. But in the dryness of the air, what a change was there; the depression of the dew-point from 10° in Orotava, had increased up here to 50°. No wonder we felt 102 SECURING THE STATION. our lips cracking, our hair frizzling, our nails becom- ing brittle, and saw each others faces scarlet ; for the sun too was now shining down vehemently from a high altitude, where the dust haze no longer dimmed his rays. A gentle air from the south at noon, and a breeze from the N.E. in the evening, completed our day; but even at 9 p.m. the atmospheric dryness was as great as ever. July the 16th was much the same sort of day as the 15th, and we spent it in a very similar manner. It is described with this character in the astronomical journal : — “ Plain of cloud below, over the sea, seen very dmse and compact; with an upper surface at probably 5000 feet of altitude. It does not come quite up to the island, which has attached to it a cloud stratum of its own, at an altitude of 3500 feet, extending towards, but not meeting, the sea stratum. Between them, the sea is visible ; and appears curling in foam waves under a violent N.E. wind, while here we have only a gentle air. “ The horizontal strata of dust haze, at and above the level of our station, are very remarkable. They almost obscure the sun at setting, though the radia- ?ter’mqrrcw>7v' 4-. TENT SCENE ON MOUNT GUAJARA,8903 TEE T HIGH . SKETCHES OF COLOUR. 103 lion in the middle of the day is excessive. No upper clouds.” A sketch looking out of the tent door at midday, shows the cone of the Peak, rearing aloft its mass of thousands of lava streams and eruptions of pumice, its terminal sugar-loaf cone, and crowning crater with snow-white lips. Indications of the true colours appear abundantly, but they are nearly overpowered by the atmospheric blue of distance, and the dancing sunlight that fills the whole region. This light glares blindingly, from the Naples yellow of the ground im- mediately before us ; witheringly, from the blue-white of old dead bushes of codeso, reduced to the semblance of white ashes, without the assistance of fire ; and transfuses through and through all the canvas of our tent. A sketch at sunset, shows the luminary entering thick banks of dust haze, at the base of a perfectly cloudless sky. The Peak comes out then as a dark purple mountain; and more conspicuously still, because more towards the sun, appears the magnificent crater of Chajorra, a huge caldron on the western slope of the great Peak, that with a diameter of 4000 feet has a height of 10,000. All this is grand and soul-inspiring of course, but 104 SECURING THE STATION. there is an uneasy feeling difficult to define. What mean those dense banks of dust haze, that completely hide the horizon from us, and prevented us distin- guishing the exact moment of sunset ? Round about the mountain beneath, we see the plateau of clouds ; they grow denser as the day declines, and at last encompass us on every side. Piling one on the other, they shut out the sea, the land, and all the lower earth from our view ; while they themselves in their turn, as they stretch away into the distance, are lost in the haze of the dust. Gazing at the scene, we are forcibly reminded of the Mahometan cosmogony ; for here is the solid rocky mountain shadowed off below and resting on the cloud, and the cloud again resting on thick air or nothing at all. The air though, is not that “ still suffocating wind,” that formed the ultimate foundation of all things with Mahomet ; for as the darkness advances, squalls from every quarter of the compass begin to assail us. N., N.E., W., and S.W., are a few of the many quarters from which mad puffs of wind came whist- ling out, shake the tent in a way to try all its fixings, and then go howling off into the distance. An extraordinary feature is now remarked in the N.E., where underneath the horizon is seen a long ATMOSPHERIC INDICATIONS. 105 lurid streak of light. At least it seems underneath it ; for one can distinguish the dark banks of dust in the atmosphere, gradually increasing in density with their zenith distance, and becoming almost infinite on the horizon; and it is below all this, that long line of lurid glow. Are the dreadful eruptions of Lancerote, which lies in that direction, beginning again, and re- flecting themselves on the lower sky? The sailors could give no guess at the meaning of the appearance ; but we prepared for anything. Carefully smothering the fires with earth, to prevent accidents from stray sparks, and looking once again to all the tent ropes, we turned in at last with quiet and approving con- science. The wild squalls long prevented sleep. But when it did come it proved sound ; for the sun was up when we awoke, and what a morning was there. The air was calm, and oh ! so clear ; every particle of the dust haze was gone, and it seemed as if a veil, and a very thick one too, had been suddenly removed from the scene. The colours of even distant ranges of moun- tains were almost as vivid and pure, as on the ground close by; and shadows of things, far or near, were surprisingly dark and transparent. Now we could examine the stratification of the opposite wall of the 106 SECURING THE STATION. great crater of elevation, the individual dykes of the Peak, or the formation of the distant island tops of the Canaries, Grand Canary, Palma, Gomera, and Hiero. The tops only in most cases, for the cloud sea, or strata of the Trade-wind cloud, concealed every- thing in the distance under a level of about 5000 feet. At 7 A.m. on this day, a water-colour sketch repre- sents the cloud sea to the east, as a dense white plain in the distance ; where the sun shines on it, as white as snow. As secure a walking ground too does the surface of mist seem to afford, for no gaps appear in it, merely undulations of surface, caused by the close juxtaposition of numerous rollers of cumuloni cloud, stretching still from N.E. to S.W., exactly as we saw them when sailing below in the yacht. On the E. and N.E., the clouds press close up to the land ; but on the S., or under the lee of that part of the island, which rises to a greater height than their level, there is an interval of three or four miles. This enables us famously to see the edge, and judge of the thickness of this great platform of cloud. It is pro- bably about 1000 feet, and produces under it, as we can also see, a region of darkness, that compared with the sunlight outside, looks triste indeed. Near SEA OF CLOUDS. 107 the boundary of the stratum, a roller occasionally breaks off from the rest, and goes drifting away length- ways, and in a direction that indicates a strong Trade- wind there ; though we, so much higher in the air, have a perfectly calm atmosphere. The same story also is told by the waves of the sea, which are seen by a telescope to be crested with foam ; while a large steamer, ploughing its way heavily to the S.W., is preceded by its own smoke. It is accompanied like- wise by so immense an amount of white frothy water, that we make sure it must be experiencing a double- reefed topsail breeze at least. At 11 a.m. a view to the S.E. shows the purple summits of the many ranges forming the island of Grand Canary, sparkling above the level of the N.E. cloud ; which is constant as ever in the distance ; but declines to approach nearer the coast in this quarter, than four or five miles. The low country is somewhat dim and hazy ; though what with the rocks and surf on the beach, the yawning mouths of many parasitic craters, and the winding angular lines of ravines, like so many huge cracks in the earth, there is no lack of detail anywhere. At the same time a ridge of the mountain, nearly two miles from us, and of about our own elevation, is throwing a shadow so dark, yet so 108 SECURING THE STATION. transparent, so black-looking amid the sun-lit land- scape, and yet in reality so richly and deeply coloured, — that a full idea can only be formed, by combining what the telescope reveals of the powerful lights and shadows in the moon, with the paintings of Turner and of Rembrandt. The day wears apace, and most luxuriously in so pellucid an atmosphere, lit up by the rays of a vertical sun, undiminished by any aerial impurity. Each moment on a day of this sort is worth hours on any other; we look at everything far and near, see it as it were face to face, and gain a higher idea of the glorious creation in which we live. As the sun descends, the shadow of Guajara is thrown first on the sea, then on the cloud plain ; and then as the sun actually sets, the shadow crosses the island of Grand Canary, rises into the sky above it, and appears dis- tinct and pronounced as a real mountain ; and when presently, almost behind the sharply defined summit of the shadow, the full moon rises, and appears to be the very cause of it,' — the illusion is extraordinary indeed. Turn round quickly though, lest you lose the glories of the west ; see how vivid atmospheric colours can be. TRANSPARENT AIR. 109 when there are no impurities in the air. The chief part of the light is yellow, glorious cadmium, passing below into the richest tint of red-orange, above into lemon-yellow, and then powerful rose-pink, which by degrees fades into the deep blue sky above. Underneath all this display is seen the Trade-wind cloud-plain, concealing all the distant sea, and forming the horizon on this as on every other side. Of a delicate blue grey, these clouds form so level a plain, that if only a footing could be obtained on the edge that approaches so close to Teneriffe, one could fancy it to offer an easy walk over to Palma, that rises on the verge of the glowing horizon. While still admiring this scene, night arrives; one hour five minutes is the observed astronomical time of the duration of twilight, but that takes account of far fainter light than what practical per- sons would deem of any importance ; and half that in- terval ought to see all wanderings about the mountain terminated. On this particular night a larger scope is allowed by the glories of a full moon, which soon abandoning the saffron colour with which it rose, mounts up in the sky as a disc of the purest white, and actually seems to stand out in front of the stars, and their background of indigo blue. CHAPTER II. SOUTH - WEST ALARM. UIETLY we had retired to rest on the night of July 17th; and after a day so fully occupied, slept soundly enough, little thinking of the morrow ; but the morrow came in due course, and proved quite able to take care of itself, and establish its own claims to attention. At an early hour, the shaking and shivering of the tent, and the noise of wind in- creasing every moment, awoke us. We went out, and lo ! the direction of the gale was S.W. ; the threatened, and the promised, return current from the Equator, had at last arrived. If we must live in a wind, by all means let it be the S.W., and not the N.E., that effete, unwhole- some, used up, polar stream. As to the chemical constitution and sanitary qualities of the two winds, there could he no comparison between them ; hut then, which was likely to do its spiriting most vio- lently? We feared, after all, the south-west; he- CHANGE IN THE WIND. Ill cause the heights were its proper province in these latitudes. Peering into the wind’s eye, we could discover little to guide us as to what was coming; the sky was clear and blue, as usual; all the country below the level of 5000 feet was covered in by the stratum of N.E. cloud, that spread out over the sea as well, and this was also its wont ; again, all the country, craters, and peaks, above 5000 feet of elevation, appeared as dry, and as hard in outline as ever. The wind swept down on us all the time, in a steady, unmitigated, un- ceasing blast, as if from a boundless reservoir ; and was now growing so strong that we could with difficulty stand up against it. Towards the S.W., the horizon, i.e.j the cloud-horizon, was particularly smoky ; and sea-gulls, that had come thus far inland, retreating before the gale, every now and then whirled up and around ; and then sped away, over the crater wall, making apparently fruitless efforts to withstand the violence of the squalls. A cloud of dust was seen rising up from our own hill, but presaged only the arrival of a small party coming from Orotava with supplies. Gladly did the muleteers unload their animals, and hasten down to the sheltered ravine of the spring. One of them 112 SOUTH-WEST ALARM. waited for answers to the letters he had brought. What said the first ? It came from the most expe- rienced person of the island in all that related to the climate of its upper world. “ Build your walls high and strong/' said the letter, “ towards the S.W., or your tents will be torn to ribbons." Pleasant com- fort this, with the S.W. wind at that very moment tugging and straining at every cord of our tent ; and that tent at the N.E. corner of the enclosure; or as far as possible from the bit of wall already built, and as close as possible to the brink of the crater pre- cipice. On reconnoitring once more outside, the Spaniard was found under our small piece of completed wall, wrapped up in his long cloak, hat doubled down, cigar in mouth; and gazing with such an inimitable air of lordly pity and sovereign contempt, at the frail- looking materials of both roof and guy ropes of our canvas abode, struggling and stretching as they were in the unequal conflict with the growing gale, — that I determined at once on the course to be pursued. So answering the letters, and sending off the cynical townsman, I called together our mountain party, — and though the sun was high in the sky, as well as burning hot, and my wife not desirous of having her domestic ACTIVE MEASURES. 113 arrangements for the day interfered with, yet for the sake of certainly being on the right side, — we removed, her tent into immediate proximity of the highest part of our southern wall. Then unpacking some new coils of rope, we carried stays to projecting points in the solid, rock of the mountain. Next came consultations, how to bring this critical period of indefence to the most speedy termination, and our interpreter volunteering to ride down to Orotava, on the angular pack-saddle of one of the baggage mules, — being sure that it would be so dark by the time he arrived in inhabited places, that the women would not jeer him for riding with such equipment,— he was deputed to see how many men he could engage, to build off-hand all the enclosure required for our encampment. With evening the wind died away. Then appeared the unusual summer sight for Guajara, of clouds; that is clouds on the sky above us, for there were the ordinary lower clouds over sea and land, as a matter of course. Long we gazed at the novel upper clouds sailing over our heads from the S.W. Of a delicate structure and recherche sort of character, they had none of the vul- garity of those great puffy clumsy rollers of the cumu- loni cloud below. They were between what the i 114 SOUTH-WEST ALARM. meteorologists call cirro-cumuli and cirrostrati, the most picturesque of all clouds in the pleasing way ; equally eminent for their beauty of form, as for their tender tints ; and most appropriate in such semi-classic scenes as the paintings x>f Watteau. Turner, would hardly have been Turner, without these clouds to add piquancy to the uniform blue of a mid-day sky, or to reflect the glories of a setting sun. These upper clouds sailed clear over the Peak, whose height is 1*2,200 feet, and were probably not less than 15,000 in elevation. When they are seen by observers below, there can be no lower clouds that day; and what charming scenes of aerial cloud-land may there often be aloft, when, as in Edinburgh, we have the N.E. wind and its low clouds immediately over our heads ; spreading a murky and soul-depressing gloom over everything; knocking out all the lights and shades of nature, and replacing them by a cold, lifeless grey. On such occasions the air is wet, yet it does not rain ; the icy wind meets you right in the face in every street, and comes down on you with chill over the house-tops, and from every quarter whence you don’t expect it. The pavement is slimy, and reflects the gas with an unwholesome gleam. Every man you meet is closely buttoned up, and is hufrying along with a dogged UPPER CLOUDS. 115 sort of ill-will, against himself and everybody else; he looks neither to the right nor left, neither above nor below. Though he be painter, or though he be poet, yet he gazes not on anything ; above there is only dulness, on the earth below only lifeless colours. Were he raised, however, at that instant but a few thousand feet in the air, the vivifying rays of the sun would be dancing about him ; and if there were any clouds still higher, they would be these fairy-like cirri and cirro-cumuli, which may chequer a day and render it beautiful, but never make it dark. As the flocks of these little clouds drove over the top of Guajara, some slight effect was produced by them on the dryness of the air ; for the dew point de- pression was not quite so great as before. From 50° it had descended to 25°; a remarkably large amount still, and in which our hair continued to become daily more frizzly, our nails more brittle, and the wood of the packing-boxes went on steadily shrinking and cracking. The electricity of the air was frequently examined, but as on every previous day, it was found still small in quantity, and resinous in quality. Although we had had a touch of the S.W. current, the electricity of this region was still that of the Trade- 116 SOUTH-WEST ALARM. wind, which is characterised always by extreme mode- ration and regularity. On the morning of the 19th, finding that there were complaints of want of water, and no notion of any way of getting it, but by waiting for a man from below to bring it on a mule — I started off by myself, with a couple of tin-buckets to visit the fountain in the glen ; i.e., the wet place by the road-side which had proved of such service on the Monday. To walk on “ foot-back,” as the Dutch say, is the true method of becoming acquainted with a mountain; and I was soon rewarded by finding red, blue, and green lavas, small specimens of obsidian like artificial black glass ; and, in the midst of a long slope of loose white pumice, a single lilac-coloured violet. Its underground stem was long, and the root distant from the place where the leaves and flowers appeared — so far had they been carried down by the descent of the soil during the time of their growth. Not being prepared for such a length of root-stalk, and hoping to meet with more specimens, I pulled, and broke it ; but not another “ Viola Teydensis ” did we ever see again. Directing my course by the bearings of cliffs on the opposite side of the ravine, I came presently on DROWNED BUTTERFLIES. 117 the water-hole of our ascent. Finding it rather muddy, I explored the neighbourhood, rambling over black lava and green- grey trachyte; until led to the origin of the trickle of water, in a cavern of small depth under a projecting ledge of white tufa. On the floor of this hollow, was a little pool de- corated with an array of floating spots of purple, as if the place was an abode of the smallest and most beautiful of all water-lilies. But what was my sur- prise on finding these gems of colour to be dead butterflies ( Folyommatus Webbianus ). An occasional specimen had been sporting in the neighbourhood of our station, but what made such quantities come to drown themselves here, it were difficult to say. While engaged in filling the water-cans at a place where broken stones acted as a natural filter, there sounded the little tinkle, tinkle, that announces in Tenerifie the approach of goats. There they came trotting along; the more active ones jumping up all the rocks on their line of march ; sometimes disputing with each other for the honour of standing on the very highest; and then running helter-skelter to be the first to arrive at another spot, suitable to their inno- cent ambition. There were milch goats among them ; quickly, therefore, I emptied one of the water-cans, 118 SOUTH-WEST ALARM. and the herd-boy so readily understood my pantomime, that he at once drove his flock up into the cavern, as a cul de sac ; and then catching one goat after the other, poured glorious supplies of its rich milk into the tin vessel. I was rather surprised at the time, to see how readily this youth acquiesced in my views ; as well as how liberally he supplied me: and not being able conscien- tiously to attribute it to my eloquence in Castilian, had been inclined to give all credit to the British silver which I offered him. We learnt afterwards, however, at the station, that a neighbouring Spanish proprietor — an admirer of science — Don Martin Rodriguez, had given all his goat-herds instructions to be civil and obliging to the strangers, if they should fall in with them. When three or four quarts had been drained into the tin, the goats began to think that they had been sufficiently taxed. First somewhat uneasy in their far end of the hole, their impatience presently began to manifest itself in attempts at escape ; many a one was caught by the leg, as it fancied itself bounding into freedom ; but at last one of them slipped out, and then there was a regular emeute ; and while the boy and myself were stopping them on one side, they goats’ milk. 119 rushed out on tlie other, like water through a sieve, until not one was left. Still there was hardly as much milk as those on the station could utilise ; so beating a large circle round about the goats, they were once more surrounded and driven into the cavern. By the time, however, that half-a-dozen more of them had been milked, the troop again grew riotous ; and the bucket being now as full as was compatible with safe carriage up the mountain- side, the poor persecuted creatures were allowed to escape for good ; and their herd-boy, with the money in his pocket, conducted them across the head of the ravine, to browse on the opposite hill. With a bucket of milk in one hand and of water in the other, I followed the pathway to that wet place where our ascending mules had rested, and met a party of countrymen who were taking this way of crossing over from the south, to the north, side of the island. The shortest route this, but by no means an easy one; seeing that one amongst many other difficulties it included, was crossing a pass at an elevation of 8000 feet. Yet were these hardy Spanish peasants trudging along cheerfully, with large packages on their backs, to dispose of in the port of Orotava. Being curious to see what sort of produce could 120 SOUTH-WEST ALARM. repay this toilsome mode of carriage, I applied to one of the men who was resting himself. Most g>ood~ humouredly and smilingly he took me to his pack, lying on a rock hard by, and consisting in a flat painted box, about two feet square and six inches thick. On it were a number of hard green pears, his own food, and of which he freely offered me. But I thank- fully declined them, perhaps not without some epicurean dream of there being fine luscious grapes within. So he proceeded to unbuckle the broad black strap; and then, throwing open the lid of the box, displayed its interior divided into a dozen partitions, each filled with little grey particles like the ashes of a cigar ! These were the cochineal insects, as picked off their cactus plants, and prepared for the European dye-market. An admirable article of produce for mountaineers without roads, for it is light, compact, and high-priced to a degree ; — while the market has never yet been overstocked, nor is it ever likely to be, so long as young damsels have a taste for pink ribbons ; — but then what a dish to set before a thirsty traveller under a hot sun. The unexpected supplies of pure water and rich milk which flowed into our mountain camp that MOUNTAIN MANNERS. 121 morning, infused new energy into the wall-build- ing party. My wife found her English prejudice against goats’ -milk rapidly declining, when she had it thus fresh and unsophisticated ; and the men felt incited also to go out after their day’s work should be over, and see what they could forage for themselves. The first attempt, however, was not well directed, and I even felt obliged to express formal disapproval of it ; and, although assured that it was the practice of the mountain, to order that it should never be tried again by any member of our expedition. The practice must doubtless be pleasant enough for travellers, but particularly otherwise for Canarian farmers ; for it consists in catching and slaughtering one of their goats, that run half wild and half tame over the upper part of the mountain. They are there during the whole of the summer, with little attention from their masters; for they are all marked, and are sure, on the setting in of winter, to come back kindly enough to the warm farmsteads below ; and there are no animals of prey to thin their numbers. Happy African isle, without the jackals, hyenas, leopards, and lions of the continent to which it belongs. Picturesque it is sufficiently, to see two bronzed mountaineers, by the light of a flaring fire of brushwood. 122 SOUTH-WEST ALARM. iii a crevice of the crater wall, flaying and cutting up, grilling and roasting wholesale; and afterwards to find a party under a gipsy tent feeding ad libitum ; while from a projecting spar outside, there is swing- ing in the dry wind, and moonlit air, a dark haunch of goat. But from all this poetical brigandage, our astronomical party was entirely to abstain : and by moral example, humbly to aid and abet the general cause of law and social order in these highly elevated regions. Next day being Sunday, and after six very exciting days of hard work, each man being left to his own ideas of passing the seventh — a more innocent excur- sion than kid-hunting was got up by some of them, in the shape of a walking expedition to the village of Chasna ; about 4000 feet up the southern ridge of the mountain, and 5000 feet below our station. To this place started off one of the sailors and Manuel “ the Marquis ;” the other sailor made it literally a day of rest, and in the hot still air of the afternoon, his stertorean breathing resounded over the place. About nightfall the Chasna expedition returned; the Englishman thought it a very poor place, just half-a-dozen ordinary houses, he said, stuck down by the road-side, and the doors of all of them closed. SHADOWS OF THE FUTURE. 123 But he launched forth, in untutored admiration of the natural scenery he had been through : the deep ravines, the yawning mouths of craters, and their colossal heaps of coal-black cinders, as fresh and natural, as if they had been thrown out only yester- day, from some burning fiery furnace. CHAPTER III. TERM-DAY WORK. HP HE method of “ term/' or stated days, whereon meteorologists should observe throughout all the twenty-four hours, was an improvement introduced by Sir John Herschel, when studying the climate of South Africa. So admirably is it adapted to bring to light phenomena ot short period, that I was happy when the morning of July 21st arriving, enabled me, with a semblance at least of utility, to begin the hourly observations of that particular term-day. At six o’clock, accordingly, the first entry of the series was made. Our meteorological observatory was now pretty satisfactory as to arrangement, and was practically efficient in guarding against local disturbances. These were mainly two ; first, the terrific radiation of the sun by day, with something of the same sort, but with an opposite sign, from the sky by night ; and, secondly, the wind, which, if allowed its own sweet METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORY. 125 will, might at any moment blow all our instruments into the crater. To protect from these, a portion of a room had been erected, with walls to the S.E. and W., and with a bit of roof formed of planks and canvas, covered in with brushwood and weighted with rock. This roof was to keep out the almighty prying of a vertical mountain sun, whose rays did indeed try the nature of everything they had access to. The walls were of stone, and pretty nearly four feet thick, so that there was no fear of direct solar radiation ffettincr through them. Yet as they were at the same time built loosely with angular masses, they were quite porous to the wind ; which kept nicely circulating in and out amongst barometers and thermometers, so as to pre- vent the formation of any local atmosphere, and enable us to obtain the true temperature of shade on the mountain. Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, and so on through the day, saw us repeating our observations of the several instruments, as well as unpacking and erecting the Sheepshanks Equatorial. This was the smaller of the two telescopes we had brought to Teneriffe ; and with its stand, packing into four heavy boxes, was no mean load for the mules. I had decided at last on trying this instrument at Guajara, in place of 126 TERM- DAY WORK. attempting the doubtful success, and expending all our means in at once bringing up the larger Pattinson Equatorial. Amongst other reasons, there was already looming in the distance, the ultimate necessity of reaching a higher station than this, in order to be above “ dust haze.” We must first ascertain how much we can do here, I reasoned, with moderate means ; and will afterwards use our utmost exertion, and spend our last shilling, in getting the more powerful, but impos- sible telescope, — as our Orotava friends call it, — up to the greatest available height along the slopes of the Peak. Could any other conclusion well be come to, when the abnormal impurities of the atmosphere at our level, were almost daily described in the meteorological journal in such words as these : — “ Air still very hazy on horizon ; haze when under the sun, or in a position to reflect light, appears whiter and brighter than the pure sky, and when seen in front of, or by transmitted, light appears darker. At sunset some small cirro-cumuli, seen through a haze stratum in the west, itself dark as smoke, were vividly bright.” Again : “ Air thick with dust haze ; distant moun- tains consequently indistinct ; except where, as with DUST HAZE. 127 Cliajorra and the Peak, they rise above 9000 feet of altitude ; anything above that height being seen sharp, black, and distinct. Night after night, when all lower things are oppressed with dust haze, the summit of the Peak appears to shoot up through it into the clear blue vault of heaven.” Because so much is said of this “ dust haze ” on the mountain, let no one fancy that it is an impurity, from which an astronomer would have been safe, had he remained below, for it spreads through the air at one definite level for hundreds of miles, far and wide, and quite independently of the Peak. An observer therefore at the sea level, would equally have the untransparent medium between his eye and the stars in the zenith, as would a man at a higher elevation. Towards the horizon, however, there will be some difference ; for if the hill station be nearly at the same height as the layer of dust, its apparent density will increase, from perspective, so rapidly towards 90° of zenith distance, that it will form in that part a very visible band; while at the plain station, there is no such rapid increase of perspective, consequently no very great variation of visible effect. In low countries there is accordingly many a “ pale” blue sky seen by day, and there are unaccountable 128 TERM-DAY WORK. absences of the zodiacal light or milky way noticed at night, which are owing precisely to the advent of a thicker stratum than usual of this said dust haze in the upper air, without the inhabitants below sus- pecting the reason. On Guajara, however, where we were nearly on the level of these dust strata, we could always detect their presence, and judge of their density over head, by referring to appearances in the neighbourhood of the horizon. Seeing then so clearly these beds of dust, spread abroad in the air, we were inclined to talk of them even over-abundantly. “ That which is unexpected ,” says Arago, “ always becomes the lion in scientific researches.” So having ascended this mountain for the purpose of getting above clouds, and as much of the atmosphere as possible ; viz., its nitrogen, oxygen, carbonic acid, and watery vapour, we found — on beginning operations at 8903 feet of altitude — there was another difficulty in our way besides aerial gases, in the shape of these strata of “ dust haze,” or of finely divided particles of solid matter. Straightway, then, these became our chief source of anxiety to understand, and of ambition to overcome. While engaged with the sailors in unscrewing the CHARMING LITTLE BIRD. 129 telescope boxes, I looked up, and lo ! a little bird of the fringilla species, — a very little bird as com- pared with any that a working man would generally care for, — came and perched on a stick that had been fixed in the ground close by, to show the site of an intended angle of the wall. A tame innocent bird it was, not unlike a common linnet ; it hopped about as far as the confined area of the stick top would permit, now to the right, now to the left ; then stooping down, wiped both sides of its bill cleverly on the edge of the wood ; looked up at us archly and merrily again ; and once more began hopping backwards and forwards as at first, in azimuth, if I may be allowed so to say. In fact it performed its part so prettily, that with my head full of expected canaries on this, the highest island of the Canary group, — I asked our interpreter by what name he called this exemplary little bird of the brawn plumage. He looked at it, and started, quite sportsman-struck, as if he had seen a stately antelope. Without answering my question, he called Manuel’s at- tention to the diminutive fowl, not five feet off, and he looked also — then they both had a long and animated discussion ; at the conclusion of which the interpreter turned round, and assured me, with infinite empresse- mentj that “ the bird was remarkably good eating ; K 330 TERM-DAY WORK. and that if he had only his musket with him, he would shoot the creature then and there.” This did not say much for the amount of game, or of shootable things in the island generally ; and living creatures of any sort were not very plentiful on our lofty abode. But we had already noticed a hawk, several swallows, some long-legged spiders, two species of large and beautiful flies, besides the ordi- nary sort, a small blue butterfly, lizards and grass- hoppers. Moreover, those astute foragers, the crows, had found that something was going on which would afford them pickings ; so they began to arrive from distant parts, and examined ns narrowly from safe rocks in the neighbourhood, while organizing their plans of procedure. A photograph taken late in the afternoon, shows the Equatorial mounted, and approximately in posi- tion. Its stand, in the shape of a hollow pier of wood, filled with stones to make it heavy, gives pro- mise of resisting the wind. The two sailors are seated about amongst the packing boxes, looking very tired. One of the guy ropes of the tent crosses the foreground, and in the distance is the magnificent Peak of Teyde, raising its sugar-loaf cone high into the sky. At the foot of the cone, or at an elevation ]?hoto - StereogroLplu IHEEPSSA3sTltS- ' TELESCOPE EIRST 'ERECTED OTT 1VC0TJTTT /GUAJARA, THE PEAR OE TEUERIFEE IN THE DISTANCE . FIRST TELESCOPIC EXPERIENCE. 131 of 11,700 feet, there is still a patch of last winter’s snow ; and below that begin on every side the streams of lava and pumice, various in colour, but subdued by distance into good keeping for the background of a picture. (See l J hoto-stereograph , No. 5.) “ Delighted and surprised/’ says our astronomical journal for eight o’clock on this evening, “ with the marvellously fine definition of all the stars seen in the telescope; they all have such perfect discs and rings with a mag : fying power of 150, a thing I have never witnessed once in Edinburgh, with this instrument.” Then seeing the constellation of the Great Bear going down behind the Peak, and having a sad han- kering after a station upon its slopes, — yet fearful of the propriety of the place, from what a learned traveller has written of the vagaries he saw, while there, in the motions of heavenly bodies, — I watched immersions of different stars, with full power of the telescope; trying to detect any symptoms of extraordinary re- fraction, such as might arise from emanation of hot vapours at the occulting ground. This is the result as entered in the journal : — (C At 19h. 55m. Sid. time, saw y Ursae Majoris occult behind the Peak of Teneriffe, at about the level of k 2 132 TERM- DAY WORK. AltaVista; the star showed a good shaped disc with well-formed rings, through the whole of the time it was watched; though prismatically coloured; red above and blue below. The occultation was sharp and precise. “ At 2 Oh. 18m. 25s., 3 Ursse Majoris went down be- hind the very crater of the Peak, and similarly with y. “At 20h. 38m. 2s., a Ursse Majoris went down coloured, but with good-shaped disc and rings, behind the sugar-loaf or ash-cone of the Peak ; but the immersion was not perfectly instantaneous.” And this conclusion was appended to the above : — “ Considering that these good immersions took place at altitudes so low as from 0 to 9 degrees, there appears no reason to fear any excessive disturbance of vision by the hot vapours of the Peak, even were the telescope mounted on its flanks. While if thereby a greater height of station could be obtained, immense advantage would result in getting above the dust-haze medium; which seems, to one who is above the clouds, to be the chief remaining obstacle to a clear view of the heavenly bodies.” Meanwhile the night wore on apace ; at every hour the meteorological instruments were noted. The temperature, which had risen to 74° at 2 p.m., went METEOROLOGICAL PARTICULARS. 133 down to 61° at 9 p.m., at midnight was 57°, and shortly before sunrise was 55°. The dryness of the atmosphere, as shown in the depression of the dew point, followed more clearly the sun’s motion ; for it reached its maximum, or 47°, at noon ; and nearly its minimum, or 32°, at midnight. Daylight showed the cloud-sea as unusually exten- sive ; and so closely thatching in all the ocean and lower lands of Teneriffe, that not a particle of these was anywhere to be seen. To all the natives below, it must have been a regular, unmitigated, gloomy and cloudy morning; though probably not worse than that species of daybreak, which a Scotchman, habi- tuated to — and to worse — calls “ a fine grey morning.” To us on the mountain, there were no * “ upper clouds,” and the morning was overpoweringly bright ; yet the air was “ dusty.” The duration of twilight was one-fourth shorter than on the previous evening; and when the sun did rise, he was seen very pale, in the midst of a dry haze bank, whose upper edge was still 1° above him. Having thus witnessed the day of the 22nd begin its course, and also seen our men, now strengthened by a party of six Spaniards from Chasna, commence 134 TERM-DAY WORK. their work at the walls, I retired into the tent to sleep until breakfast time. The Spaniards understood their part so well, and laboured at it so energetically under the direction of our interpreter, that before the close of the 23rd, we were enabled, with safety, to replace my wife^s tent in its original N.E. corner of the enclosure. From thence the door gave us a charming view of the Peak of Teyde, its rugged dykes, and its lava streams of various colours. At the back, and on either side of the tent, ran dwarf stone walls, to keep off the wind ; the narrow intervening spaces serving as larder and pantry. [See Photo-stereograph , No. 4.) In front of the door, thanks to the laminated, if not stratified, nature of the trachytic lava, we mounted a large slab of it, to serve as a table; and a little further off, constructed a fire-place. Even- tually we had several fire-places in different directions, to be used accordingly as the wind blew ; for in so violently dry an atmosphere, — very often with 50° of dew-point depression, — and living under canvas in a breezy locality, no amount of caution against stray sparks could be superfluous. The supply of fire-wood was inimitable. The ground FIREWOOD. 135 was dotted over with alternate bushes of codeso and retama ; and each plant vied with the other for burn- ing brightly, even when in the green state ; so what would they not do, when dead, — as every other one was, — and so dry, so astonishingly dry, as they inva- riably became. Then there was such a nice distinc- tion of fuel properties between these two shrubs; the codeso with its stringy fibrous bark, and the in- numerable needle-like processes of its twigs, being so splendid for beginning a fire ; and the retama , with its thick, solid, smooth branches, stems, and roots, so excellent a material wherewithal to keep up the blaze. I have made bigger and hotter fires with doom - looms , and trunks of other trees drifted down with the flood of a South African river ; and in the kar- roos there, have made larger and brighter flames with some of the dried euphorbiaceous plants, — but for good useful, semi-domestic fires, to cook the pot by day, and to make the night cheerful, — fires not so small as to keep one constantly attending them lest they go out, and not so large as to make one fearful of pos- sible consequences, — commend me to the dual bushes of Guajara, Adenocarims FranJcenoidesj and Cytisus Nubigenus . 136 TERM-DAY WORK. Of the latter, only one or two specimens were in flower, its season being past : but we saw quite enough to understand bow, when all the tribe was in blossom, the townspeople must find it well worth their while to pack their hives of bees, as they do, on mules, and bring them up to these higher regions ; to gather honey from the innumerable cream-coloured and broom-like flowers of this famous plant. The codeso was still in full vigour of florescence, and its bright yellow blossoms and aromatic leaves, lent point and interest to the rocks as one walked along. Other fires had to he considered in our domestic arrangements, besides those of artificial combustion, for the vertical sun shone down so fiercely on our tent by day, that had it not been constructed with a great part of the upper walls to let down on each side, and so per- mit the wind to blow through and through, — it must have become an oven of insupportable heat; and my wife therein, would not have been able to lend me the important assistance she did, in writing and many other occupations. The sailors* tent did not easily admit of such an arrangement ; but they rigged up a sort of arbour with spars and canvas just outside their door. And at night, they showed the best disposition to take DORMITORY. 137 tilings pleasantly , far more important than any mate- rial means, to enable them to bear the heat that then arose from below. Their circumstances must have been rather trying, for this was the sort of dormitory arrangement. The seamen climbed up into their ham- mocks, very nautically slung in the upper part of the tent ; then the six Spaniards crowded in below, and sent up fumes of garlic, that were quite astounding to the unsophisticated senses of Britishers. However, they all made the best of it, and got on famously. The carpenter, when he saw the great wall surrounding our whole station, and afterwards smaller walls intersecting its interior, and affording special protection to each tent and retreat, — began to say that they were being made so comfortable, that they would not like to leave the station. The chief Spaniard, too, was so proud of his own share in the work, that he talked of erecting* a cross on the highest corner-stone, and of carving his name thereon. An opportunity now occurred which enabled the whole party to revel in good things, for a pedlar ar- rived, bringing along with him a mule-load of fruits ; delicious purple figs, allowed to hang on the tree until fully ripe, — a justice that strangely is not often ac- 138 TERM-DAY WORK. corded to them, — sugary, luscious, and of the finest flavour. Then there were the most exquisite plums, purple and yellow, of fine oval forms and growing in such charming groups and bunches, that a cluster of them, — with a few green leaves appended, as they generally were, — would have been a matchless prize for a fruit painter. The plums came from Chasna; the figs from Grenadilla, a village lower down and in a warmer zone. Then from somewhere between, came immense basketfuls of the fruit of the prickly pear. The Spaniards devoured them wholesale, that is, such part as can be devoured, viz., the small quantity of juicy pulp in which the seeds are enclosed. A plea- sant flavour truly had this portion, tempered too with such a degree of gentle acidity, as to make it most efficacious in quenching thirst ; but the British sailor looked at it with excessive disgust, and de- nounced it as so much sheer nonsense in the shape of eating. Pears came from the same quarter, but had gene- rally to be boiled up with sugar, they were so hard and unripe ; even the crows had much difficulty in selecting specimens that pleased them. At least, they got hold of our fruit-basket one morning before we were up, and drove their beaks into every pear ISLAND SUPPLIES. 139 there, just as a grocer would drive his long steel taster into a Gloucestershire cheese. Fruits, notwithstanding, were the most easily kept of all our stores; bread perhaps the most difficult, for in half a day it became so extraordinarily dry, and desperately hard, as to need teeth of iron to make any impression upon it. And the meat? why the difficulty was not so much the keeping it when once obtained, as obtaining any to keep. The frugal Spanish peasants rarely touch meat themselves, and do not rear it for others. But one morning our in- terpreter came to us radiant with joy, for he had found a proprietor in Chasna, who had, he said, a “ ram and this ram he was willing to kill, if we would take half of it ; the other half he hoped to dis- pose of amongst the Spanish invalids and fashionables who were then flocking to Chasna, for the sake of its coolness and medicinal springs. A half of the alleged ram came in due course of time, but proved to be little larger than half a hare ; while in flavour and in fact, it was happily very excellent lamb. My wife suddenly reported one evening, that smoke was proceeding out of part of the mountain ! Every one turned out to look, and with rather serious coun- 140 TERM-DAY WORK. tenanees. There, in the basin of the great crater, almost vertically under our station, lay a grotesque collection of pinnacles of volcanic rock; and from some of these, every now and then, fits and flashes and wreaths of smoke arose. (See Photo-stereograph, No .6 .) There was not so much then as there had been, we were told ; and we had to look long after each appear- ance, before we could verify it by another. We were gazing down on the scene, at almost as great an angle as if it had been in a map, while the forms of the rocks were so picturesque, and highly coloured, that they might have been in fairy land. It was soon tolerably plain, from the thinness of the smoke, that if volcanic, there was nothing very violent going on ; and presently a theory was broached, that goat-herds had been setting the retamas on fire. This idea at once relieving every mind, a general rolling and throwing of stones down the precipice began. One of the men, Manuel, or the te Marquis/’ espe- cially distinguished himself. The mildest and best dispositioned of men, he had all along performed his part most admirably at the walls. The earliest to begin, the last to leave off work, and carrying always the heaviest stones. Now, after all the labour of the day was over, and a little play beginning in the dusk MOUNTAIN SPORT. 141 of the evening, lie commenced exerting himself like several men all in one, to roll down a monster block. Then to see the poor fellow all this time, with his hands bound up in bundles of rags ; for what with a preternatural roughness in all the igneous rocks about, and such astonishing dryness in the air, — every worker on the mountain, native as well as foreigner, had got his nails broken down to the quick, and split up besides ; while his hands were covered with lacera- tions, to say nothing of blistered face, and split lips. Poor Manuel’ s hands were in a worse state than any one else’s, yet he brought up the big block success- fully from a considerable distance, and finally launched it over the edge of the cliff. After five seconds we heard a tremendous crash, then a series of others, as if the block had broken into many pieces, which were still bounding down precipitous ledges. There was yet something peculiar in the fitful way in which smoke occasionally curled up from the “ lunar rocks and they looked so small, and so close by, that the carpenter was determined to he off, and examine the thing at the place. So away he went, to descend by a side ravine, and not to come hack until he had actually felt, with his hands, whether the ground was hot, and giving birth to volcanic smoke. 142 TERM-DAY WORK. Some time after dark he returned — completely crest-fallen ; every essay that he had made, had onty resulted in discovering the brink of some yawning chasm ; and all his walking, and all his scrambling had not sensibly brought him any nearer, to the really far-off line, of (( Los Corales.” CHAPTER IY. THE GREAT CRATER. mllE “ Lunar Rocks” had been a subject of high A- admiration, and intense puzzle, from the first day of our tenanting Guajara. We had complete com- mand over them as to view ; for, from the top of our cliff, or volcanic wall, we gazed almost vertically down upon them as they lay, or rather rose, and shot up, on the floor of the gigantic crater. Was it as a Gordian method of solving the difficulty of their origin, that Yon Buch left them entirely out of his large map ; otherwise a most excellent one, specially called a carte physique, and engraved so laboriously in the line man- ner, as to leave no part of the paper unburdened with careful conventional shading. Suffice it that they are not there] yet were in earlier Spanish charts; and are also in that more recent map of MM. Barker- Webb and Berthelot, which the friends of the great German geologist have so unhesitatingly condemned in everything. 144 THE GREAT CRATER. Look down at any time of the day from Guajara, and these “ Lunar Rocks” riveted your attention. In the middle of the day they gleamed again with bright greens, reds, blues, purples, and whites, as well as with yellows and browns. The greens, and likewise all those other colours being due, to the nature of the rock. Not to vegetation certainly; for of that there was practically nothing, even in the plain about, save the barely visible, far between dottings of globular retama hushes ; the living, dark grey ; the dead (see Photo-stereograph , No. 6), cinereous white. To study these rock-formed enigmas from their commencement, we must come to the very edge of the precipice; and as the air about us rejoices in little puffs and eddies of wind, it will he as well to lie down at full length, allowing only one^s head to project over the brim. Then looking vertically downward, we see on the floor of the crater below, a long ridge of rub- bish, coming out as it were from under the cliff; and at intervals along the line, which trends generally to- wards the great central Peak, there shoot up some remarkable masses of rock. Rocks simply they can hardly be called, because they are so large ; and hills would be more inappropriate, because they are such J?}wto - Stet^ooqroLi'il'iy CLIFF AND FLOOR OF THE GREAT CRATER, 8 MILES IH DIAMETER AND 7000 FEj .ABOVE THE SEA, UNDER MOUNT GUAJARA . 145 THE “LUNAR ROCKS.” strangely steep vertical forms, of nothing but sheer hard stone. Following this ridge along with the eye, its debris portion gradually sinks and is lost; but its rock-masses continue to shoot up more strangely, and as it were more unreasonably ; for they start forth at once from the ground without previous notice, and with perfectly vertical sides. There is a square tower amongst them, more than twice as high as it is broad, which might almost pass for a specimen of masonry, seeing that it is com- posed of horizontal strata ; but then one side of the tower is somewhat convex, and the other concave; and the breadth rather enlarges, than diminishes, to- wards the top. On the nearer side of this pillar, is a curious triple structure; while on the further, is a gorgeous collection of spires, minarets, ridges, and sharp-pointed peaks, glowing in varied hues ; their bands of colour, as well as the weathering, all indi- cating a horizontal stratification. On the flat near the square tower, we see some- thing like a tea-party, rather gigantic, but forming a friendly, sociable group, and apparently discussing the scene. On closer scrutiny, the guests turn out to be needle-shaped rocks, sitting up as abruptly, as so many nine-pins. In the evening and morning L 146 THE GREAT CRATER. the long shadows which are thrown athwart the plain, — by the members of our “ tea-party,” as well as the cathedral collection of spires and towers, — are such as one can only compare, with those which a telescope reveals in the moon, at certain periods of its solar illumination. Coming fresh from the glacier and iceberg discus- sions of Scottish geology, these “ Lunar Rocks” had first reminded us of the “ grand mulets” on Mont Blanc, with their glacier removed. For on the eastern side, was something amazingly like a series of old ter- minal moraines, one behind the other ; showing appa- rently how some ancient ice-stream, all of the olden time, gradually waning before a secular increase of terrestrial temperature, had finally vanished from earth, and departed into air; leaving behind it, all the way up the mountain slope, long winding lateral moraines, which had once measured the breadth of its frozen river. Learning, however, to throw old associations on one side, and attend only to absolute facts, before us at the instant — we traced every apparent glacier-marking so completely up to the various craters, — to the huge, and it may be called the still active one of Chajorra, as well as the equally large and unextinct, but yet EARLIER LAVA STREAMS. 147 filled up one of Rambleta, — that there was no doubt left in our minds, as to the long curving ridges of red stones, in front of the “ Lunar Rocks/’ being in reality, the termination of a stream of lava. When travelling through the Great Crater, during our ascent of the mountain, the stupendous scale of everything prevented our making out general features. We were cognizant then, only of long rugged hills of horrid stones ; i. e. broken, angular blocks, sticking and bristling up in all directions, and could make out little more. But now, from our commanding height, and bird’s-eye view position, all those asperities of surface were smoothed down, and we saw the con- secutive wrinklings of the lava streams, as plainly, in fact, as if they had been painted in a picture. Day after day we gazed at, sketched, and discussed these various outpourings which had flowed down from the central Peak, deluging the plain of the great crater; and insensibly we glided into a gene- ralization, which further experience has fully con- firmed. It may be stated thus : — The earliest lava streams are of a yellow tint, the succeeding ones red, a rich Indian red, and the last are blue-black. The yellow appear to have been the L 2 148 THE GREAT CRATER. most abundant, as well as most fluid ; for they cover the largest spaces, have flowed over nearly level tracts, and their ridges imitate the forms of watery waves. In one of our photographs of the south-eastern comer of this broad crater, the confines of a flood of yellow lava from the Peak, may be seen rushing up the curving beach in surf-like waves, as with the sea on the coasts below. The red streams, again, are evidently' much smaller in extent than the yellow, and have never run or spread very far. Their terminal markings are more like the wrinkles of a glacier, than the waves of water ; and, besides these transverse features, there are beginnings of a longitudinal arrangement; in some cases, as mentioned above, looking like the lateral moraines of an ice stream. In others, they give one the idea of nothing so much, as the ruts of chariot-wheels of Grecian demigods, driven with celestial power through the bewildered plain of loose red stones. The black streams, are decidedly the scantiest of all ; they have never moved, except when the slope was very notable; and with them, the longitudinal arrangement, which had just begun to appear in the red, predominates ; all the black streams, being Nothing but a series of long ridges or embankments. LATER LAVA STREAMS. 149 They have not the form of any sort of fluid stream, watery or viscous, but rather of a quantity of finely- comminuted solids, as sand ; their sides, and even their ends, being sloped so uniformly at a constant angle, that they look here and there, amazingly like embankments formed by railway navvies. I do not propose here, to enter into minutiae of the absolute manner of movement of a lava stream, and the oft-discussed influences of viscosity and crystallization in modifying its manner of flowing; but only to point out differences of shape, on the large scale, actually subsisting amongst different streams. These shapes, being undoubtedly an expres- sion of the particular mechanical forces once exerted in each case — must be replete with instruction, if rightly interpreted. Their study constitutes, indeed, a sort of colossal or telescopic mineralogy, which assumed in my eyes quite an aspect of professional importance, as presenting the only means, by which we can legitimately compare the surface of the moon, with that of the earth. The relative ages of streams, alluded to in the enumeration already given, we ascertained by their position. The colour was an accident, or at least was superficial; but the differences of form were 150 THE GREAT CRATER. something of far greater importance, and when taken in conjunction with other features, — also capable of accurate measurement, as, relative extent, quan- tity, and angular slope of the bed, — indicated, besides their age, the gradation of heat in the different classes of streams, and showed, at least with this volcano, that a secular progress had accompanied its periodical movements. Why certain leading geologists will so perseveringly refuse to the earth any secular change, over-riding and permeating its periodical movements, — when, from the range of physical astronomy to the boiling of a tea-kettle, we see that any effect of long period, is always mechanically bound up with others of short period, — it were difficult to say. But this Peak of Teneriffe, that is the central cone, or crater of eruption — in the midst of the vast crater of eleva- tion, which will afterwards form an extension of our view, — shows indubitably, secular and periodical qualities co-existent. Examination of the streams which have been sent forth within the memory of man, would tell little of secular progression ; for they only break out about once a century, the last eruption having occurred in 1798, and the previous one in 1703 ; and it is neces- AGES OF LAVA STREAMS. 151 sary, therefore, to question, as we have done, pre-his- toric phenomena. This method at once enables us to take up a far more powerful position; for what a mighty period must have elapsed, to include alone the thousands of black streams, which now seam the cone on every side ; and finding many of these, that are quite beyond the memory of man, untouched by any oxidating influence — we are inclined to wonder what myriads of ages must have further elapsed, to produce the deep red and yellow decompositions, so conspicuous on the surface of still earlier streams. For their blocks are, in the interior, black ; and in chemical composition, very similar to the substances last ejected. We have here at all events, whatever the absolute dates, results from an immense duration of perio- dical effects, spread before our eyes ; and cannot resist the conclusion which their forms set forth, viz., that a most marked secular change has been wrought out, and that its signs are visible still. Hence, we may state as the general law, holding good on the whole, — not, of course, in every individual instance, any more than that the tide-wave advances uniformly, and without little undulations on its surface, — that the earlier streams were the most copious and most fluid ; 152 THE GREAT CRATER. nay, we may pretty safely add, the hottest also, and that there has been a continual decrease in size and heat ever since. The Peak of Teneriffe has, in fact, been steadily burning out for ages; and is, happily for mankind, no longer in its youthful energy, nor in its primeval vigour of destructive power. In taking pictures of the several volcanic pheno- mena, our camera and photographic tent had been blown over more than once. Certain mahogany grooves being thus broken, for the replacing of which our spare deal-wood was not sufficiently strong, the yacht carpenter contrived to supply them by ingeni- ously cutting up a tent-peg ; while he manufactured a new hinge, out of a bit of iron hoop and a nail. Other unlooked-for accidents would often occur, amongst the most frequent of which, was the opening of cracks in camera-box, or plate-boards, in consequence of the desert-like dryness of the air. After a successful picture, the next one would have a black line across it. A new crack had opened in some part or other of the apparatus, and had to be found out, and then stopped up with white-lead, before anything further could be attempted. VISITORS. 153 At the close of a trying day of this sort, visitors were announced; they proved to he our friends, Mr. Smith and his eldest son. Both were to start for England by the next steamer, hut could not leave the island, without coming to see how we were prospering on that particular part of the mountain, which they had recommended. What splendid carriers are the mules of Tenerilfe, thought we, as Mr. Smith’s animals were unloaded, and we saw how much they had brought in one day, over so many miles of lava, and up 8900 feet perpen- dicular. What a fuss there would have been in another country, when attempting to carry a fraction of the same weight, on the backs of Coolies or Hot- tentots. With our friends contributing more than half of the feast, we made a grand dinner under the tent that day. Our table was merely a building plank, mounted on a couple of boxes, but answered perfectly well : and except on a few occasions, as after much writing, my wife never regretted that she had herself proposed decreasing the bulk of our camp equipage, by declining to adopt either actual tables or chairs. The Peak rose grandly before our dining-room door ; but Mr. Smith preferred its appearance as seen 154 THE GREAT CRATER. from the “ Tiro del Guanches •” a deep defile which from its name ; was, or might have been, a place of defence to those aborigines, if anyone else had gone out of their way to attack, and they had chosen to defend it. It is situated on the great crater wall, but further westward than Guajara. Owing to this position, the Peak is seen from thence with much steeper sides, than as it now appeared to us from the south; where its true conical form had been stretched into a ridge, lying nearly E. and W., by the protrusion of Chajorra on one side, and Montana Blanco on the other. This last-mentioned hill, or abutment of the Peak, is of smooth surface, and light-yellow colour; but every here and there has exudations of red lava, which have half-stretched, half-slobbered, down the sides like so much treacle or hasty-pudding, and show the trans- verse glacier-like wrinkles in perfection. Such common-place similes occurred to us only, when the phenomena were viewed at a distance of several miles. Something nobler would have been suggested had we been closer, but might not neces- sarily, by its mention, give the reader any better idea of the appearance presented to our eyes. Distance certainly enabled us to comprehend with unexpected SUBMARINE FORMATIONS. 155 clearness, the manifold history of the Peak, and its outpourings, all sub-aerial; yet how were we oppressed with immensity, on finding the stage of all this wonder-working for myriads of ages, to be itself only the floor of another crater, the great crater of “ elevation j” something of far older date still, and on an infinitely larger scale. Probably at work in its day under the sea, from the stratified nature of all its lavas, the general absence of pumice, and all the lighter and looser materials — this crater, with a diameter of eight miles, whose walls are like giant mountain-ranges, and whose outward slopes extend over so many thousands of square miles, that its upheaval must have sen- sibly altered the earth’s centre of gravity, — is truly a subject to be studied by “ lunologists” as well as geologists. Looking eastward beyond our ravine of the spring, an opposite headland, cut sharply through, gives an excellent section of the wall of this particular speci- men of Von Buch’s craters of elevation. Its external slope is exceedingly smooth, and moderate in angle, viz., under 12°, and it thus ascends on every side from the sea, up to its culminating line; curls over slightly there, and then at once plunges down with one or more 156 THE GREAT CRATER. precipices to the depth of 1800 feet, and in such a manner as to leave a vast central hollow. Sailors in their ships, might sail all round the island, and have no notion of these internal annular cliffs; nor would the natives on the coast have any idea of there being such bold features, without actually making the ascent. Yet there they are, these vertical precipices, most marked by nature of any phenomena, and contrasting so powerfully with the gentleness of all exterior slopes, that they must have some striking mechanical explanation. Together with this difference in angle, of the two sides of the crater-wall, may be remarked the arrangement of its strata. As seen from the interior, they are accurately horizontal ; but they dip down towards the sea — at angles rather less than the surface — in the side section exposed by several radial ravines, themselves mechanical witnesses of much import. The uppers tratum appears to be a bed of trachyte, some 500 feet thick, brown from oxidation, and picturesque from its weathering into angular points ; underneath that is a bed of white tufa, some fifty feet thick ; and this can be traced for a great distance, both in the ravine, and then round a corner, along the interior wall of the crater. Below that are other beds of trachyte YESUVIAN ANALOGIES. 157 and greenstone, but not so clearly and continuously seen, by reason of accumulations of debris lying upon them. From details of material, rising upwards to a bird’s-eye view of the whole arrangement, we find Guajara to constitute the highest portion of the huge circular rampart of this elevation volcano. It is, in fact, speaking in Yesuvian terms, the present Monte Somma of Teneriffe. The Somma crater of Italy, was an entire ring; until broken up, on the seaward side, in the erup- tion of Pliny; when the cone of Vesuvius rose. Teneriffe had also its Plinian eruption, but long before the days of Rome; and raised “its Peak,” or Yesuvian cone, nearly in the middle of its Som- mian basin, and without destroying much of the wall. Large gaps, however, exist to the N.W. and W. ; and there are such irregularities among the still remaining portions, that unless we can rise, physically or mentally, into such an elevated position, as to take a general view of the whole — we shall be but bewil- dered with Peaks, table-tops, and buttressing ridges of mountains. The immense scale of things before us, is exceedingly difficult to realize. The volcanic lines of Somma, must have enclosed a pretty roomy plain for Spartacus and his army of gladiators to encamp in ; 158 THE GREAT CRATER. but the corresponding portion of Teneriffe, which we may call the crater of Guajara, would afford space enough for the manoeuvres of a whole campaign, be- tween the largest imperial armies. Having acquired some real idea of this immense plutonian amphitheatre, we look towards the west, and see there the steeper walls of the Caldera of Palma ; eastwards, Grand Canary, an entire crater. Then remembering Yon Buch’s relations of terrific outbreaks in Lancerote during the last century, and flames seen rising through the sea between the islands, we cannot but look on this whole Canarian Archipelago, as consti- tuting one enormous volcano, still to arise out of the ocean in all its majesty. While in the course of those secular changes, which Darwin has so well brought out in his researches on the Pacific, — those heavings and sinkings that the earth's crust undergoes so slowly, yet so extensively, as to have both elevated and submerged the Andes more than once, — the African continent may one day be ramparted on the west, by a greater than Andean chain of mountains ; of which Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape de Verdes, will be some of the most glorious summits. At this period of the year, July, the sun at its set- MAN MISSING. 159 ting, actually went down behind the suggestive vol- canic heads of Palma, and never were the forms brought out more grandly, than on the evening of the 27th. The air was calm, as well as transcendently clear. The saffron and orange of the horizon, and rose-pink blush of the upper sky, defied artistic imitation; while, looking down at the blue-white rollers of the ocean of cloud below us, and the arrowy beams of sunlight glowing along their tops, one was reminded of a sunset amongst Polar bergs, of nought but ice and snow. From this scene of contemplation we were suddenly roused by a report, that the carpenter was missing. He had not been seen since the middle of the day, when he had started off for a walk, no one knew where. He had previously tried to persuade each and every man on the station to pedestrianize with him, but he was the only one who cared for that active method, of shaking off the effects of a week’s hard work; so he had started off by himself, in a new straw hat, and a clean white jacket. Darkness was falling so fast, that no one could with safety go very far in any direction, and no one knew in what quarter the wanderer was most likely to be found ; so we raised a great fire of retama wood on a 160 THE GREAT CRATER. prominent point, and after bawling ourselves hoarse, from projecting rocks, without receiving any response, waited the approach of day, with trouble it were difficult to define. CHAPTER V. SOLAR RADIATION. ORNING came, and showed us all the minutiae of hill-tops far and near, above the sea of clouds; but no carpenter. Again we made a great fire, with green wood now, so that its white smoke rising in a high pillar, might enable the lost seaman, unskilled in wild mountain lore, to recognise the top of Guajara. Several wide circles were swept around the station, and one of the Spaniards descended into the crater, and coasted along, as it were, by the foot of Guajara, reascending on the other side; but no trace of our wanderer was found. Had he merely miscalculated the distance, and his walking powers, the previous night, and then lain down to rest, — on finding himself benighted by the rapid closing of an almost tropical twilight, — it would have been the safest and best course to pursue ; for, in darkness, a precipice might easily be stumbled over ; while on the other hand, in this warm summer M 162 SOLAR RADIATION. season, and in a land without large wild animals of any description, a man could take no harm during a night's repose under a sheltering rock. But then thought we, in such case he would surely have started again soon after day-break, and would have returned to the tents at an early hour. Here however, eleven o'clock in the forenoon had arrived, and there was no appearance of him yet. Then a fearful idea occurred, of the man having fallen over a precipice; and either being killed out- right, or lying amongst the stones wounded, maimed, and unable to give, or return, any signal. While we were almost wishing for African vultures, to point out by their flight the quarter of the catastrophe ; behold a crow, cawing sinisterly, flew above our heads, and went down over the cliff some little distance to the East ; then a few minutes after, went another ; — so in the absence of any more positive indication, I imme- diately followed their lead on foot. The descent was not very difficult, for at one point the wall of rock had been broken up, and was lying in a long slope of stones, really awful to contemplate. It must have required some extraordinary exertions, even of nature, to have tossed about such im- mense masses, in the reckless way in which she STATION PRECIPICE. 163 had apparently done here ; and, as it seemed, only yesterday, so fresh and clean were all the blocks. Availing myself of many such breaks, which ap- peared here and there in the ledges of precipice, I descended several hundred feet, and in one part found a man’s footsteps ; they led near, hut not exactly to, a very treacherous slope of fine debris , which seemed at the commencement, to invite a confiding descent ; but presently broke off in a ver- tical cliff; and the next objects one could discern beyond its upper edge, were the tops of some remark- able pinnacles of rock near the base of the mountain. At this place I shouted long and loud; there was no human answer ; and no crows flew up, startled from an unhallowed feast. Pushing along by every possible path, I came at length vertically under our station, but at a great depth below. Here was the finest plunge of rock in the whole mountain, in parts rather overhanging, and not very encouraging to one in the position I occupied ; for a large slice of the front of the pre- cipice seemed to have separated from the mass, and to have broken up ; hut — the portions having caught for the moment and held each other entangled by fric- tion, — did not fall. There however they were, hang- id: 2 164 SOLAR RADIATION. ing together only by their points; and waiting for the smallest additional force to bring them thunder- ing down. The carpenter was surely too clever a fellow to go and tumble over a precipice, but how easily might a stone have fallen from that impending avalanche, and have smote to sudden death, either him, or the most experienced mountaineer. So at least I thought, on gazing np at the promised ruin, when suddenly there was a step close behind me. Starting round, there was a black goat. After looking at each other for a little, the animal gave a pulling sort of bite at a branch of retama, and then hopped and jumped about amongst the blocks of stone, until it came to another bush. By and by a second goat appeared; a white one this, and all that could be made out from the movements of the pair, was, that they were by no means afraid of mankind. Coming again to the station, and finding that with the exception of three more crows, which had been seen flying in an opposite direction to the two pre- ceding ones, no sign of any sort had appeared ; and being convinced from the little specimen I had been having of the vast extent, complications, and diffi- culties of our Mount Guajara, — that a dead or badly wounded man might lie for weeks unfound by a WANDERER’S RETURN. 165 few searchers, — I sent off a deputation to ask assist- ance from the alcalde of the village of Chasna. The loss of a man on the mountain, our interpreter assured us, was by no means an uncommon event, and the country people were quite accustomed to being called out, to assist in a finding. Our deputation had been gone some hours, when a sort of spectre appeared ; it was the carpenter himself, looking strangely wild and haggard, not altogether fully sensible, and with the soles nearly worn off his boots. He was conducted by an old goat-herd, and his story was this. On setting off for his solitary walk the previous day, he had gone down to the spring, in- dulged in a good drink, and a sleep ; after which he looked about, and saw the Peak so wonderfully close, that he thought he would just step down the side of the hill, and then cross over the crater floor, to where a very black stream of lava, obsidian he hoped, descended from the cone. The mere stepping down, occupied much longer than he had expected; and he had hardly begun to cross the plain, ere he was bewildered amongst heaps and heaps of lava stones, rising like hills above his head, and shutting out all the distant view. He attempted when too late to retrace his steps, but taking the wrong direction, did not extricate himself 166 SOLAR RADIATION. from the stony wilderness, before darkness compelled him to stop. Even next day, though he did regain the Canadas, he had so lost all idea of the lay of the country, and all his strength from hunger and thirst, that if the old goat-herd had not met him, and given him milk and rest for a while in his hut, and then brought him up to us, he would certainly have been a lost carpenter. The countryman was a fine hale fellow, and a splendid walker, though his hair was grey. But his morale , was finer even than his physique ; for he ex- claimed violently against the idea of taking any money for what he had done ; and though he had no objection to breaking his fast with us, and even carrying home a few biscuits ; still he insisted on giving us, for them, some milk out of a goatskin which he carried over his shoulder. On subsequent occasions we frequently visited with photographic camera, the scenes of cleft and shattered cliffs with which our day of search had made us acquainted. The dangerous front of precipice below the station, was a very old one, as evidenced by the discoloration from weathering and lichens, on its face; and as it might apparently fall at any moment, there came the interesting inquiry, whether, when that RUINS OF A CLIFF. 167 event did occur, the thickness of slice taken off, would not reach backward as far, or farther, than our tents on the summit. Some actually fallen portions in the neighbourhood, must have been ruins of very recent date, the angles were so perfectly sharp, and the surfaces looked so new ; and were as brilliant with their embedded crystals of felspar, as any fresh frac- tures we could make with the hammer. In some places where large parts of the trachyte cliff had been thus destroyed, the dykes having been broken up, together with the matrix, caused curiously stray blocks of greenstone, and of a black lava to be found. (See Photo-stereograph, No. 8.) This dark stone attracted most attention, being so utterly dissimilar to the lighter and gayer coloured trachytes of Gua- jara; but we were afterwards to become acquainted with it, as forming the whole material of the more recent portion of the Peak, or cone of eruption. The first of August was again a term-day of hourly meteorological observations, and was to be kept by Captain L. Corke in the yacht Titania, as well as by ourselves ; so that there might be exact comparison between the climate below and aloft. The arrange- ment had been communicated by our friend Mr. 168 SOLAR RADIATION. Hamilton in Santa Cruz, who writing to us soon after, said that he had no doubt Captain Corke had observed throughout the desired twenty-four hours, for they saw nothing of him on shore during the whole of the first and second of the month. So it turned out too, for the excellent seaman, both upon this and subsequent occasions, himself made every ob- servation that was required, during both day and night. On Guajara, there was no fear of oversleeping our- selves on the morning of the first ; for from an early hour, the wind rained alarums upon us, in the shape of gusts and eddies that made our tent reel again, and caused its pole to swing about like the mast of some little boat in a cross sea. The character of the wind, which was from the N.E., was remarkable; there was never less, than a velocity of some fifteen miles an hour, in the aerial current ; while every now and then came blasts of far greater force. We first heard them in the distance, as they struck against the face of the precipice below, and seemed to roar with rage ; and then immediately came whistling over the cliffs, and caught our poor tent on its only undefended side; viz., the northern one, left purposely open that we might enjoy that splendid feature of the landscape — the mighty Peak. N.E. GALE. 169 What with the strength and chiiiiness of the wind, though its temperature was 57°, the poor Spaniards looked like drowned rats, and about as miserable, cowering in their long cloaks, under rocks and stones for shelter. From some experiments which I made with the sailors* assistance, the velocity of wind at 5 a.m. was about 30 miles an hour, but fortunately decreased to about a third of that before the middle of the day. During all the period of greatest violence, the usual sea of N.E. cloud, was at its ordinary elevation of only from 3000 to 5000 feet, and there were no upper clouds; yet here was the N.E. current of wind felt, and in such intensity, at an elevation of 8900 feet; and how much higher, there was no saying. Above all this Polar influence, there was no doubt prevailing a legitimate return current from the equator; but still the affair of this morning most eminently confirmed the general result of previous days, viz., that the N.E. cloud is found low down in its N.E. stratum of wind; and not, according to the general belief, midway between the N.E. and S.W. currents. That midway position appeared, from a summing of all our experiences, to be, in the summer time at least of these latitudes, a region of calm as to wind. 170 SOLAR RADIATION. and of freedom from any sort of cloud. As the depth of lower N.E. current rose or fell, so did this zone of calm, which was only arrived at gradually, by the air in motion, above and below. The line of separation therefore, must have fallen greatly, per- haps three thousand feet, on the morning when we had the S.W. storm; and now, with a similar visi- tation from the N.E., there must have been an equivalent rise. Hence we may at once see the futility of certain proposals, to determine by one or two ascents, the exact height of separation between the Polar and Equatorial currents, in a given latitude. If a few days, had produced variations of several thousand feet ; a few months, with their effects of season, would bring about far more change ; and so indeed we found before we had finished with our expedition, when the S.W. wind descended to the very surface of the sea. Amongst other instruments which we had prepared for observation on this day, were two large black bulb thermometers, kindly lent by Mr. Airy, and a smaller one by Dr. Lee, for measuring solar radiation, one of the most characteristic features of a moun- tain climate. Headings were taken every five minutes during the greater part of the day; and on subse- E LACK-BULB THERMOMETERS. 171 quent occasions, even at one minute intervals, tlie changes were so rapid. At this work I should soon have been exhausted, had not the second mate of the yacht shown so much taste and talent for observation, as to be able, after a very little instruction, to note accurately the indications of many instruments, which he had never seen or heard of before. With this assistance, a larger series of radiation measures, and with higher results, was procured, than had perhaps ever been taken before. On the first day of trial, the sun thermometer rose so rapidly, that before we knew what we were about, Dr. Lee’s instru- ment, a “ patent ” one for this sort of observation, by a London maker, and with its tube extending to 140°, was broken to pieces by the mercury passing that temperature. Mr. Airy’s instruments however, not only were graduated to 178° and 180°, but had a bulb at the top of the tube, into which the mercury could pass with safety at higher temperatures; and with these we had the satisfaction of seeing the quicksilver stand at 168° at noon, even on our windy term-day; when the temperature was only 67°. High though this result might be, it was far ex- celled on subsequent days, when the calm atmosphere being more favourable to obtaining a true result, our 172 SOLAR RADIATION. exposed thermometer rose to 180° by half-past nine o’clock in the morning ; and at 12 o’clock, had half filled its spare bulb. What then, the reader may ask, was the maximum heat of radiation on a fair day ? Why, although the insufficiency of the instru- ments prevented our ever actually seeing it there, yet from a comparison of curves, whole or partial, on many different days, it results that on August 4th, the black-bulb temperature in the sun must have been 212°. 4, the temperature in the shade being only 60 ° ; thus leaving the enormous quantity of 152° for the effect of sunshine at a height of 8900 feet. To chronicle the exact circumstances under which these high results appeared, the photographic camera was employed with effect. Accordingly in Photo-stereo- graph , No. 7, may be seen, towards one corner of the telescope enclosure, our stout seaman-observer, note- book in one hand, and chronometer in the other, counting seconds up to the moment that he is to take the reading of the exposed thermometer, sharp : after that, he will remove part of the tin-foil covered lid from the sheltered instrument, in order to get the tem- perature of shade. Both thermometers have their bulbs encased in glass bells, from which the air has been extracted by syringes, that project through the SECOND MATE OF' YACHT OBSERVING RADIATION THERMOMETERS ON MOUNT GUAJARA SEAMAX-OBSERYER. 173 boxes below; and show their turned rings neatly under a magnifying glass. Our honest second mate wants no such refinement of method to make him visible ; and though he had requested that his portrait might be taken, — in the act of holding up a large sex- tant, which he was ambitioning to learn the use of ; and with a smart cap on his head, and in his best jacket, as if he were already a merchant skipper of some degree, — I preferred catching him at an instant when he was thinking of nothing but his duty; with his oldest Guernsey on his broad, manly breast ; and his trousers turned up and dusty, from his recent labours at the wall. Amongst those who have not thought much on ra- diation, there has arisen an idea, that the closer we go to the sun, the less heat do we receive from that great luminary. Consequently, they allege, a comet — which like that of 1843 passed at its perihelion within 60,000 miles of the surface of the sun, — must have suffered rather from cold, the cold of space, than from the ex- cessive heat which astronomers have described; and the circumstance of perpetual snow on the top of our loftiest mountains, is pointed to as an illustration of the case. Such snow however, and its perpetuity, are rather to be taken as proofs of temperature, and of the 174 SOLAR RADIATION. non-conductive powers of frozen water, than of radia- tion ; and this latter quality we invariably found on Guajara to be the opposite of temperature; i.e . the days in which the temperature in the shade was lowest, and we may add, when the air was most clear and trans- parent — were precisely the days of highest radiation. With the increase, on the other hand, of our too fre- quent visitors, the banks of dust-haze, the height of a thermometer in the shade increased; while another exposed to the sun’s rays, invariably decreased. Were it possible to ascend fifty miles above the earth’s surface, and so escape altogether from its at- mosphere, the temperature of shade might fall to — 50 °, but that of solar exposure, or radiation, would be increased probably some hundreds of degrees, though we had not sensibly altered our distance from the sun. Were we then, from that point, enabled to accompany a comet on its perihelion approach to the mighty orb of light and heat, the immediate radiation effect would be continually increasing, according to the greater angular area under which the sun was seen : O o J while the resultant effect made good on any material body, would be greater and greater according to the increased proportion that the area of sun surface bore to the extent of visible sky. At our distance from the RADIATION AND HEIGHT. 175 sun, this body is at a disadvantage compared to the sky and earth, of about ; but at the distance at which some comets have been, when the sun’s diameter must have appeared to them under very nearly an angle of 180°, the hot and cold surfaces would be re- duced to equality; and the rarity therefore of the ethereal medium pervading space, and its low tem- perature, would by no means suffice to cool down one side of the comet, as fast as the magnified sun roasted up the other. Amongst those who have thought on, and observed the radiation of the heavenly bodies, whether accu- rately as Saussure in his ascent of Mont Blanc, Sabine, Mason, Herschel, and Daniell ; or, with reference only to general impressions, as much earlier travellers — there have been truer ideas of the increase of solar radiation, corresponding to every ascent in the atmo- sphere. Something of the sort must even have dic- tated that eastern tale, still in vogue amongst Egyp- tians, touching King Solomon and the vultures. That incomparable king, wishing to visit some distant part of the earth, summoned his obedient Jinn to convey him through the air to the place in question. Where- upon those spiritual giants, seizing the four corners of the carpet on which their monarch was seated, 176 SOLAR RADIATION. raised it high in air, above all the clouds, and then flew along with it towards the spot appointed. They flew swiftly, as only Jinn can fly, and everything went on as right as could be, until the king felt the radia- tion of the sun so strong, that he asked a flock of vultures, whom he passed in upper air, to come and fly between him and that blazing orb, whose rays were beating down so unmercifully on his kingly head and shoulders. What the vultures answered the king, and what the king said to them again, and what he did after that, being more interesting to naturalists than to astronomers, as offering an explanation of vulturian neck-nakedness, I shall not stay to describe ; suffice it that the increased radiation above the clouds, was thought powerful enough to disturb the equa- nimity of a sovereign of Palestine, a country where, from the clearness of its atmosphere, the natives must be accustomed to a very considerable intensity of solar rays, even in their lowest valleys. The suddenness with which day changes into night on high mountains, has often been remarked ; and as the sun went down on Guajara, we found radiation decrease, with marked rapidity; the amount fallen through in the last hour, being no less than 8£°. At sunrise during the same period the rise had been 69°; RISING SUN. 177 with the remarkable feature, that at sunrise itself, the radiation was negative; the exposed thermometer reading less than the shaded one, by 4°. This circum- stance was but in confirmation of that weakness of the sun at rising, which we had generally remarked. He was indeed very unlike the South African globe, of which Cape boers relate, “ So soon, Mynheer, as the sun comes up, that instant he sticks you through.” We ought however to bear in mind, that on a very high mountain, the rising sun is seen through a greater thickness of the atmosphere, than he can ever be on a level plain ; and as, moreover, he rose on Guajara at a zenith distance of 91° 10', all his shining from that instant, until he had reached 90°, was so much given in, over and above, to mountain climate. Besides this, when he had attained the altitude at which he is usually first seen by dwellers below, he had quite got over his early indecision; and in an hour had heated up an exposed thermometer to 112°. At night, the radiation was constantly negative, and on one occasion, a thermometer exposed to the sky, was 17° below a shaded bulb; and this having itself fallen 16° beneath its day maximum, we have a difference in temperature for an exposed body, of 185° between noon and night ; while if to this we add the N 178 SOLAR RADIATION. effect of evaporation at the coldest period, the differ- ence of wet and dry bulb thermometers often reaching to more than 20°, there will he a fearful amount of change for the human constitution to withstand. We all had nevertheless most excellent health; and to- wards the small hours of morning on the term-day, when I might have retired to the tent, I preferred remaining out in the calm, open air, gazing at an extraordinary cloud suspended immediately over our station. First attracting attention from a slight luminosity at 3h. 43m. a.m., — when it could hardly have been illumined by the sun, unless we suppose a height in- compatible with subsequent appearances, — this cloud became presently more remarkable for the changes of form, and we may say of nature, which it underwent; and without any alteration of place. Hour after hour, and far into the next day, did this cloud remain vertically over our heads ; yet it was unconnected with our mountain-top, for there was nothing similar over any of the other heads of the crater wall, nor over the loftier central Peak; but there were two over the sea, or rather the cloud-sea; one to the south, and another to the east ; both of them, as it appeared to us, permanently located there. Yet with all this PKOTEAN CLOUD. 179 constancy in general position, the clouds were alter- ing their figures from minute to minute, and even at every second. In the dark, we could see the zenith mass by its luminous fringe, changing form fitfully; now resolving itself into a globe, then into two, and again into one ; and when twilight came, and when other clouds were of brown and blue greys, our particular one was intensely white, and seemed to be bent on rivalling flashes of aurora, or the changes of artificial fire- works. There was a nimbus portion, and this threw out curving bands of cirri around it, then chased them round and round, as a kitten does its tail, and proceeded still further, to swallow them ; growing as it did so, and becoming a most portentous-looking cloud. Presently again the nimbus arranged itself in a series of many lenticular discs, one above the other, as in RhumkorfFs electric discharge ; then throwing out auroral striae, it collapsed once more into a single mass ; and all this in the course of a few seconds. CHAPTER VI. WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. HE N.E. storm of the 1st of August, though exhausted of its greatest force in a few hours, was still dragging its slow length along through the following day. Every now and then a stray puff of wind came hurrying up, like a conspirator too late for the concerted rising, and throwing itself wildly against the northern cliffs of Guajara, came spinning over their summits in the form of a little whirlwind. Sometimes, even our stone walls were enough to pro- duce the effect ; and then we saw an ordinary gust of wind blowing over the dry ground outside, raising a cloud of sand before it, and at the instant that it struck our wall, it eddied round the corner in a fine little revolving pillar of dust, occasionally entering our tent door in a most inconvenient manner. Amongst numerous young hurricanes which were thus gene- rated before our eyes, one of them was remarkable for a regular increase in its diameter, as it travelled on. WHIRLWINDS SPORTING. 181 in a curving line ; and for its diminishing velocity at the same time in the whirl. Mr. Redfield’s theor}^ and Col. Reid’s plates, of the West Indian storms, could not have been better illustrated. Occasionally something more powerful came by ; and one day, a heavy piece of canvas, ten feet square, spread out on the rock, was suddenly lifted up, whirled round and round in a horizontal plane, and then deposited again, as flat as before, almost in its former position. On another occasion we had a more curious display still, of what the wind could do in goodnatured sport. Being at work inside the telescope enclosure, I felt myself suddenly peppered with little pebbles, coming from over the wall ; and jumping up to see what this meant, I was almost blinded by a cloud of dust, and a confused blast of wind ; in the midst of which there was an immense rustling noise. This had been caused by one of the last things which we had purchased before leaving England, no less than a draper’s whole roll of cheap blue cotton cloth. On this very morning we had opened the box in which the material was packed, to take a portion for some purpose ; and the chest was still open, with a corner of the calico projecting. What then did the 182 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. wind do, but seize hold of an end of the cloth, unroll the whole of it, and carry it clean out of the en- closure. As soon as I could open my eyes, lo ! there was our piece of blue cloth, forty yards long, right up in the sky, and projected most intensely against some white cirrous clouds. So high was it, that it looked like a mere piece of ribbon. Three times com- pletely did it sail slowly round in a circle — accompa- nied by some hats, caps, and other smaller matters, that looked like swallows beside it — and then de- scending leisurely, it fell about four hundred yards to the S.W. of our position. There was no doubt about the direction of the path of this whirlwind, being at first, nearly identical with that of its parent wind ; and I never had any doubt when looking at it, that the direction of whirl was similar to that of the hands of a watch : but such an observation requires perhaps more experience to be unexceptionable. The direction of whirl is of extreme importance to the true explanation of hurricanes ; concerning which some most instructive hints may be derived from these Guajara experiences. For on considering the mighty amount of mechanical power set in action by the Trade-winds, during the long course of their sway MOTIVE AGENTS. 183 over the ocean ; and then the sudden and abnormal manner in which they are interfered with, by portions of land stretching across the tropical seas, — there is every reason to expect that some disturbances in the nature of eddies must be produced, similar in prin- ciple to those about our station. We ought also on mechanical grounds, to find them in the North and South Atlantic, not towards their Eastern, but rather their Western sides ; or exactly where the cyclones of the West Indies, and of Rio Janeiro are known to prevail. Of these storms the dynamic force is such, that we can only look to the Trade-wind current, which we know has been interrupted, for a sufficient producing power ; and the interference becomes more complicated, from the now apparently proved idea, that those Polar currents in either hemisphere, cross over each other at the Equator; so that West Indian hurricanes, may be due in some measure, to descending eddies of a S.E. Trade-wind. Electrical hypotheses have been started by some persons to explain revolving storms; but while it would be a difficult matter for any one to produce enough electricity, to supply the force exerted, even in the little affair of carrying off our piece of calico — if they did at last succeed therein, the mechanical 184 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. means taken up for the purpose, and which must be accounted for in nature, could certainly be employed more economically in bringing about the observed result, directly. The whirlwinds on Guajara, small as they were, required an exertion of a considerable amount of mechanical energy ; and the question to be settled, is, which of the two elements present on the occasion, was most capable of producing the effect observed, wind or electricity? Of the vigour of the wind there was no doubt to any one who stood out in it, or even to one in the tent that was being shaken so rudely; but who will vouch for the amount of electricity in the air being sufficient for the purpose ? This amount must have been exceedingly small; as, notwithstanding the dryness of the atmosphere, there was no crackling on rubbing silk, and there were no sparks on stroking fur; and even with the delicate test of the gold-leaf strips of our electrometer, there was barely power to separate them; this too, nearly equally, whether plain gusts or whirls were passing by. In short, whatever the N.E. wind did, its elec- tricity was always moderate. Sometimes we saw its cloud-sea, especially in the neighbourhood of Gomera, gradually changing from cumuloni to cumuli, and ELECTRIC THREATENINGS. 185 almost to lightning cumuli. But there was still no electric demonstration, and a fine specimen of the “ Table Cloth,” or “ Perruque ” cloud of Table Moun- tain, combed as it were smoothly down over the highest part of the island, was all that rewarded our watching. Sometimes again, the S.W. clouds floating high over our heads, looked very like cirro-cumulo- strati ; and I anxiously cast about for some method of lightning protection, and looked with awe at the number of round holes formed in, or as some would at once have said, struck into, and through, the rocks around. The influences of such clouds, however, did not penetrate down to us, or our electrometer ; and when they had sailed away to spend their energies in another land, we ascertained to our satisfaction, that the round holes were due to a special man- ner of formation and decomposition of the trachytic lava. The tract of sea between Gomera and Palma, next to that on the N.E. of Teneriffe, seemed to be a special arena for cloud manifestations. Generally there was a tumultuous assemblage of rollers at the height of about 4000 feet. But on the evening of the 3rd of August, these were all cleared away, and 186 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. presently, invisible bands seemed to begin the laying down of a new stratum, which came out dense and strong from behind Chajorra, and stretched away into distance, preserving a level of 5000 feet; a strange stage, suspended in mid-air. Then appeared a num- ber of fleecy little wisps of white cloud, that danced before us, like aerial sprites, on the dark grey platform of cumuloni, until long after the sun went down. Next day, though one could not pretend that the air had become damp, its dryness had decreased to a dew-point depression of 18°, and some of those aerial sprites of the previous evening, paid us a visit at noon-day. Without the level of the Trade-wind cloud itself being altered, little puffs of cirrous mist on the top of it, rose up and passed over our heads from the S.E. ; then others came, and for a few minutes enveloped us with fog; but they disappeared again immediately, and the sky became bluer, and the sun brighter, than ever. Trying the capacity of our telescope to pick up stars by daylight, I found it able to do far more than in Edinburgh, though its superiority was not so decidedly predominant as at night, owing apparently to the increased power of the sun. The atmosphere was far clearer and purer than down below ; but then DAYLIGHT STAR OBSERVATIONS. 187 the sun was to such an extent brighter, as to illumine the atmospheric motes to a degree, that quite pre- cluded a chance of seeing anything in his immediate neighbourhood. Hence perhaps it came about, that the chief fact impressed on us by day observations, was, the very great preponderance in brightness of large stars over small ones. Sirius for instance blazed in the telescope at mid-day with a lustre almost painful, while smaller stars of the first magnitude were not very notable, and total invisibility arrived with those of the third magnitude. The sun himself was of course frequently looked at ; but \vas never so well defined as the stars were ; his tremendous radiation doubtless perverting the telescope, as well as disturbing the air. Added to this, the year being nearly at the minimum of Solar spots, there was seldom anything very notable in progress, on that wondrous disc of light. Various devices were employed from time to time, to make the “ eclipse red prominences” visible, if in existence ; but invariably without success. In the afternoon came a number of peasants, fine specimens of the country people, clean, obliging, and cheerful. There were several men, one woman, and a 188 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. number of boys, who — in their simple dress of white shirt and drawers, tied with a scarlet band about their waists, a broad hat, and nothing besides save their fine coffee complexion, black beaded eyes, and teeth whiter than ivory, — formed most Murillo -like groups, as they played about amongst the rocks, with dimi- nutive iron-shod poles; and then lay panting and smiling in the shade. The elders of this party had come for something more important ; for they had heard rumours in their goat-tending country, that an English Astronomer had arrived with so large a telescope, that he had actually been able to see goats in the mpon. No civilization is possible, or is attempted in Teneriffe without a certain understratum of these animals, which furnish nearly all that the simple natives re- quire for food and drink, shelter and clothing. From thence arose a notion amongst them, that Lunarians cannot carry on the business of life, in any other way or by any other means. In their inability to separate the idea of a rational existence from human beings in general, and themselves in particular, these honest goat-herds have but too many to keep them in countenance in our own country. The visitors were however shown other things that COUNTRY PEASANTS. 189 astonished them greatly, and perhaps they admired nothing more, than the stupendous size and fresh - coloured complexion of one of our sailors. While the woman of their party, being taken by my wife into her tent, touched everything respectfully with her fingers as she looked at it ; and con- cluded with a congratulation to herself, that she had been so courageous as to leave her goat-fold, and ascend the mountain-top, to see such wonders as these. Though the “ Islenos” pass as Spaniards, one cannot but confess, when wandering in Teneriffe with perfect safety, through most guerilla-looking passes — that there is on the whole a certain difference. When for instance, a murder was committed in the island some years since, everyone immediately de- clared that it could not have been the work of a native; and sure enough the perpetrator was soon apprehended, and found to be a disbanded soldier from Spain. While too, much might be concluded from the prevalence still of certain Guanche customs, and the use of many of their words, — more impor- tance may be attached, it is to be hoped for hu- manity's sake, to the mild modification that Spanish character has evidently undergone here ; seeing that 190 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. the effect superinduced, is precisely in accordance with what history has handed down to us, respecting the aborigines of these islands. First discovered to Europe in 1330, and then assailed, invaded, and re-invaded by Normans, Portu- guese and Spaniards ; bravely defending their homes, defeating over and over again their outnumbering enemies, clad in armour and furnished with weapons of steel, but treating their captives always with clemency and more mercy than they deserved, — yet tired out at last, and overwhelmed by the ceaseless shoals of aggressors poured upon them from the millions of Spain — the brave Guanches of Grand Canary and Teneriffe at length gave in after a cen- tury of fighting ; the smaller islands had been sub- dued before. Had they possessed a large country, these men might still have preserved their inde- pendence ; but as it was, a longer persistence in the conflict could but have ended, in their total exter- mination. Having shown what they could do as men,* in bravery and mercy, they yielded to natural laws which had suddenly brought a great, a civi- lized, and a warlike as well as aggressive nation, into contact with them, a tribe of primitive goat- herds, on a finite tract of some few dozen miles. GUAXCHE CUSTOMS. 191 The best English account of these Guanches is in Captain Glas's early, but excellentVork. He dissents from the common idea of extermination, and considers that this interesting race, has rather passed into the bulk of the Spanish people, adopting their name and language. The present Canarian goats are allowed on all hands to be descended from aboriginal flocks. Real Guanche too, both in name and manner of com- position, is the “ gofio •” a staple food with all Tene- riffian peasants; and which our friendly visitors began shortly to prepare for themselves. Some toasted meal, now of Indian corn, is put into a kid-skin prepared with all the legs dangling about it, in true southern style. Some water being added, and the bag^s mouth, the quondam neck of the little kid, being tied up fast, a man sets to, energeti- cally kneading up the skin upon a flat stone ; where- upon, with the meal and water inside, the skin-bag tosses out its four legs violently, and appears to be taken with terrible convulsions. After a while the ba£ is opened, the paste that has been formed is taken out as good “gofio,” and is eaten without further cere- mony. During winter a little milk, and a flavour of cheese are added ; and so good is the dish thought to be, in spite of its simplicity, and want of cooking. 192 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. that it forms the children’s breakfast in many of the best families of Canaria. The goat-herd party having hastened off, when the sun became low ; and the air being still transcendently clear, I prepared for a hard telescopic night ; and re- mained at it from dark to half-past two o’clock in the morning. The negative radiation had amounted to 18°, and the dryness had increased again to a dew- point depression of 30°; but the air was calm, and the stars were so vividly bright, as well as admirably defined, that I had no sense either of fatigue, or of cold. In Edinburgh, the telescope which I was using, had never exhibited satisfactorily the companion of a Lyrse, a star of the eleventh magnitude; but now this little speck of light was shown so brilliantly, that I could hardly but suspect some alteration in the star, until I had looked at the companion of $ Equulei, also of the eleventh magnitude, and found it as bright and distinct. Then trying further ; B of S Aquilse, C of 185 Antinoi, and D of 13 Lyrse, stars of the twelfth magnitude, were seen: also B of 128 Anseris, B of 307 Aquilse, both of the thirteenth magnitude ; lastly even C of 5 Aquilse, and C of j3 Equulei which are of no more than the fourteenth magnitude. J?hoto -S'ber'oogrroup, TRACHYTE BLOCKS ON GUAJARA. SIDEREAL OBSERVATIONS. 193 Here was indeed an extraordinary increase of the space penetrating power of this telescope, viz. from the tenth to the fourteenth magnitude. The stars were not only so much brighter, but also so much better defined than I had been accustomed to at the sea level, that they appeared to provoke one to apply micrometer measurement to them. Had this been the highest point of Teneriffe, then here would I im- mediately have tried to bring up the Pattinson tele- scope. But as long as there were more elevated points still, every success on Guajara, was .only an additional reason for trying such higher levels. In the numerous consultations which I had held on the subject of those more elevated regions of craters and lava streams, there was so much more of hearsay than actual knowledge, — that not being able, myself, to leave Guajara, I at last sent off the interpreter and a guide, to make a systematic exploration of that upper world. On the very night after they had left, a fire was seen on the Peak. It was too soon to be our party ; who could it be ? Our native assistants were in ex- traordinary ferment at this sign of other life and activity on the heights, than ourselves. The fire was o 194 WHIRLWINDS, AND VISITORS. about a thousand feet above the level of Guajara, and on looking at it through the telescope — we saw tongues of flame leaping fitfully amongst black rocks, while at intervals the forms of men were revealed for a moment by lurid flashes, and then all disappeared in gloom. CHAPTER VII. DROUGHT AND LIGHT. BOUT a mile to the south of our station, along the descending slope, was a curving ridge of rocks, the mouldering rim of a small crater ; and in- teresting, from the rare feature of vertically in some parts of its exterior. Just in front of it, was apparently, a road across the mountain ; the “ road of the Guanche kings,” we felt inclined to name it. Not a bush or rock was there visible, and the sides were bordered or marked out, by large blocks at short intervals. But then who would make so grand a line for traffic through desolate parts of the mountain, when there were only mule paths in the cultivated regions; a line too, from 100 to 150 feet broad, and leading only from a precipice on the west, over a barren and stony ridge, to another precipice on the east ? We went down to examine the place; and as soon as we arrived on the seeming road — a tract sure enough cleared of all large obstacles — we at once o 2 196 DROUGHT AND LIGHT. began to sink in over our ankles, in a gravel of yellow and brown stones, of remarkably small specific gravity, and acting almost like a quicksand. The change was startling, after the rock-firm surface of Guajara; and tracing the line both ways, we found neither more nor less, than these symptoms of a danger of sink- ing in. According to Humboldt, there are well-attested instances of trachyte mountains having suddenly opened, vomiting forth volcanic fire for a time, and then closing up for ever, — surely then, this rent across Guajara, imperfectly filled with ashes and pumice, might be the locale of such an event. Other explanations also occurred, as worthy of con- sideration ; but with the small crater invitingly close, we entered by a convenient gap, and found the in- terior almost silted up from the seaward side ; where its walls had been washed to such an extent, as to have nearly disappeared. The finest remains of this piece of antiquity, for it must certainly date from the submarine period, are towards the west. Following this portion of the arc, we came to an aperture from which there had been a distinct eruption, and an outflow of a stream of dense obsidian, alternately laminated with green felspar, coated reddish brown GOOD OBSIDIAN. 197 externally. Round about were lumps of tlie purest and densest obsidian, that are to be met with in the whole island. Easily breaking into thin edges, with which deal could be quickly sliced away, we were quite able to understand the importance of this volcanic glass amongst the poor Guanches in former days, ignorant of any species of metal. Returning up to our station in a zigzag direction, we came on many small lines of rocky wall, of which there are better instances still, on the westward heights. They seem to indicate, that in its uprise from the ocean, the great crater for a long while had little more than its lip above the waves ; which then cut back into the sloping sides, and formed these quondam sea-cliffs. The smoothness of the remaining portion of descent, covered as it is with soil, indicates for that part a quicker rise, or a more quiet sea. While the high cliffs, now formed in a great measure along the coasts, — and evidently broken and washed out by waves, on the same principle as that recent scene of destruction, west of Orotava, described in Chapter IY. Part 1 ; but requiring myriads of similar storms to produce the whole effect, — may be held as proving that the present rate of ascent is extremely slow. 198 DROUGHT AND LIGHT. Specimens of Guajara trachyte, we found on exami- nation to be not only magnetic, but to have polarity; while the laminated mixture from the small crater, was more eminent still in its action. On taking out the apparatus for these experiments, it was found to be suffering from the same intense drought, under which most of our instruments, or their boxes, were giving way, and which seemed to arrive at its maximum in the beginning of August. A wooden- scaled thermometer had then twisted or started into such a curve, as not only to break the glass stem, but to eject the central portion to a considerable distance. Smart mahogany cases had cracks in their lids, into which you might put your finger; aud lifting up a box carefully by both handles, I raised only its lid and sides. The glue, fastening the bottom and all the partitions and lockers, had given way completely ; over aridity, acting like damp, in destroying the cohesive power of the animal matter. Again the cork of a bottle of Canada balsam had shrunk to such an extent, as to let out the sticky fluid amongst microscopical glasses, and glue them all into one odious lump. Worse still, the wooden base of our electrometer, in shrinking on the glass bell, had broken it; and finally the well-seasoned EFFECTS OF DROUGHT. 199 mahogany box of the magnetometer had contracted on its plate-glass cover, and forcibly held it in. For- tunately the glass, being half an inch thick, resisted the pressure, until we could come to its assistance with chisels and pen-knives, and cut it out safely from so murderous a grip. These little accidents had their scientific uses ; for our wet bulb thermometer only gave the measure of dryness at the instant of observation ; while the effects on our baggage, acted, though vulgarly, the part of a cumulative instrument, and indicated the sum total of drought for the entire period of our mountain residence. The observations for intensity of terrestrial mag- netism were not very satisfactory, owing to excep- tional characters in the soil. We turned therefore with more hope to optical questions, wherein the height on which we were placed, was everything, and the nature of the ground nothing. Foremost amongst these, came the subject of black lines in the spectrum; primarily discovered by Wollaston, and secondly, but quite independently by Fraun- hofer, and so much better taken account of practi- cally by him, as to be now generally known by his name. First viewed as so many defects or originally 200 DROUGHT AND LIGHT. missing portions of the sun’s light, suspicions were afterwards raised as to their being caused by the absorption of our own atmosphere. But in that case, even allowing for a moment such cosmical egotism, as that the light of our own luminary is perfect in itself, and the earth’s atmosphere the sole cause of evil, — how comes it that the light of stars, some of them many times larger than our own sun, on passing through the same atmosphere, presents in each of their spectra a different series of black lines ? The case being altogether one of practice and experiment, the elimination of atmospheric effects, in part at least, by comparing observations on a high mountain with those taken at a lower level, becomes a matter of the first importance. In such experiments, a dark room is generally a standard requisite. This was however more easily talked about, than procured, on the mountain. We built the walls of an “ optical” room certainly, and roofed it in with deal planks and canvas ; but the wood was quite translucent in a vertical sun, and the canvas appeared a mere netting; while our thick stone walls showed an infinity of holes, through which the light came streaming in, either from bright sky or still brighter ground. At last, however, what with FRAUNHOFER’S LINES. 201 heaping on half a stack of retama branches above, and lining the inside of the room with that blue cloth, which the whirlwind had so obligingly returned to us, — a sufficient degree of darkness was procured, and the observations were begun; the solar light being reflected into the room through a narrow slit, from a mirror worked by a man outside. At mid-day, there was not any very great difference between the system of lines which we saw, and the received estimation of them; but as the sun ap- proached the horizon, they grew in numbers, thickness, and definition, in the most extraordinary manner. Careful drawings made both morning and evening, at length satisfactorily demonstrated, from the variations of some lines, and the constancy of others, — that there are certain of them that are produced by our own atmosphere, and others by some medium very much more distant, and probably depending on the nature of solar light. The noting of these lines was a very long and tedious process, and I sought the assistance of pho- tography in vain ; for no exposure of the collodion plate seemed to bring on anything but a faint colora- tion in the region even of violet rays. But towards the end of the time, trying the same experiment 202 DROUGHT AND LIGHT. with one of his quartz trains, obligingly lent by Pro- fessor Stokes himself, where the rays of light passed through no glass medium, — instantly the photogra- phic action was most intense. One minute, ten seconds, five seconds, one second, were tried as inter- vals, and still the plates were solarized. At length with a contrivance to reduce the exposure to a tenth of a second, — a fine picture was produced ; and lines were mapped down with more certainty in that short time, than in days by eye and pencil. With great ideas of what might be done by means of a quartz objective in a camera, and hopes of better opportunities for observation at a greater height, — we packed up that part of the apparatus, as so much preparation, for our impending move to “ ALTA VISTA.” Such appeared to be the name of the place I had now selected for our next station, on the strength of the reconnoitring party’s report. The locale was on the Peak ; seemed to be at least 10,500 feet in elevation; was the very last point to which horses could ascend; and was more than 900 feet above the Estancia, the usual spot where tra- vellers abandon their mules, and betake themselves to climbing on foot. RECONNOITRING RESULTS. 203 Our interpreter had conscientiously been up to the very top of the cone ; but specimens of sulphur which he brought back with him, and accounts which he gave of the hot ground throwing off steam, showed that it would not be worth while to overcome many difficulties, to reach such a place with astronomical intentions. Contenting ourselves therefore with the height of “ Alta Vista,” we drew up plans for a more regular and methodical arrangement of station, than the hand to mouth affair on Guajara ; and we pro- posed even the luxury of living in regular houses, by dint of roofing in neighbouring walls. Remembering too, how much we owed on our first night to the pro- vidential calmness of the air, and that we could not be certain of the same good fortune again, — we de- termined to have some protection erected on the place, previous to moving over with all the instruments. Moreover one of our party having complained of not having slept a wink all night, on account of his neighbour talking so much in his sleep; and that talk proving, on inquiry, to have been all about walls, building them in this way or that way, — I immediately put the accused at the head of a party for carrying out again a work, which he had entered into so zealously on the former occasion, as to have got it identified 204 DROUGHT AND LIGHT. with his very system, and made the regulator of his dreaming thoughts. Meanwhile attempts were made to obtain some measures of the intensity and plane, of polarization of light from the blue sky ; but they were no sooner commenced, than a cloud began to form over the station, and continued till night. The same thing occurred next day, and next, with an addition of de- scending wisps of rain seen beyond the Peak. The following day, a cloud again formed towards noon over our heads, and presently began the unusual sound of pattering drops of rain. The air was excessively calm ; all nature seemed to leave off every other occupation, and stand open- mouthed to catch, and make the most, of this shower. Our tent soon began to shrug its shoulders, as the wetted canvas contracted ; and to tighten the guy- ropes, which from this cause, needed attention every few minutes. But otherwise, we delighted in the visitation ; for the wooden boxes were being greatly improved by it, and gave promise of returning to their original dimensions. The ultimate effect however was but very small and partial ; for after nearly three hours of rain, excepting SUMMER RAIN. 205 the side actually exposed and wetted, each box was as dry as ever; and the depression of dew point was never less than 22°. Our own stratum of air was in fact still dry and properly African; while the slight rain which had fallen to us, from the accident of our being under a certain cloud, had evidently been matured in an upper region of the atmosphere, with which we had nothing in common. These tc Southern” rains as they call them, are not unknown during summer in the vineyards on the coast; where their few and big, warm drops, just mark the passage of elevated S.W. clouds over the zenith of a place, and nothing more. The natives are not disappointed ; for they seem to have learnt, according to true theory, that the moisture conveyed along at that height, is not intended for them ; nor meant to fall on earth, until the whole stratum be- comes a surface current ; as it may do somewhere in the parallel of 40° of latitude, or beyond the range of their Trades. Now and then the husbandmen do have heavy showers in summer; but these come from the N.E. cloud, at a height of 3000 to 5000 feet; and are not therefore felt in the upper parts of the mountain. One of these rainy days, no less unusual with the 206 DROUGHT AND LIGHT. Polar wind in Teneriffe, than in Scotland, seems to have occurred when Captain Basil Hall visited the Peak; and the appearances which he describes of festoons and hangings of fringe from the clouds below him, had not anything to do with the general appearance of clouds seen from above; but were simply owing to the circumstance, of there being rain that day, between the level of 4000 feet and the sea. The Trade-wind is undoubtedly a poor one for bringing water ; but its position in Teneriffe during summer, is favourable for making it deposit any, that there may be present. Hence these occasional wet days, over the lowlands in July and August. Hence too our friends at Santa Cruz and Laguna, used in those months to write dismal letters to us, sym- pathising with the frightful weather which they thought we must be encountering on the mountain; at the very time, that we, above the level of all the disturbance, were in reality enjoying ourselves most, under fine skies, and sunshine surpassingly bright. Letters came also during this week from the Edin- burgh Observatory, describing how a series of nothing but cloudy days, S.W. wind, and rain, had prevailed there ever since we had left. EQUATORIAL MOISTURE. 207 These were no doubt, the produce of that upper Equatorial current; which, looking upwards from Guajara, we had long seen day after day, ever sailing steadily, hut nearly transparently, on, far above the mountain tops. CHAPTER VIII. END OF GUAJARA. A FTER several nights of unusual cloud, the evening of August 15th displayed a clear blue vault of sky, and the full moon starting from behind the purple summits of Grand Canary, commenced to esta- blish almost a second day. The cloud referred to as unusual, was of course composed of the S.W. cirro- cumuli, floating high in the air; for the lower N.E. cumuloni were never disturbed, from month’s end to month’s end, from their sluggish position below. That there is a preponderance of clear weather on the night of full moon, and that such clearness is due to a dissolving of vaporous clouds, by heat reflected from the lunar orb, are ideas started by Sir John Herschel. While if he and other experimenters, have been unable with their most sensitive instruments, to detect any symptom of that heat, the want of success, he has suggested, may be due to the caloric being expended in upper parts of the atmosphere, in this FULL MOON EFFECT. 209 very dissolution of vapour. And owing to its original low temperature, such lunar heat would have great difficulty in passing through, even a transparent medium. Some confirmation of these views was at once found on this occasion; for the upper clouds had vanished before our eyes, under the presence of a full moon ; and if the lower ones had not also disappeared, that might be considered only as a consequence of the higher strata, having exhausted the full potential energy of heat thrown upon them. A person below those N.E. clouds then, even had he caught a glimpse of the moon through an opening, should not have expected, even with the most delicate apparatus, to be able to detect any traces of heat. But raised as we were on Guajara, 4000 feet above the mist, our chance of getting a positive result was evidently far better. Moreover, the only instance known of any real success attending experiments on lunar heat, is that of M. Melloni; when employing not only his invaluable improvement on the thermometer, the thermomultiplier, but taking his stand on the cone of Vesuvius, at a height of 3000 feet above the sea level. Melloni’s experiment hardly seems to have received p 210 END OF GUAJARA. all the attention which it deserves, in this country. Whether his plans for concentrating the lunar rays, in the first instance, were thought exceptional; or, whether simply his success, in a path where every one else had uniformly failed, was considered to need confirmation, before being finally accepted as a fact in nature, — I do not know. But I prepared on this evening, to try, under better circumstances than his as to height, and without any condensing apparatus, — whether the heating effect of the moon's rays might be sensible to an excellent thermomultiplier, kindly lent me for this purpose, by the well-known electrician J. P. Gassiot, Esq. As the moon gradually rose higher and higher, some observations of its optical spectrum were made ; chiefly remarkable for the quantity of blood-red light thereby proved to exist, in its innocent-looking blue, or rather violet-coloured rays. At last, about 11 o'clock p.m., the heat experiments were commenced. The moon was in unfortunately low declination, so as to have a meridian altitude of only 42° ; but all other circumstances were eminently favourable. The air was pure, and perfectly calm, every one but myself had long gone to bed, the fires had been put out four hours previously, and their sites were a long way off, THERMOMULTIPLIER. 211 with stone walls between. So the apparatus being mounted on a small pier inside the telescope enclosure, with a range of nearly 20 feet clear in front of it, with no artificial lights about, (for I had found it possible to read off the graduation, and write down the figures by moonlight) ; and with no other active source of heat in the neighbourhood, than my own body, and that swathed abundantly in non-conduct- ing flannel, and kept well away from the thermotic pile, — I tried a preliminary experiment. Holding my naked hand in front of the peculiar voltaic arrangement, and at a distance of three feet, there was an instant move of the magnetic-needle through 7° ; and then bringing it within three inches, there was so large a deviation, that I had to wait a long time, before the needle had recovered from the disturbance. How calm, how perfectly dead calm was the air all that time ; not a breath could be felt ; not a sound heard; there was the silence, and stillness of death. This degree of silence felt inappropriate on a high mountain; for on such, there is in general, so cease- less a murmur of hundreds of torrents far and near, working their way downwards continually ; and never for a second leaving off their bubbling, splashing, p 2 212 END OF GUAJARA. struggling onward ; — when powerful, even urging on the stones in their beds with a perpetual low, grinding, rumbling noise. But on Teneriffe there was nothing of this sort; the absolute aridity of air and ground, had denied the existence of a single stream. A faint tinkle tinkle now and then, from a stray goat, was the only sound to be heard during this anxious period ; and though the creature was far off, one could distinguish whenever it stopped to browse on some solitary retama bush, and then when it trotted off to find another. The needle came at length to rest ; so, quickly turn- ing the voltaic cone, which had been directed to clear sky, on the moon, — I anxiously watched the result, — the needle scarcely moved. Lunar radiation was small indeed then, and I girded up my loins to try special methods of observing, suitable to such a case. The plan decided on at last, was to take a large number of readings, at stated short intervals, combined with variations in the direction of the cone. Having at length obtained about two hundred such, in the course of an hour and a half, I was extremely well pleased to find, that the mean of the numbers indicated an undoubted heat effect, of about a third of a degree. AN ISLAND DON. 213 Had the recording instrument been a Fahrenheit’s thermometer, the whole operation would have been concluded. But as a thermomultiplier’s degrees may- be almost anything, I immediately placed a candle on a stool, 15 feet in front of the pile; and ob- serving it on exactly the same principle as the moon, — there was given a heat effect of nearly one degree. With this result, there need be no wonder at the failures of former observers in England, near the level of the sea, and before the day of the thermomultiplier, — to obtain any instrumental evidence of the moon’s radiation; for here, on so peculiarly favourable a position, with the luminary shining away quite blindingly, the heat was only one-third that of an ordinary candle, at the distance stated above. After having obtained a nearly similar result by about ninety observations on the following night; the packing up for our intended move, proceeded so strenuously, that on the morning of August the 19 th, when a visitor was announced, there was little of a scientific nature to be seen. This we much regretted, as our new acquaintance, Don Martin Boderiguez, proved to be a most intelligent and well- 214 END OF GUAJARA. informed man ; and in what a fine old Spanish style he came up. First there arrived two men with a vast supply of goats* milk as a present for the sailors, ourselves, and every one on the place; then there followed attendants with loaves of splendid home- made bread ; some, white and light as that of Paris, and some, of a richer description, saffron in colour, and with a crust, that happily did not become case- hardened, in the dry atmosphere above the clouds. Then too, when we invited the Don to join us at breakfast, he produced his quota in the shape of a dish of partridges, — flavoured with miniature cloves of choice garlic, — and home-made cakes, which were a compound of hardly anything hut almonds and honey. He had hoped to have caught us a rabbit or two, but had lost his ferret in the attempt that morning, not very far from the tents. Without such addition however, there was more than enough for a feast all day long ; and when, over and above so much, his herdsmen arrived in the evening with more of the goats* milk, as luscious and as thick almost as cream, we had to empty out the water stowed in tins and bottles for our intended journey to Alta Vista next day, in order to profit by these unexpected supplies of the richer fluid. I-'hoto -St^eoaiTccph MASSES or LAVA SLAG- AT ALTA VISTA ZODIACAL LIGHT. 215 With the larger instruments packed up, there was more time than before, for attending to peculiarities of twilight, the zodiacal light and similar eye phe- nomena. The zodiacal light, ever an interesting object, was particularly so just now ; not only because this was the first good opportunity that I had had of supplementing my observations in the southern hemisphere; but on account of certain new ideas recently published, and not a little hostile to the dynamic theory of heat. They tended indeed, to deprive that mathematical conception of one of its cosmical triumphs, viz., an explanation of the true nature and origin of solar heat. This solution of a problem, older than Zoroaster, had seemed to receive decided confirmation, when theorists could point to the zodiacal light, under an heliacal hypothesis, and hold it up as a proof of numerous meteoric stones falling, and about to fall, into the sun ; thereby hav- ing their dynamic energy, resolved into its equivalent of heat and light. From observations lately made however on the American expedition to Japan, a conclusion has been boldly published, that the zodiacal light encircles, not the sun, but the earth ; which should in consequence have something of a Saturnian look, as seen from 216 END OF GUAJARA. other members of the solar system. No sooner was this new hypothesis put into print, than it was en- dorsed by several distinguished names ; and the Abbe, conducting the J ournal “ Cosmos,” stated “ that a notion of the same sort had long been caressed by himself.” If the observations were good and unique, of course their result must be received at once, despite any beautiful theory, built up on an abstract idea. But there are many older observations exist- ing, by no means bad, and pointing to an opposite conclusion ; while the phenomenon is by no means easy to measure with certainty. Indeed a more southern position, and a clearer climate than Eng- land are so necessary to unexceptionable work, that home astronomers have generally deferred entirely to the accounts of travellers. Now our position on Guajara being more than usually favourable, even for travellers, in latitude and elevation, — what did w r e see, — asked several of our friends ? In the evening, after twilight had ceased, we saw the strange glade of light, very fairly, though the angle of the ecliptic was such, as to allow the axis an angle of only 31° to the horizon; and hence, but for the purity and rarity of air at 8900 feet of eleva- EASTERN DISPLAY. 217 tion, nothing would have been made out. As it was, we observed instrumental^, night after night, all the several elements of length, breadth at horizon, and place, or It. A., and D., of apex. Gradually the inclined tongue set in the "West ; and for several hours before and after midnight, we were left with only stars and milky way to admire. But at two o'clock, something began to appear in the East; and at four o'clock, there was a gorgeous zodiacal light at an angle of 75° with the horizon, and with the length of 63°. So bright was it towards the base, that it produced a weak reflected glow in the West; and we could occasionally fancy a tail, of the faintest conceivable light, extending nearly to the zenith. Nevertheless there was no doubt of the len- ticular form of all the chief mass of light; and the place of its apex, as measured, was always consistent enough. In this there was confirmation rather of the old, than new, ideas; but one evening (August 18th), looking towards the Eastern horizon, where the moon was presently to rise, there was a cone of light visible ; and so very “ zodiacal " did it seem, that we had almost jumped up, and said, that the question was now so far settled against the old school. The 218 END OF GUAJARA. appearances followed in this order; at 17h. 5m. Sid. time, the moon’s twilight was perceptible as a low flat elliptical arch of faint light; at 17h. 12m. it had manifestly grown obtusely pyramidal, or somewhat pointed above; at 17h. 15m. the point had ex- tended itself into a cone, all of the faintest light, 30° high and some 12° broad; and at 17h. 20m. the moon rose. What, however, all this time was the angular position of the axis of the cone? On being measured, it invariably proved 90° to the horizon. I was rather surprised at this, for the general appearance to the eye was so similar, on the whole, to the zodiacal light, that I had felt almost certain of an inclination ; as probably any one else would have done from the mere impression of his senses. On similar judgment, every untutored person, believes that he sees the sun larger at rising or setting, than when high in the sky; and yet the case is really the reverse of this, as angular measure instantly demonstrates. In the same way, each of my measures in the present case, proved the axis of such lenticular cone of lunar light, to be standing vertically on the horizon. Now this circumstance, combined with the further one, that the angle of the ecliptic in that part of the LUNAR DAWN. 219 sky, was only 38°, not only showed that the appearance was not caused by that suspected cosmical body, which with solar illumination, causes the legitimate zodiacal light, — but that it was some local affair, depending on atmospheric refraction and lunar dawn. Seeing also, that the cone became visible only after the lunar twilight had manifested itself strongly, and immediately before, the moon rose, — the solar analogy which it bears, is not to the zodiacal light that vanishes with the very first dawn of morning, — but, with the pyramid of rose-pink light, which subse- quently surmounts the more level arrangement of orange and yellow in lower parts of the sky, when the sun is about to appear. This feature is well known, and very dear, to painters ; but has little in- terest for astronomers. The manner, and relative times of showing, are precisely alike with these two phenomena, the rose-pink pyramid and the white cone ; while if one of them be so richly coloured, and the other not at all, — it is quite agreeable to the difference known to exist, between solar and lunar rainbows. The concluded lunar zodiacal light then, was not only erroneous in itself; but, when duly considered with regard to its real solar analogue, — was a suf- ficient proof that the human eye, would have been 220 END OF GUAJARA. unable to appreciate anything so inconceivably faint, as must be a lunar analogue of the solar zodiacal light ; supposing the latter for a moment to depend, on the sun illuminating a nebulous ring, encircling, not himself, but the earth. A more startling feature still, however, than any lunar phenomenon, had been mentioned by the pro- pounder of the new theory in favour of his doctrine ; viz., that as he had sailed in the tropics, from one side of the equator to the other, — the zodiacal light had accompanied him, changing its place amongst the stars. This is in itself a mighty and a conclusive fact, regarding what the observer himself saw. But when I found my observations for the place of the light on Teneriffe, agree with those made at the Cape of Good Hope on the other side of the equator ; and with others procured in India, France, and England, by a variety of astronomers during the last century, — I could only come to the conclusion, that the zodiacal light of observers in general, was not that of the third volume of the “ Expedition for opening up Japan.” After our friend the Don, hospitable though not in his own house, and giving an excellent idea of a PREPARATIONS FOR MOVING. 221 Spanish welcome, had left us on the evening of August the 19th, there was an immense boiling of milk going on at several different fires, in order to enable the fluid to keep during the next day's journey, under a hot sun. There were gallons of milk, and only two very small portable saucepans and a tin coffee-pot, to boil it in ; so the stewing went on far into the night. Gusty winds, from the N.E., arose ; the fires flared, and crackled, and shot up clouds of sparks ; but most of our tents were already taken down, packed up, roped tight, and stowed away within the quondam telescope enclosure. Freely, therefore, and without stint at their mountain fire-place, amongst rude masses of trachyte lava, with the white moon shining on them from above, and reflected broadly from the silvery sea of cloud below, the sailors heaped on retama wood. The flickering flames leapt up on high, re- vealing, in their lurid light, more and more swarthy faces every moment ; for the men from Chasna were arriving with their mules, in preparation for the morning's move. Not a very pleasant set were they, these Chasna men. Consumers of odious tobacco, and bad garlic, in overpowering abundance ; they tossed our packages 222 END OF GUAJARA. about somewhat impudently, and then went back to the fire denouncing their weight, and declaring the impossibility of such burdens being carried on the backs of any mules. What with the boisterous wind, and the growling men, no one slept particularly well that night on the mountain. Next morning at an early hour, after a refreshment of the Don’s rich goats’ milk, our last tent was struck, and the Chasna men were called on to load up. One or two did, but others refused, without more pay; and then they all began disputing with each other and the interpreter. After a couple of hours of violent vociferation, and vehement action that must have made their arms ache fearfully, and after some of them had gone back, — an arrangement, not very wisely on our part, was con- cluded with these villagers, — the loading was re- sumed; and by 9 o’clock a.m., some on horses, and some on baggage mules with wooden saddles, we all rode off, from the top of the “ wind-loved” Guajara. PART III. ON THE CRATER OF ERUPTION. CHAPTER I. SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE. TT7TTH our long train of mules defiling down the " * pass, we soon reached the floor of the great crater, whose central cone we were to climb before night. The direct distance to be travelled, was but four miles, and the general inclination nothing important, but the roughness was verily incon- ceivable. One of our reconnoitring parties a few days previously, had tried a straight cut across this lava-covered plain, to save themselves the trouble of going round towards the east, to a smoother region ; but after awhile they became entangled amid such terrible stones, that they had to take all the baggage off their mules, and carry everything on their own shoulders. As we stood on the Canada, the pumice beach of a once fiery sea, its frontal wave of lava, rose between us and the Peak, as a long ridge of rocks piled one over the other, at the steepest angle at which they Q 226 SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE. could avoid falling over. Looking westward, the lava rolled up to the crater wall, formed there by Guajara, whose cliffs and avalanches of broken stones, we loved to trace from the summit, down to the base ; where sudden pinnacles and spires shot up, with a strong family resemblance to the " Lunar Rocks.” Some appearances of this phenomenon were seen also in the eastern direction, whither we now pursued our way ; gazing upwards in admiration at the range of mural precipices far above our heads. The lower parts of these ramparts of the great elevation-crater, were generally but steep slopes of stony debris ; yet being bared in some places, the construction of the mass was illustrated in fine sections of horizontal strata of green-stone, and tufas; some of them hundreds of feet in thickness, and others thinning away, like ribbons, to a few inches. These latter looked often at a distance, so like the veins in the sides of an alluvial sand pit, that one was inclined to examine them for the much- desired fossils of Teneriffe. Yon Buch considers the great crater, says one, who is no friend to the author he quotes, to have been formed under the sea, although no fossils have ever been discovered upon it. This is a cruel dig, and is IGNEOUS ACTION. 227 it deserved ? Why not, adds the critic, what is the proof of formation at the bottom of the sea, but finding marine organisms in the rock ; have not such been found on Monte Somma ; and has not Teneriffe been compared to Somma ? Yes truly ; yet all the analogous parts of each have not been examined. Fossils are by no means found over the "whole of Somma, but only on those parts which are repre- sented in Teneriffe by the southern foot of Guajara, a region not yet investigated by good geologists. The stereotyped route for ascending the Peak, is from Orotava; and unfortunately lies over nothing but sub-aerial lavas and pumice ; somewhat as if one were to ascend Vesuvius from Torre del Greco, and declare that all is barren. Barren in good truth, and without organic remains, should all such slopes be found, when we walk over streams upon streams of material, that have flowed forth at the temperature of melted iron, from a caldron seething for ages with fire and liquid rock, and incandescent acid gases. Wherever we examined the beds, forming the sub- marine crater walls, crystallizing effects of heat were predominant In one case indeed, a stratum of green- stone exhibited the once action of water, in having cracked and rent into little pieces, only two or three Q 2 228 SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE. tenths of an inch in the side; giving it the appearance of hot glass dipped suddenly into a cold fluid ; or that stream of lava, which Dana describes, flowing into the sea from Kilauea, and crackling into fragments as it went. Yet even in this case, the greenstone or basaltic lava, had not only its own ordinary indications of being a fire-formed rock, but by the numerous long crystals of glassy felspar which it contained, torn and bent as they were, seemed to prove that it was a melting of some previous mineral, whose refractory felspar crys- tals had alone resisted the second application of heat. Such strata of the mountainous walls on our right, were objects of unceasing interest in their varieties of colour, and their accidents of faults and dykes. These last had sometimes altered the appearance of parts through which they had pushed their way ; but were more noteworthy, when considered in con- nection with the well-known lunar striae of Tycho, extending unbroken over hill and dale, — from their having always conformed to the surface of the rock, whatever its inclination ; and not to the law of fluids seeking a level. In some places, the dykes certainly stood up above the matrix; but plainly, from a modern wearing down of the latter. On our left all this time, were the frontal ridges of sub-aerial lava streams; sometimes pressing so close BRILLIANT LAVAS. 229 up to the walls, that our horses had great difficulty in stepping through heaps of tumbled stones. These stones, massive as they might be, were but the foam-flecks of that fire-borne flood, which surging and resurging like the ocean below, had in ages long since, covered all the area around the central Peak, with colossal ruins. Occasionally amongst the brown blocks was found one of charming sea-green tint, smooth, dense, and in a mighty lump. This had tumbled from the cliffs above ; and in its nature, appears to have been a product of the ancient submarine volcano only. Similarly one or two huge portions of a porous lava, in colour a rich lakey Indian-red, and as pure and true in tint, as if specially prepared by an artist’s manufacturer. I broke off portions as a great prize, and packed them away in a knapsack, together with stones of cobalt-blue, lilac, purple, green, orange, yellow-ochre, and Naples-yellow, with some view to converting them into pigments. How inexpressibly varied and brilliant were the colours then, bathed in the light of a vertical sun, undimmed by impuri- ties of the lower atmosphere; how dull and mono- tonous do they appear now, under the grey of a Scottish sky. As we gradually made our way towards the eastern 230 SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE. side of the crater, the long ridge shape of the Peak, seen over hummocky heaps of yellow lava, slowly shortened; the abutment of Montana Blanco, with its deep red streams and their viscous wrinkles, was projected on the central cone; and then, when at last, it began to stand out to the south of the Peak, — there was seen in the midst of rearing bergs of red and brown lava, of masses of tossed and tumbled rocks, of peaks sharper than the aiguilles of Mont Blanc, — a fine parasitic crater of intense hue, and one would think, of immense potential energy. The tops of other such craters appeared here and there in the distance ; while behind and above all, rose the grand Peak, seamed with its blue-black torrents, and show- ing clearly the dimensions of its once active crater of Rambleta, at the height of 11,700 feet; while imme- diately in front lay a glittering sea of pumice, dotted with grotesque groups of reddened slag. Allowing the rest of the party to proceed, my wife and I stopped to sketch this rare volcanic scene, though the sun had become furiously hot. The place however was not without its agremens , for fine speci- mens of retama were growing round about; few and far between, yet princely in their almost globular GROOVED ROCKS. 231 form, as compared with the flat and stunted bushes on Guajara. Presently too a herd of goats came past, led by a glorious old animal of the Guanche breed ; Vandyke brown in colour ; with long twisted horns, a venerable beard, and hair lengthening almost into a lion's mane. A few steps beyond this spot, was a large flat-sur- faced rock, right in the pathway, and so splendidly grooved and scratched, as to be rather too like the marks of a clogged waggon wheel ; but such a machine had certainly never been there, so we secured a por- tion. A little further, and the “ coup d'oeil ” was twice as fine as before ; the small crater had opened out its mouth, and now showed a most inordinate swallow. But we could not stop to draw again, for the rest of our party were out of sight, and this was exactly the point where w^e had to enter the lava-strewed plain, and strike across to gain the Peak. We entered, and soon got surrounded by jagged and impassable rocks ; our attendants, guides though they professed to be, were at fault. They ran here and there to look for a path ; then led the horses through hollows, where rough rasping points of stone peered everywhere above the thin sandy covering; 232 SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE. and then they climbed up to the highest harrier in the neighbourhood, and hallooed with all their might, hut without avail, to those who had gone on before. The sun was now on the meridian, and the altitude of our position being upwards of 7000 feet, the radia- tion was something scorching ; and both horses and men were wearing out in scrambling attempts to re- cover the path. At length a trace of footsteps was struck ; and away we went on a curving line, in and out amongst rocks of every conceivable shape, always, however, treading on a sprinkling of fine pumice. In this course we approached the small crater, — from its colour, one was inclined to fancy it composed of good garden mould ; but as we passed over its southern foot, we found nothing but the hardest of elinkery cinders. Away, and still away we kept urging our horses on the “ spoor •” the reefs of rocks and rugged piles of stones became more complicated, but happily their crevices and gaps were always nicely closed by pumice-stone dust. Everywhere was it sifted down, yet so moderately, as to leave no more than just room enough,, to enable a clever horse to walk along with- out endangering his legs ; his feet at the same time, leaving a mark, legible to a countryman skilled in tracking. REST IN THE CRATER. 233 Before long, overtaking the troop, — horses, mules, and men were found enjoying a sort of standing rest in the open sunlight, on the top of a hillock, with red crags rising through its glaring pumice-stone soil. From this point we overlooked the whole south- eastern floor; stream on stream of lava, rolling its ridges of stones over its fellows; here and there a small eruption crater of dark brown; and then an- other larger one of the red period, of firmer rock, but still so rent and cleft, that the caldron’s circle looked like some mighty Druid’s temple. But in that case, where the oak-trees or the grass that Druids loved so well? Here, all around, excepting an occasional shrivelled- looking retama , — a plant that grows naturally with- out apparent leaves, and with merely a bristling collection of glaucous twigs, — there was to be seen nought, but hot red rock, and thirsty yellow pumice ; while the scorching sun over head, and the blue un- varied sky, with its uniform saddening tint of arid light, seemed to condemn everything, far and near, to barrenness and desolation for ever. In such a wilderness, one fresh from English meadows, might exclaim, oh ! for “ the shadow of a 234 SCALING THE CENTRAL CONE. great rock in a weary land.” The phrase expresses much that we felt at the moment ; and was far more suitable there, than to the case of a recent Hima- layan traveller, who quotes it while spreading his blanket at night, under the warm lee of a large block, in one of the snowy passes of those mountains ; but the figure is only fully applicable, in an Asian or African desert. In glowing c'3'J®2S'-°2 cn (3^ " RAMBLETA.” 303 to 122° Fahrenheit, condensed on the neighbouring stones, and gave means of support to a few handfuls of moss growing between them. This phenomenon passed; still lay before us the stones, the black lava stones, as bare, but if possible more rough, and rude, than ever. After a while, some little sprinkling of pumice-stone dust began to mani- fest itself in crevices ; more and more appeared; and suddenly at the altitude of 11,745 feet, we emerged from the Malpays. Instantly there rose before us, high above our heads, the Piton or sugar-loaf cone, forming the summit of Teneriffe, resplendent with light red and yellow, like some huge tower, gleaming in the brightness of the morning sun. The place that we were on now, between the Mal- pays, and the Piton, was “ Rambleta,” by some described as a plain ; but there was so little flatness about it, that we could not very easily get a conve- nient corner for our breakfast service. There is really only a slight difference of slope between the Malpays, Pambleta, and Sugar-loaf; while the space through which the moderate angle of the middle locality lasts, is inconsiderable. We were easily pleased, however, and after contemplating with admiration, during our 304 SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. meal, the high smooth slope of pumice, rising like the cone of some giant glass-house, — we set off again ; and with all our apparatus on our backs, began the last climb. The mean angle of the sugar-loaf is 33° ; on the east, where all travellers ascend, it is about 470 feet high; on the opposite side nearly 650 feet; its base, Rambleta, dipping towards the west. At first, walk- ing through the loose pumice, we rather wished for the Malpays again ; but coming to the projecting points of some red lava crags, we found such very fair footing, that the ascent ought not to be spoken of as difficult by any man traveller. Here and there some warmth was felt in holes and cracks of the rock. The fissures increased continually in number and tem- perature; then a faint sulphurous smell was perceived. A few hasty steps more, — and we were on the brim of the culminating crater, in the midst of jets of steam and sulphurous acid vapours. Fagh ! — on inhaling the first whiff one was inclined to beat an instant retreat for a few steps ; looking, for the moment, with infinite disgust on the whole moun- tain, as nothing more than the chimney, 12,200 feet hiffh, of one of Nature's chemical manufactories. This chimney, having been built at great expense, she wcs TERMINAL CRATER. 305 resolved to turn it to account. We, curiously foolish creatures, had been innocently creeping up the sides; and were now astonished to find, on peering over the mouth of the long stalk, that noisome fumes were ascending from it. Again we mounted up on the brim, and soon getting toned down to breathing mephitic exhala- tions, found the chief feature of the crater interior, some 300 feet in diameter, and 70 feet deep, — to be its extreme whiteness ; often white as snow, where not covered with sulphur. The breadth of rim was hardly sufficient to give standing room for two ; so imme- diately, and in such a knife edge, did the slope of outside flank, meet that of inside wall. On the por- tion of circumference where we collected, the ground was hot, moist, dissolving into white clay, and full of apparent rat-holes. Out of these holes, however, it was, that acidulated vapours were every moment breaking forth; and on the stones where they struck, were producing a beautiful growth of needle-shaped crystals of sulphur, crossing and tangling with each other in the most brilliant confusion. The north-eastern, northern, and north-western were the highest, whitest, and hottest parts of the crater walls. Towards the west and south they dipped x 30fi SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. considerably, and verged to an ordinary stone-colour inside ; outside they were red and brown all the way round the circle. Hence it arose, that when in previous months we had looked from Guajara, some of the bleached interior surfaces of points on the northern brim, being seen through and over the southern depression, gave us the erroneous idea of a double crater ; an exterior ring- wall of brown, and an inside one of white, material ; errors of perspective, it now appeared. Some short portions of the interior of the wall, are precipitous rock, 10 to 20 feet deep. But gene- rally the structure has so crumbled away during long ages of volcanic idleness, that it is now, like a baron's castle of a long past feudal age, going to slow and certain ruin; falling downwards in a mass of rubbish, that tends to fill up the central hollow. All about the curving floor, my wife and Don Rodriguez wan- dered over the deep bed of fragments, searching for the finest specimens of sulphur; and, with the photo- graphic camera, I walked through and through the crater more than a dozen times, in as many different directions to take the several views, — completely dis- proving thereby all alleged dangers of the “ awful abyss," that one tourist described looking into with SULPHUR. 307 fear ; after he had “ crawled ” up on the outside to a high pinnacle, from whence he could safely make the survey. Only in the neighbourhood of the walls, is there much annoyance from puffing steam and vapour; while neither there, nor anywhere else, is more than a thin coating of sulphur, often bedewed with sulphuric acid, to be found. If all the sulphur on the Peak were to be gathered together, by scraping it off the stones, a long and tedious operation in itself, there would hardly be two barrows full obtained; and speculators therefore in England, need not incur the expense of sending up here to the height of 12,200 feet, for so scanty a supply. Comparing his own observations with those of pre- vious travellers, Humboldt concluded a cooling of this crater; Bertholet in 1830, in a similar manner concludes a heating, and speculates in a lively French manner on what a catastrophic destruction of men will ensue, when this hoary old volcano resumes its pristine energy. As far as we could make out, the ground is heated by the steam, or at least has less temperature than the steam which permeates it, and which indicated in the strongest vent holes only 150°; while the boiling point of water which we ascertained x 2 308 SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. by careful experiment, in a deep cleft on the western side of the crater, is 191° 08. There would seem therefore to be no “ high-pressure ” at work, nor indeed any sensible difference in the effects on the whole, since the day of Captain Glas, nearly a century since. The expiration of steam by the volcano, has rather a happy effect than otherwise ; for tempering, as it does, the sharpness of an atmosphere of great eleva- tion, it attracts a population of bees, flies, and spiders, as well as numerous swallows and linnets ( Fringilla Teydensis). After the solitude and desolation of the arid and dusky Malpays, our sudden entrance into this bright, white caldron of the crater, with insects and birds flying about in numbers through the moistened air, seemed a new as well ag a strange world. A remarkable little colony at least, an oasis of life and activity in the midst of an elevated desert of lava. During the few minutes that a previous visitor spent on this spot, he remarked the bodies of some dead bees, and jumped too hastily to the conclusion, of an “ oblique current of air that brought them up to die.” But the far greater length of time spent by our party on the summit, proved plainly, that the living bees, which swarmed there in such numbers were CHAJORRA. 309 perfectly at home ; and if no food was to be found for them immediately round about, was there not Chajorra at a moderate distance, well clothed on its southern flanks with retamas , whose abundant white flowers are to bees so dear ! A magnificent feature of the whole volcano, is this Chajorra. From the culminating point we looked down on it over the western Malpays, — formed appa- rently of innumerable ridges of black lava stones, similar to those we had seen so much of on the east, — and then over a light-coloured flat, to where a dome- shaped eminence arose. Through its pumice covering, had been many special protrusions of red and viscous lava, flowing similarly to those of Montana Blanco. Ages may have been spent in these operations, Cha- jorra looking all the time like that innocent eastern dome. Then came a more violent period, during which the convex top must have given way, broken in, and so formed a huge pit. In this the liquid lava rose, as in Kilauea, on Mouna Loa ; and may have, for long succeeding ages, shown an open boiling caldron of the metal, nearly level with the edge. Then the contents cooled, froze, and so filled the hole across, with a level plain. After this had endured for 310 SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. years, again the mountain experienced terrible con- vulsions, the filling material was broken up, and ejected either in powder, or in re-melted streams of lava, which we still see as they poured over the sides. All was thus got rid of, save a portion which adheres to the southern wall. There we saw it adhering still ; and there our photographs represent it, with its level top contrasting with the rounded sides of the mountain, and showing internal pre- cipices, three times as profound, as any part of the older caldera wall. More than a quarter of a century ago, M. Cordier lamented the neglect shown by travellers towards this magnificent crater, three-quarters of a mile in diameter, 10,000 feet high, and so totally unlike, says he, everything that we know. His advice has only yet been followed by one individual, and rich rewards are reserved for future geologists, independent enough to leave the beaten paths of ascent. Interesting as is Chajorra viewed by itself, the interest rises on comparing it with Rambleta and Montana Blanco; they are the triple heads of the one central Peak or cone of eruption, that rises in the midst of the great elevation-crater. Brethren are they, with a more than Siamesan union, yet of different MONTANA BLANCO. 311 ages ; the oldest and the tallest being Rambleta, with its Piton crest. Montana Blanco, the youngest born, we have described already, as a huge rounded tumulus of pumice and ashes of the red lava or obsidian period. There might we leave it in the case of any ordinary geological formation; but with a volcano, a con- fessedly unextinct volcano like Teneriffe, with a vital principle as it were, and a power of growth within itself almost like that of an organic being, we have to take future increase into account. Hence, would we see what Montana Blanco may one day become, we have only to look to Chajorra, and behold the Montana with a terrible gulf on its summit, where the liquid lava rises and falls, with every pulse of the volcano’s life. Again, should we desire to see the future of Cha- jorra, which has passed through its Kilauea age of an open caldron, and is just beginning to pour a few black streams over its early exudations, let us look to Bambleta. There stream upon stream, and torrent upon torrent of black stony blocks and cinders have been forced forth unceasingly for ages. There too, a Piton has been formed in the centre of the crater of eruption, the whole of which has alternately been 312 SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. filled up by the pressing of material from below, combined with the fall of endless volleys of stones, shot np from the Pi ton, and rolling again down its sides; until now, the very locale of the Rambleta gulf is marked alone, by the black lava streams on its rim, cropping out of the rapilli slopes that lead to the final cone. Tracing the circle by such markings round and round, Pambleta must have been a magnificent caldron, well worthy of the black lava inundations it has poured forth; and in the midst of it, the “ sugar-loaf,” with its little terminal crater, — or the present culminating point of the mountain, — must have evidently played only the same diminutive part, that does the small cone inside the crater of Vesuvius. This cone of Vesuvius, as described by travellers, keeps ever shooting up stones, when the grand boiling and seething of the fiery lava, for the destruc- tion of towns and villages, is going on round about its base, in the wider crater ; over whose edge the matter presently pours, seaming the sides of the greater cone, the true Vesuvius, with a black lava ridge; not very different from the spectacle of Alta Vista. PROPORTIONS. 313 So likewise the terminal sugar-loaf of Teneriffe appears, in its day, merely to have shot up stones and pumice ; no lava stream having ever exuded from its mouth. This privilege was restricted to Ram- bleta, the analogue of the Yesuvian crater ; as the whole Peak from the floor of the great crater of elevation, is the Vesuvius ; and Guajara, the Somma, of the Island. When therefore, the usually sagacious Humboldt, comparing Teneriffe and Vesuvius (“ Per- sonal Narrative,” vol. i.), contrasts against the latter, merely the sugar-loaf of the former ; and so finds for the proportion of the “ ash-cone of Vesuvius” to the entire mountain J, and for that of Teneriffe only — he infers a needless anomaly, somewhere between J and J being the true proportion for the latter volcano. Much has been written too, at various times, on the supposed law of decrease in the diameter of craters with the increase of their height ; such posi- tion being defended by comparing the breadth of the small terminal crater of Teneriffe with the full bore of Vesuvius, combined with their absolute elevations. The facts compared, however, not being analogous, results thence arrived at, fall to the ground ; and if we again make a comparison, keeping strictly in view SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. 314 the principle of like with like, — against the bore of Vesuvius and its height above the plain of Somma on one side, setting the united areas of the caldrons of Rambleta and Chajorra, with their elevation above the Canadas on the other, — we shall find both diameter and height equally magnified ; Vesuvian dimensions being in every way quadrupled on the Peak. Similarly also comparing Somma with Guajara, we shall arrive at equally favourable results for the latter; and find in fact, that in all its craters, Teneriffe is of standard proportions, as well as of gigantic size. That size is vast, but evidently, nevertheless, gives no indications of approaching near the limits, of nature's volcano-making power. With all this breadth and height then, what of the view? The view has been so often described by able writers, that I will merely mention a green band around the middle and lower part of the moun- tain, produced by heaths and grasses ; a large expanse of fir-trees (. Pinus Teydensis ), on the north-western slope ; an eruption crater there, as red as fire, others about the coast line, especially towards the south, brown and black, and gaping open with wide VIEW. 315 mouths, like the fish of “ Arabian Nights’ ” story, standing on their tails, and answering the summons of the magician. The two near Capes or corners of the island, Teno and Rasca, and the long far off one, Anaga ; altogether, rivalling the triangular figure of Sicily — Mediterranean home of Etna. Beyond is the sea, a small portion of it only is visible ; for soon beyond its shore, begins the edge of the cloud-level ; and it is that, stretching away over the waters to the distant horizon, which there joins the sky, and seems to support its vault of blue. The tops of the islands, Palma and Grand Canary, are seen above these lower clouds; Gomera and Hiero, where no cloud is ; but for Lancerote and Forte- ventura we look in vain ; they are safely covered in beneath the cloud that floats at twice their height, and overspreads all the sea in their direction for hundreds of miles. The Don has heard that these two islands are visible from the Peak, but has never seen them himself, and cannot see them now ; nor can we ; nor did we ever do so during all the mornings we spent on Alta Yista and Guajara ; so constant throughout the summer, is the dense, broad plain of N.E. cloud. Enough of the view, the west-wind is blowing 316 SUMMIT OF THE PEAK. strong and cold ; and we shall do well to descend, and get through the Malpays, before the mountain-night arrives with its sudden darkness. Yet wait my friends, said I, one moment more; allow me only another photograph ; for these sulphurous exhalations of the ground, have spoilt nearly all my plates to-day. So Don Martin Rodriguez placed himself again on the highest point of the crater- wall, absolutely the culminating point of the Peak of Teneriffe, his man stood close by, and the yacht carpenter going past at the moment with a bucket of sulphur specimens, was included in the picture ( "Photo-stereograph , No, 1); where the dark rocks in the foreground, show the brown exterior, — and the white cliff under the Don, the acid and steam-bleached interior, — of the terminal crater of Teneriffe. CHAPTER VI. AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. 4 FTER our visit to the caldera of the Peak, with its walls of rock bleached by steam, and by acid vapours permeating them for ages, we could better understand the remarkable internal whiteness of lunar volcanoes, as shown by our telescope at Alta Vista. Some geologists have, indeed, denied that the features seen by astronomers in the moon are to be considered as volcanoes ; but we who duly noted the gentle external slope of some of those circular pits, their cliffy internal descents, their flat floors, and their central peaks — had little doubt in our minds. Occasionally could be traced something much like a collection of stony lava streams; which even the Spanish attendants, when looking by permission into the telescope, would call a Malpays. Generally too would they describe what they saw, with the same 318 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. terms that they employed, for volcanic features of the mountain whereon we stood. Could we have found in the moon, that dynamic trace, which was so important in proving relative ages among the red and yellow lavas of Teneriffe, viz., glacier wrinkles in one, and surf-like waves in the other, — all sceptical doubts must vanish. But we failed, and this point is left to a larger telescope, more constantly employed in lunar physics, on this or some higher mountain. Details of a larger sort, however, were multitu- dinously brought out by the Pattinson Equatorial; to such an extent, indeed, as to he hopelessly beyond my poor efforts, to record them usefully in the small portion of time, that was available each evening. Eor it is to he remembered, that there were high lava ridges westward, and the young moon had very low south declination. Night after night, this latter quality lessened ; and so improved ; but then, the planet drawing near her full, became less appropriately illumined to show configuration of surface. Our lunar observing season therefore, though rich in promise, was very short, and by no means equal either in quality or extent to what, with a little difference in the preliminaries, it might easily have WARNINGS. 319 attained to. This was not our only misfortune ; for with the general brightening of the sky, consequent on growing lunar illumination, the nights became less appropriate to trials on small stars, for space penetrating power ; and thus, lamentable barrenness began to follow close, on our recent nights of unex- ampled astronomical harvest. We complained, however, the less, inasmuch as on each succeeding evening, west winds blew stronger and stronger down upon us from the Peak. By day there was an east wind blowing up, from the crater- plain, with a velocity of five or six miles an hour ; but at night it was made up for by increased force in the western squalls. These came at last so fast and fre- quent, from sunset to sunrise, that the telescope shook to a degree, rendering it impossible to take accurate observations of any sort of objects, bright or faint. September 11th was another term-day, but its promises were of a negative kind. Hour by hour we saw the barometer falling, and before six o’clock of next morning, the S.W. cloud had arrayed its forces once more over land and sea. The north-eastern stratum, confounded at this resuscitation of its enemy, seemed struck with panic ; and immediately 320 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. broke up into detached portions, ready for flight. Still the solar radiation was strong, and with all our experiments to try to make manifest the “ eclipse red prominences,” the telescope eye-pieces got danger- ously heated ; and in spite of care, some part or other of our photographical apparatus, for picturing the sun’s image, would every now and then begin to smoke and burn. The bad symptoms, predictions of future, rather than manifestations of present, evil, nevertheless went on increasing all the time. September 12th was cloudy, and though the sky cleared up again the following day, the 14th opened with bad omens. A whistling S. wind; and, most unusual feature, on the sea between Teneriffe and Grand Canary, long curving lines, indicating a grand current of sea, or of wind acting on the sea, from the S.W. These cur- rent forms were traceable, in their curving inlet- sort of markings, for a distance, each of them, of twenty miles unbroken. Earnestly did we look at them, thinking what they might betoken. Yet still the sun was shining ; the barometer too had risen a full tenth in the last day and a half ; and in the course of the forenoon several parties of visitors arrived. The news of what Don Rodriguez had - o’tereogroq&hy IS. 'TRANCE TO THE ICE CAVERN IN THE MA1PAYS ON THE PEAK OE TENERIEEE , AT THE HEIGHT OE 11.040 EEET . ■p. 361 363. FALL OF HAIL. 321 seen through the large telescope, had spread far and wide; and others now hoped to enjoy a similar opportunity of star-gazing made easy. This was all well enough : but they brought us a letter from the captain of the yacht in Santa Cruz roads, relating how, when he was quietly one morning at the moorings where he had been lying for two months, a large man-of-war that had an- chored between him and the shore three days pre- viously, had put to sea in such a clumsy fashion, as to run right upon him. Had the yacht been wooden- built, she must have been cut, he said, down to the water's edge ; as it was, the strength of her hull had been sorely tried, and a large part of her bulwarks carried away. To repair this damage, he now ear- nestly requested us to send him the carpenter. We were all busily engaged in discussing the strange, the inexplicable contretemps, when suddenly the sky darkened, and down came a rattling fall of hail, that soon whitened all the ground. The painted canvas was instantly brought out, and every part of the costly telescope and mounting, safely covered up. The hail ceased, and then there was a sudden agitation amongst the guides, who had accompanied our bands of visitors. These men declared to their y 322 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. employ ers, that such intense cold was coming on, as would kill their horses, should they stay there through the night ; and that all must descend in- stantly. This was not agreeable to the tired travel- lers, and they appealed to me. The barometer had passed its lowest point, there- fore the rain, if coming, was at hand. The mercury was oscillating violently, a sign of much wind. And finally the difference of wet and dry bulb thermo- meters, reduced to one-fourth of its usual amount, was too sure a symptom that rain was intended, and in no measured quantity. Immediate preparations were then made by the visitors, to conform to their guides* advice. Bottles and pies and loaves of bread were bundled again into saddle-bags, big boots were pulled on, great-coats and mufflers mounted once more. The guides never worked so actively, as they did now in saddling and loading the horses. One after another, each went off as soon as he was ready. The last passenger was Herr Kreitz, to whose mechanical skill I had been so much indebted for the successful re-arrangement of the telescope in Orotava. He was exceedingly desirous of looking through the instrument, and was utterly exhausted by his long FLIGHT OF VISITORS. 323 ride performed through the night, and by a sick headache. His horse was saddled, and standing with his head turned towards the descending slope, below whose edge his companions had already disappeared. He had bidden adieu, and had departed five steps, when he returned with, “If the clouds should dis- appear at night, will you uncover the telescope and show me the moon ?” There is not the smallest chance, said I, of the clouds disappearing ; and Herr Kreitz went griefful away. We were sorry for him, for he was a man with a soul to appreciate nature, as well as a quick brain and ready hand for exact engineering. All the bustle and confusion of the morning, with the unexpected arrival of so many horses and mules, English and Spanish visitors, Orotava men and in- habitants of Santa Cruz, — had now died away, and we were a very small party left behind, to stand the brunt of whatever might be coming. Before it actually came, however, our number was destined to be still further reduced. Our servant Manuel had a dog, one “ Pecho,” a brindled animal with ears like a fox. When first brought to Guajara, he was a lean anatomy of skin and bone, fierce as a wolf, and sus- picious as a hyena. Before very long he found out Y 2 324 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. the state of society in our encampment; and while preserving his savageness to strangers, became very gracious to my wife and self; and got quickly fat- tened up in consequence. This dog Pecho then, came out on the present occasion, wise as a serpent and fully as sleek, took one look at the sky — and con- cluded that he had better go down with the horses. Darkness advanced with unexampled rapidity; the violence of the wind, and the moisture of the air rising in proportion. At 4 p.m. there was a heavy cloud on the mountain-top, descending to the level of the ice-cavern. At 4h. 30m. masses of vapour were seen rolling over the great crater below us, and at 5 o’clock we ourselves were enveloped in dense mist; unable to see what was coming next, and compelled to abide whatever it might be. The meteorological instruments were now our only means of questioning the weather, and very sorry comforters they were. The oscillating barometer confirmed itself by the continued increase of the gale, blowing due from the south ; while the dew-point, only 2° below the temperature, when at 9 o’clock a.m. it had been as much as 40°, prepared us for abundance of wet. WIND AND RAIN. 325 Forewarned, was not altogether forearmed, and thereby defended ; for not until the rain came on, as it did about 7 o’clock in the evening, driven horizon- tally by the furious south wind, did we know all the various points of weakness in our habitations. The roofs, mere lengths of felt laid over sticks, were too flat; they bagged in between their supports, and began to leak at every yard. Then the felt would be lifted up by the wind at some corner or joint ; a dangerous flapping would begin, and unless imme- diately stopped, — by our rushing out in the fog, rain, and darkness, finding a heavy stone, flattish if pos- sible, and clapping it on the peccant morsel, — would threaten to carry away the whole roof. Meanwhile the barometer showed a small inclina- tion to rise, but the dew-point depression decreased to 1°, the temperature being 40° 5. The wind by midnight rather deviated from its early, steady, unmitigated force, and had become somewhat squally ; but all the gusts, strong and weak, came equally from one and the same direction all night through, viz., due south. The high black lava ridge there ( see Photo-stereograph , No. 12), that we had looked to, for defending us from such storms, was not only perfectly invisible; but one would have believed it 326 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. quite removed, such a clear, clean blow of it did the south wind make upon us. The rain kept on without cessation. After months of dry weather, nature seemed bent on balancing her accounts. For a long while we made ourselves quite easy as to ultimate consequences, for could not the thirsty soil swallow up and dispose of an almost infinite quantity of water, without inconvenience ? But as hour after hour of this heavy liquid-fall went on, and as buckets and basins set to catch droppings from the roof, were filled and emptied, and filled again with alarming rapidity, a new found fear began to arise in our minds ! Might our walls be at last undermined? Was this low tract of pumice on which we were encamped, between the lava ridges on either hand, the bed of a winter torrent ? Might we presently expect to hear the rushing sound of many waters above us, as the cascade broke into life, and came rushing down the steep slope upon our devoted walls, that stood exactly in its pathway? We could not assure ourselves of a negative. Practice and experience alone could settle the question. All that we knew was, that the walls were in a very hazardous condition. Dry walls, run up in five STORMY NIGHT. 327 days by a few men, what could be expected from them ? Especially when remembering the bad shape of the stones ! No more flat slabs as in the lami- nated, half-stratified, submarine-formed trachytes of Guajara, were here; at Alta Vista were only the rolled and fallen lumps of sub-aerial lava. Had it depended on the shape of the stones alone, our walls would long since have fallen. But happily, they had a roughness peculiar to themselves ; a roughness which, while distressingly damaging even to the horny hands of the builders, had the admirable quality of making stone stick to stone, almost like a couple of brushes driven into each other, bristles against bristles. Thus then did the materials of our walls cling together, almost in defiance of gravity; and so dif- ferent did their minute vesicular nature make them, from ordinary stone, that the carpenter found he could drive his nails into them with the greatest ease; and he had so fastened, a sort of tapestry around the walls of our room. How those cloths did wave and flap about that night ; for the walls behind them were porous, very porous, and were becoming more so every instant. This unpleasant feature arose from the expeditious 323 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. method that had been adopted in the building ; each wall being formed of two built-up faces, with their internal void hastily filled up with sand and rubbish. Excellently did this plan answer for a short time ; but each succeeding day, as winds continued to blow, and walls to shake, — the smaller of the filling- up particles were gradually falling downwards, and leaving the interstitial division above, quite empty. Not only so, but by their undue pressure on the middle, they were always tending to burst out either one or other face ; and now the rain entering, as- sisted the inside material, in its downward flow, and outward pressure. Had we not most fortunately, employed ourselves during many previous evenings, in wedging up all the external crevices of the walls, giving them thus an increased strength, it might have fared badly with us, in this long, long night, of stormy wind and driving rain. With morning, the rain happily ceased; the mist withdrew a few hundred feet above our heads, the wind moderated in strength, and I went out to survey the mischief that had been done. Nearly two inches in depth of water had fallen in MOIST WEATHER. 329 the course of the night. Sad to say, the whole of what had descended on the sailors* roof, had gone through the middle of it, right upon them as they lay on the floor below. Yet withal they never looked more cheerful, than when I hailed them at daybreak through their broken doorway. They had been nearly wrecked they said, but smiled at the same time, taking it quite kindly, as if it were something they were perfectly accustomed to. They did also, in truth, physiologically prefer the present temperature of 40°, saturation of moisture and a clouded sky, to the dry heat and vivid radia- tion of previous months. Then, they were dried up, oppressed, discouraged; while the Spanish Manuel, with his brown complexion, and wiry frame, would ascend or descend like a chamois amongst the rocks, in the blinding light of a vertical sun. In all this arid heat, he would come down from the ice-cavern at a run, bounding from block to block of the Malpays, with two water-barrels on his back, an example to all beholders. Now, what a change ! Poor Manuel looked like a drowned rat, and could only shiver and shake, and whimper that he must go down. The sailors, in their glorious strength of Saxon constitution, generously 330 AUTUMN IN EXCELS1S. excused him ; he was not sufficiently clothed, they said, only a cotton shirt, linen drawers, a straw hat and raw hide shoes ! What cold could he withstand ? Out of their slender stock they fitted him with a Royal Yacht Squadron guernsey, and several woollen articles. But he continued so wretched and que- rulous, that at last we gave him leave to descend the mountain, but with orders to he up again within three days. No sooner said, than instantly he disappeared, as quickly as his dog Pecho had done the previous evening. A nice little party were we now at the station, for scientific work, had the weather been favourable ; my wife and I in our house on one side of the telescope square, and the two yachtsmen in theirs on the other. We four were, for the time, in possession of the whole summit of the mountain, of full half of the Peak of Teneriffe ; in so far as there was not a single human being within many miles to dispute our claim. The sailors were lively and ready to assist in any- thing. We observed meteorologically, cracked the biggest blocks for fresh fractures ; dug into the pumice of antepenultimate lava streams to test their SEASON CHANGE. 331 depth and temperature ; but nothing astronomical did the sky and clouds allow ; the season had effectually changed. The gale of August 30th-31st had blown the note of warning, — the present storm had accom- plished the fact, — for summer was gone, and autumn verily begun. Everything about us altered utterly. No more lower clouds now, the chief feature of the Trade-wind ; that must have perished also. In place of this cur- rent, a continual wind blew on us from the south, day after day; having its cloud stratum far above our heads. We were living now below the clouds, like men on the sea level ; as astronomers do in most of the public observatories. Hence no longer to us were clear blue skies, and bright luminaries ; but the sun by day and the full moon by night, if seen at all, were faint and hazy, scarcely struggling through diffuse and watery clouds. Watery too was the air round about us, and in the place where our best seasoned mahogany boxes had been cracking and rending with the drought in pre- vious weeks, we were now unable to 2 »et our bedding moderately dry. The temperature still kept to 40°, and the dew- point depression was a mere nothing. Occasionally 332 AUTUMN IN EXCELSIS. a shower or two of rain would fall, sometimes a sprinkling of hail. Yet withal was the weather bland and genial to our feelings. The peculiar sharp- ness of mountain weather, with its opposite radiations by day and by night when the sky is clear, — had gone ; and with it, the astronomical advantages of the site had ceased and determined for the season of'56. CHAPTER VII. THE REITERATED QUESTION. OME three days after the storm, when our reduced party was engaged in packing up the telescope, — unexpected voices broke the stillness of the moun- tain air. Above the edge of the slope leading down to Estancia de los Ingleses, suddenly rose a head, and then the shoulders, of a stalwart Spanish peasant. His whole figure manifested itself quickly as he ad- vanced, walking rapidly towards us. Behind him, other heads and other figures similarly rose up from the lower ground, with knapsacks on their backs, and iron-spiked poles in their hands, following their leader. When he had approached within a few paces, he doffed his hat, and pronounced the name of our friend, Don Martin Rodriguez. The Don had sent a letter, and as usual, his men were not empty-handed. We rejoiced once more in his rich goats'-milk; as luscious as cream, and capable of being preserved in this high locality to the 334 THE REITERATED QUESTION. eleventh day, by boiling with a little sugar and water, and pouring into glass bottles. Then they pro- duced a basket of fine fresh eggs, a luxury unknown for months, and a new goats’-milk cheese. We felt ourselves fortified once again, for another storm. The leader of this party was a fine open counte- nanced fellow, a genuine specimen of the worth and strength of the country peasant. Our communi- cations were not very fluent, from his understanding no other than his mother tongue, and our not having picked up much Castilian ; but he was voluble in his inquiries as to how things had gone with us during the wet weather. Quite regardless of rest or cold, had our present letter party, come across the country from a high level on the south-eastern flank of the great crater. A tremendous walk ! And now they sat down in a corner to discuss their simple food, a little gofio, while I answered the Don’s epistle. The response to our well-wishing friend on his own score, was soon indited ; but then he had enclosed a note from a per- son or persons unknown, begging and praying of an answer to certain scientific queries, astronomical and meteorological, drawn out to the extent of two closely written pages. The paper was dated, Orotava. Who could be the AN INVALID SAVANT. 335 author? The Don said a friend of his; so we stretched out to the task of answering. How much we were interested some few days after, to learn, that the unknown was a grey-headed Spanish gentleman, who for twenty years past had been an utter invalid, and had sought for rest and relaxation in scientific reading. For the sake of its books, he had taught himself our English language, and had profited by its literature extensively. The very first of this gentleman’s questions showed an able mind, for he had picked out from the third volume of Humboldt’s “ Cosmos,” precisely the prob- lem, which, from my peculiar situation, I should labour to answer, and which my official instructions had ordered me to undertake. The question was one, towards whose solution, the author of that famous book, had vainly, through fifty years, called for additional observations to his own; and he takes that oppor- tunity pp. 55-56 to reiterate his request ; concluding with, ie as the Peak of Tenerifie is so near us, and is so often visited before sunrise by scientific travellers provided with instruments, I may hope that my renewed request for the observation of the lateral fluctuations of stars may not be without effect.” The phenomenon seen by the learned Baron was 336 THE REITERATED QUESTION. sufficiently extraordinary in itself, and its knotty points were but twisted more inextricably, when called “ lateral refraction.” Generally, the idea of such a refraction, in the atmosphere at large, is “ unsound;” yet if after having eliminated exceptional local in- fluences, we restrict ourselves to exceedingly minute portions of time and space, as seconds and fractions of seconds, or quantities visible only in a large tele- scope with a high magnifying power, — it may be per- fectly sound and true. The circumstances however of the case under discussion, denoted irregular move- ments of the stars, by no means confined within tele- scopic limits ; and were indeed so wide and discursive, as to arrest attention, and excite astonishment, amongst the guides, as well as the savants, present on the occasion. To all this must be added, that the anomalies were seen on their gigantic scale, precisely in a locality where they should have been most liliputian, or even microscopic, viz., in the thin, breezy air of a mountain top, high above the vapours and emanations, radiations and dust, and in fact all the disturbing sources of both plains and sea. Theory therefore seemed to be at fault. Where men expected that the motions of the stars should be most regular, there they had THEORY AT FAULT. 337 been found most irregular ; or, contrary to what was computed and predicted for them. It is precisely by attending to such, at first very unacceptable results of observation, and following them up by all the varied means in their power, that astronomers have from time to time succeeded in discovering an unseen planet, or arriving practically at a better knowledge of the varied consequences of gravitation, on different members of the solar system. So, if for a moment, some of them were disappointed at there having been found by observation one morn- ing on the Peak of Teneriffe, traces of some general law of nature, new to theory, — they soon recovered the proper philosophical spirit; accorded abundant praise to the watchful traveller ; and, — unable to co- ordinate what he had seen with anything that they were acquainted with, — called for additional obser- vations. Hence when one of our first philosophers was informed by the Admiralty of the intended starting of the present Teneriffe mission, he advised offi- cially, “ that the observer’s attention should be directed to any instances of lateral refraction, like that remarkable case described by Humboldt as having occurred to him.” z 338 THE REITERATED QUESTION. Similarly the Royal Astronomical Society requested the Admiralty) “ that observations should be made to verify Humboldt’s remark, on the lateral oscillations of stars near the horizon, and on scintillations in }> Some private friends also brought the passage from Humboldt’s work to my notice, before I left England. One of them, most sympathizingly deplored the indications thus presented by the mountain, of being totally unfit for astronomical purposes. Another hoped, that in a region where such effects culminated so ostensibly to their maxima, — the obscure and difficult subject of lateral refraction, would be looked into, with a good chance of being settled at last. Loaded thus with the instructions and suggestions, forebodings and hopes of all parties, — we sailed from England. Time passed, and we were at length en- camped within a few yards of the identical spot from which the Baron had witnessed the abnormal pheno- mena; and while still there, came this anxious letter of the unknown of Orotava, endorsed by our friend Don Rodriguez, asking if any explanation of the OBJBQ.£' - THE “GREAT DRAGON TREE’’ AT THE VILLA DE OilOTAVA . THE OLD DRAGON-TREE. 419 and then turning to the left, we arrive at the mansion of the Marquis of Sauzal. Leave is asked, and readily granted. We pass through the house; descend a terraced platform, turn the corner, and are vis-a-vis with the great dragon-tree of Orotava. ( See ^Photo- stereograph, No. 19.) Proudly it raises its antique arms above every- thing around; but how it is hampered. An indi- genous wild laurel tree is absolutely in contact on one side, and a Lombardy poplar is almost touching on the other ; while there are such numerous peach-trees, oleanders, myrtles, and oranges between and all about, that there is hardly a single point from which we can get a fair view. A rivulet of water flying along in front, the whole ground thrown, from its naturally sloping surface, into so many terraces for cultivation, the boundary line between two of them passing through the tree, and making the ground on one side five feet higher than on the other ; hedges crossing in every direction, and the faint form of the summit of the Peak appear- ing between two tall, dark cypresses, complete the general accompaniments of the scene. Poor old tree, whose trunk was hollow, — when Alonzo del Lugo and his conquistador es in 1493, esfca- E E 2 420 DRACCENA DRACO. blished the Spanish authority here — and turned the bark into a chapel for holy mass, after it had served Druidical purposes amongst Guanche tribes for ages : how frail is it now. A storm in 1819 wrenched off an arm ; and more recently, certain Goths hacked an immense piece out of the thin wall of hollow trunk, for the Museum of Botany at Kew. In place of growing larger, the tree was rapidly collapsing, when the present intelligent proprietor, the Marquis of Sauzal, came into possession. He immediately interdicted a finger being laid on the poor thing, (though always allowing strangers a sight of it, notwithstanding they are arriving almost every day) ; and by supplying the abstracted portion of the trunk with masonry, he has given it renewed strength. Sixty feet high above the ground at its southern foot ; forty-eight and a half in circumference at that level, 35 # 6 at 6 feet above, and 23 -8 at 14*5 feet above, or the place where the branches spring out from the rapidly narrowing conical trunk, — this Dracma cannot compare with real monarchs of the forest for size. And we must remember that it is no proper tree, with woody substance; it is merely a vegetable; an asparagus stalk, with a remarkable MODE OF GROWTH. 421 power of vitality, and an equally eminent slowness of growth ; it is this last indeed, not its size, which has gained it the credit of being the oldest tree in the world. Let us take note of the chief characteristics. First, the immense uprearing of long naked root-like branches; and the pyramidal outline of the trunk. The leafage makes no very sensible appearance ; there is the typical tuft at the end of each branch or rather stem ; but the miniature palm-trees have been grow- ing for ages without bifurcation ; extending only in length, nothing in breadth. At the point of junction of two or more, a thickening of the lower branch begins, and occasionally may be seen one or two withered radicles, hanging loose ; for they have failed to enter the bark, and work their way down to the ground. So many of them, however, have done this ; that, while the simple stems are smooth, or marked only by shallow, transverse indentations of foot-stalks of past leaves, — the compound stems are deeply corrugated longitudinally ; and the trunk, more markedly still ; with an evident tendency in every wrinkle to divide continually as it descends. 4 22 DEACCENA DEACO. When once a stem has branched, its life seems to have departed, being replaced by the lives of the several young trees of its kind, left growing on its summit ; and whose roots, entering the bark and encasing the old stem on every side, conceal its slowly withering corpse from the light of day. Ages pass by, the young trees after flourishing, die in their turn ; each producing two or more new ones mounted on their summits ; and altogether presenting such a surface to the wind, that the base of the original tree would never be able, unassisted, to support the strain. See, however, the admirable provision of nature. The inosculating roots which had decorously concealed the death of their parent stem ; feeling the require- ments of the growing family above, expand their circle of support below; the trunk that had been cylindrical, becomes a broad based cone. An opening is made on one side; we look in, and find a mere hollow. In the centre of that void, once stood the original tree : it is gone now, as completely as any of the early progenitors of annuals growing in our gardens. Hence some explanation of the hollow interior of the great dragon-tree ; it is a physiological necessity. DRAG ONI AN THEORY. 423 But hence also a considerable limitation in the age of those parts which are still leafing and flowering, viz., the extremities of each long, thin branch. Supposing 6000 years to have elapsed since the original plant first came above the surface of the ground, that period must he divided by nearly the number of times that the tree has branched. Yet as the successive generations must have fol- lowed each other on the self-same spot, this con- clusion will not touch the dazzling theory of an eloquent author, setting forth that Draccena Draco does not belong to the Canaries nor to Africa ; but to India; and that the Guanches must therefore have had commercial relations with that part of the world more than 5000 years ago. An attempt has been made to disprove such idea, by showing that the dragon-tree is indigenous to Teneriffe, on the ground of dragoniers having been found in out-of-the-way valleys there, and on rocks inaccessible to man. But unless those specimens be older than the Orotava patriarch, why should not winds or birds have carried the seed from a tree, imported into a country with favourable soil and climate. Of the suitability of these two, there is no doubt ; 424 DRACCENA DRACO. and if a great man who was never in Africa has simply asserted that the tree is not there ; where is the proof, we are entitled to ask. The country of the Moors, and much besides has not yet been botani- cally examined : and Morocco has long traded in dragon’s blood, that could not well have been pro- cured either from the Atlantic islands or from India. Probabilities then, in place of being against, are rather in favour of Dracaena Draco being indigenous to N. Africa ; and if so, most likely in the Canaries as well ; while in the similar latitude of S. Africa, among the Khamies-berg range of the western coast, is a well known tree of the same family, the Koker- boom. A drawing of this made for me some years ago, by my friend Mr. Charles Bell, surveyor-general of the Cape Colony, is precisely an old dragonier in its mode and form of growth; the pyramidal trunk, the single stem branches, and the terminal tufts of leaves. Showing him, on the other hand, a few weeks since, without any remark, DJioto-stereograjoJi , No. 19, he immediately exclaimed that it was a Koker-boom. But what did he say when Professor M'Gillivray’s view of the great dragon-tree was laid on the table ? DELINEATIONS OF THE TREE. 425 What could any one say, on seeing a huge elm tree, with a superabundance of small leafed foliage, a height of 150 feet, as measured by the man going up the ladder, and the position solitary, in a nearly level country. No one copying nature direct, could have erred so widely; but then our Aberdeen professor had copied Baron Humboldt; so we looked up his view in the celebrated “ Atlas Pittoresque ;” and found that the tree was there only ninety-five feet high, not with elm foliage, but rather that of a sycamore, in the Italian style of line engraving ; the trunk was smooth, sleek, and seemed to contain 20,000 cubic feet of solid timber ; and the locale , showed us a very flat alluvial meadow. Baron Humboldt’s view again, not being taken from the tree itself, but from a drawing by M. March ais, and that from a sketch by M. Ozone ; we applied to the hydrographical department of France, where Ozone’s papers are still preserved, and a certi- fied copy was forwarded through the courtesy of Admiral Mathieu. Here the tree is reduced to its correct height ; and though the trunk has not the characteristic pyramidal 426 DRACCENA DRACO. slope, and the foliage is still too abundant, yet one can believe it to have been taken from nature ; by some sketcher, in a great hurry, and with bis imagi- nation and style of drawing based on European types of plants. With these three views before us, it is instructive, as connected with the language of drawing, to trace the gradual growth of error and conventionality, as man copies from man. Errors are always copied, and magnified as they go ; seldom are excellences repro- duced. After a few removes, the alleged portrait of nature, is only a caricature of the idiosyncrasies of the first artist. Never was the debt that mankind owe to the inventors and organizers of photography, Talbot, Daguerre, Herschel, and Archer, more apparent than in the case of the dragon-tree. Artists, landing for a few hours from a ship, were appalled at the tangled mass of vegetation about the old dragonier, and made a sort of ideal tree, on a bare level surface. Nature, on the other hand, awed by nothing she has made, takes on the collodion plate, the whole scene, with all its foreshortenings, all its groupings, as in- stantaneously as a flat wall. “That cannot be long enough,” said one of our 1 “Photo - StiereograpTi/ 20 . THE GREAT DRAGON TREE CLOSE VIEW OF TRUNK. 427 companions, as we tried a half second of exposure : but we showed him presently the hollow trunk, the wrinkled hark, the gardener’s scaffolding, which has passed into the fiction of the ladder and man; the long branches, the sword-shaped terminal leaves, hedges and terraced land, distant trees and still more distant hills. One more view we took, P koto -stereograph, No. 20, exhibiting the trunk from the east, where its cala- mities are least apparent. On the masonry filling up the northern side, is standing our interpreted, the Vice-Consul’s son, to afford, a human scale of measure ; his unfortunate hand, so bruised at Alta Vista, still in a sling, CHAPTER III. ADIEU. j^jEPTEMBER 26 th saw us riding from Orotava to Santa Cruz. During the first part of the journey, while still in that depressed or fallen-in region of the valley of Taoro ; gardens were thick and close. Of their con- tents, none were perhaps so admirable as the double oleander ; think of a rose-bush at least twenty feet high, and in a perfect explosion of flowers. Peaches were fine, as trees, but the fruit, strangely small ; though numerous as the leaves. Date-palms, PJmnix Dactylifera, were not unfrequent ; and after as- cending the hill surface beyond the valley, vil- lages were passed with almost groves of them. Yet none could be called well- grown. Stunted and stumpy they rather were, more like tree-ferns than palms ; and whenever fruit appeared, it seemed dropping off immaturely. Whether the soil or climate be at fault, others must say. The latitude could not be, for in Egypt and Syria, several degrees GARDEN CULTIVATION. 429 north of Canary, date-palms wave on stems as tall and graceful as any in the world. These countries, however, have no Trade-winds blowing on them every day, as in Teneriffe ; not only bringing cold air from the Poles, but producing such mists through the greater part of summer, that the chief portion of solar heat, due to latitude, is reflected back to the blue sky, from a brilliant upper surface of an almost permanent sea of clouds. Under such discouragement, vegetation along the northern coast of the island, is simply not so fine as it might be ; with certain exceptions, there is more of the desert, than of the “ scenery of plants/’ These, often most curious, have been admirably de- scribed, with all scientific minutiae, by Barker- Webb, and Berthelot, in their unrivalled volumes. The industry of the inhabitants was perhaps the chief source of interest that rose before us. They have certainly worked out the garden system of cultivation admirably ; and enabled the land to sup- port astonishing numbers. Hills terraced all the way up their sides, and corn growing by handfuls in corners amongst rocks, where the only moisture that can visit it, is sea-fog, — form a sight to im- prove the inhabitants of our Hebrides, where so 430 ADIEU. many hills and valleys, are equally untouched, un- altered, and unimproved by man. In spite of deserts of lava and pumice, and of regions elevated above the clouds, Teneriffe on the average maintains 106 individuals to every square mile : our colony of the Cape of Good Hope, about one to every ten miles. After traversing half the distance between Orotava and Santa Cruz, riding over mule paths, we came on the new road that Government is constructing to connect the two towns ; a broad and admirable carriage way. An immense impulse will this give to improved ideas ; in a land, for a colony, reverend with age, boasting of an indigenous aristocracy, marquises and counts of 300 years’ standing, yet until recently without a wheeled vehicle for country transport. Already an omnibus is laid on to carry passengers the length of the finished road from the capital ; and we heard of three other carriages; though one of them was hors de combat indefinitely, from the diffi- culty of getting experienced blacksmiths to repair a broken part. Somewhat late, in truth, have the Spaniards been here in forming roads ; but having begun, they are doing the NEW ROAD. 431 work well. A new broom sweeps clean ; and thus, while you may preach for ever to Scottish mac- adamize^ not to injure the feet of all the horses in their country, by covering roads with naked, angular, cutting stones, leaving it to unfortunate animals with delicate feet to stamp the mass down, and wear it smooth, — a more humane, as well as more perfect, mechanical plan is adopted in Teneriffe. Before the public is admitted to a new portion of the road, a gigantic roller, loaded with tons of lava, is dragged backwards and forwards over the materials of mac- adamization. As these are gradually flattened down, triturated siftings are added, and the surface is speedily brought to a condition, that you might shoot marbles along it. With a wind blowing behind us from the north, we entered the elevated country about Laguna, and soon were in the midst of driving rain. So had it been when we came through this same tract, in an opposite direction, last July; and so we concluded that it must have been, from our observations on the Peak, nearly every day since. Probably not quite so bad as that; but the numerous plants of Semper- vivum urbicum , growing into magnificent heads on the roofs of houses in the extensive city of Laguna, speak 432 ADIEU. as strongly of much wet and little sun, as do the grasses so plentiful in fields around. The thickest part of the cloud was passed through, before reaching the ancient capital ; where we found two winds blowing in, from the east and south- west, respectively. The conflict of these currents with the northern, over the tract between Laguna and Tacoronte seems a main cause of the deposition of so much rain there; and appears chronic. Yon Buch has noticed the strange circumstance of two windmills in this neighbourhood, with their sails directed to opposite quarters, and each with a fair wind whenever he passed. A ride of this sort up into the lower parts of the cloud, hereabouts hanging eternally at almost 2000 feet above the sea, must have given travellers a fearful idea of dismally cold and watery regions, awaiting that persevering explorer, who should venture further in the same direction. The conclusion would not be a Canarian one only; for all the world round, are not clouds generally raised some thousands of feet over the earth ; and do not rains come down to us from above. Ascending mountains at the Cape of Good Hope, HYPSOMETRIC ZONES. 433 for instance, from dry air below — we enter a cold wet mist on the heights, with all its botanical consequences. Thus, on Hottentot Hollands Sneeuw Kop, from heaths and proteas, flowering evergreen shrubs with aromatic odour, and hard woody stems below — we arrive by degrees at grass and reeds on the top. Everywhere the woody forms of the lower, regions, pass into grassy, in those above. The flats at the foot of Table Mountain are composed of arid white sand, with here and there a large bush of Protea mellifera , carrying huge pink and white cup-shaped flowers; the flats on the top of it, are black and boggy, percolated by rivulets of water, and closely covered with short reedy growths. Similar phenomena were observed in other countries also, and at once the generalization was leapt at, ff the summits of mountains are misty and wet, in direct proportion to their height.” On this belief, a scheme of plant-zones was made out for the Peak of Teneriffe, on the principle of the smaller hills actually observed; and beginning with vines below, ended with a region of grasses at the top. With such detail before him, — as the result of observation, and with the specific note by one au- thor, of the u compact short-swarded turf being so 434 ADIEU, slippery/* as often to endanger his falling, between Alta Vista and Estancia de los Ingleses at an altitude of 10,000 feet, — the late Professor Daniell was a bold, but clear-sighted, man, when he published his con- clusions of dryness existing above the clouds, usually floating at less than half the level, of the just- mentioned cumulative plant-proofs of moisture. From the Alpine journeys of the scientific Saussure, some instrumental indications of what had thus come to be suspected, were first obtained. Next Mr. Green, the well-known aeronautist, being furnished by Daniell with one of his admirable hygrometers, brought down from a balloon voyage, undoubted proofs of the new theory. General Sabine followed with observations on the Blue Mountains of Jamaica ; and Mr. Welsh* s four recent ascents by balloon, have now unalterably established the fact, that from the surface of the earth up to the level of the first, Newton*s “grosser/* clouds — moisture evidently in- creases ; but above that level — suddenly and greatly decreases, barring exceptional cases, to more than African dryness. So much for the atmosphere generally; but what of the particular instance of Teneriffe. As regards numerical observation, the dew-point depression from daniell's prediction. 435 Orotava up to 3000 feet was, with us, seldom more than 8° to 10°; at that height (the full measure of many of the wet-topped South- African bergen), if the clouds were dense, there was saturation of moisture ; but above it, the depression or dryness in- creased, not quite so suddenly as indicated by Daniell, but rapidly ; until, at 8900 feet of altitude, a depres- sion of 56° was attained at a temperature of 55°. At the same time, these upper regions of the mountain presented everywhere a sterile aspect; any plant that was seen thereabout, invariably proved a woody bush, more like the growth at the bottom, than the top, of Table Mountain; and at the place, 10,000 feet high, of the "compact short-swarded turf ” already noticed, we found only a rolling slope of clinkery ashes, pumice, and occasional fragments of obsidian. Grass then, was by no means discoverable towards the upper part of the Peak ; and we had to descend more nearly to the bottom of it, or to 3000 feet of altitude, before that peculiar class of plants could be conspicuously met with. In other words, we had to enter the lower stratum of Trade-wind cloud. Looked at timidly by some, hastily by others, from fertile valleys below, the upper parts of high moun- tains have been too often sadly misunderstood : and r f 2 436 ADIEU. have had such untoward climates attributed to them, that, although the idea of eliminating atmospheric tremors from telescopic vision, by their means, was promulgated by so great a man as Sir Isaac Newton, — the scheme fell dead on the world, and no serious attempt to try it was ever made, until this mission to TenerifFe in 1856. In physics as well as in mathematics, some remark- able intuitions were gained by that wonderful master- mind; and not the least admirable among them, though the last to have the proof by experiment ap- plied to it, is that which bears on the probability of “ a serene and quiet air, pre-eminently fit for astrono- mical observation , existing on tlie tops of the highest mountains above the grosser clouds” The prescience exhibited herein, is illustrated all the more power- fully, when we find the most popular physical teacher of the present day, both describing the Peak of Tene- rifle as constantly enveloped in cloud, and specially recommending low, versus high, positions, for tele- scopes directed to the heavenly bodies; because, according to him, “ mountains have a misty and variable climate and, “ the elevated strata of the atmosphere, when they envelope the ridges of moun- tains, undergo rapid changes in their transparency.” LAGUNA TO SANTA CRUZ. 437 Pascal’s suggestion of a mountain ascent, baro- meter in hand, produced an epoch in the science of pneumatics. Newton’s idea of going up with a telescope, may be of more signal advantage still, to astronomy, — if it be energetically carried out in practice. From Laguna the ground descends rapidly towards the sea. Leaving the new carriage-road on the west, we rode down by the grand mule path, as important a work in its way, as the road ; being nearly as broad, paved through its entire length, bordered with parapet walls, garnished with landing-places, and carried over and alongside remarkable torrent-beds, showing worn, but not grooved, basaltic rocks, at a giddy depth below. Arrived in Santa Cruz, we are met by our friend Mr. Hamilton. Captain Corke is also there, and undertakes to get the yacht under weigh, while we are examining a tide-guage recently erected for us by our friend, and the engineer of the Mole, Don Francisco Aguilar. It is admirably constructed ; but who is to observe it? The Spaniard’s enthusiasm for a piece of useful science is equal to any one’s ; and he readily volunteers to do all that will be required. 438 ADIEU. though the very first step has been already intimated, as nothing less than — observations at five minute intervals, for three days and nights consecutively. From first to last we owe our sincerest thanks to all the inhabitants of Teneriffe, with whom we have had to do, from the Captain -General downwards. Coming as perfect strangers, yet for scientific purposes, we have been received and aided rather as countrymen. What can we say more. The Titania awaits us, with her sails already spread ; and she must be round the island, before Orotava, sometime the next day, Saturday, or remain there idly until Monday. The winds through the night are light and variable; but somehow, the sharply entering iron hull does really “ walk the waters like a thing of life.” At six o’clock, on Saturday morning, some one reports to Mr. Goodall in Orotava, that the yacht is in the offing. He declares that such a thing is impossible, ascends his belvedere, telescope in hand, but immediately comes down again, confessing that it is the yacht; and he arouses porters and boatmen to bring off our instruments and stores. With us at sea, the wind had died away to a calm ; the sky was clear, the sun bright, the swell had de- creased to a ripple, and the Peak of Teyde rose before BEFORE OROTAVA. 439 ns in all its grandeur, with hardly a portion of cloud about it. Immediately over the line of the dancing wave tops, were the buildings of Puerto Orotava ; beyond, the two rapilli craters; and then the broad white surface of Villa, where the telescope even distin- guished the mansion of the Marquis of Sauzal, and the dark, peculiar form of the great dragon-tree. But up above all this; above the long valley of Taoro, above the Portillo and Mount Tigayga, arose more magnificently than anything else, the Peak itself, the “ crater or cone of eruption.” In Orotava, it is evidently always foreshortened by the walls of the “ elevation crater ;” but six miles out at sea, we saw it in full proportion, “ one mountain upon another,” as Von Buch has well described it. A black speck is now seen on the waves towards Orotava; then is lost behind a ridge of the swell, then is seen again ; there are two ; and before much longer, we distinguish our trusty friend, the acting Vice-Consul, Andrew Goodall, coming off with all our packages. He is soon on board, and brings with him a cluster of bananas, so large as to need almost to be carried on a pole between two sturdy coolies. We would willingly 440 ADIEU. prolong the meeting, but he is far from shore, and must get back there safely, before a wind springs up. From the stern of the yacht, now directing her bows towards England, as we watch the vanishing boat of this excellent, and hard-working official — we think of his innumerable services to make our long: residence on the mountain, effective for science and agreeable to ourselves. As evening advances, Orotava is lost, and the cinder hills, and the Villa, below the blue edge of ocean. Clouds too form all along the 3000 foot level ; but above all this, is still seen the great Peak, stand- ing on the vast plateau of the elevation crater ; raised high above all the turmoils of this lower world, into the calm grandeur of height. At length, when night closes in, and our last view of the Peak leaves it still high in mid-air, — we wonder how long the learned world will delay to occupy a station, that promises so well, for greatly advancing the most sublime of all the sciences. INDEX. Aberdeen, Professor, 425 Acid gases, 227 Active measures, 113 Adenocarpus frankenoides, 74, 135 Adieu, 428 Admiralty Manual, 14 iEolian harp, 58 chances, 95 Aerial gases, 128 doings, 245 ^Esthetic decorations, 35 Africa, 423 African isle, 21, 121 land, 37 Agassiz, M., 355 Agave, American, 413 Aguilar, Don Francisco, 437 Airy, Mr., 170, 354 Alcalde, 47, 165 Alhambra, 36 Alonzo del Lugo, 419 Alta Yista, 202, 240, 256, 274, 288, 340, 377, 427, 434 American deal, 37 Amphitheatre depressed, 265 Anaga point, 22, 26, 242 Anchorage, 25, 45 Andes, 158 Anderson, Mr., 405 Andromedae, 7 , 287 Angular movement of ships at sea, 4, 12, 15, 42 Annual heat curve, 399 Anseris, B of 128, 192 Antares, 293 Antelope, 267 Antinoi, C of 185, 192 Aquilae, B of 8 , 192 B of 307, 192 C of 5, 192 Arago, M., 128 Arabesque, 36 Arabian Nights’, 315 physicians, 411 Arcadian visitation, 254 Arcadia, 264 Archer, Mr., 426 Architecture, 37 Arietis, e, 287 Aristocracy, 430 Artists, 426 Ascent, 62, 402 Asparagus, 412, 420 Astronomical observation, 283, 289, 436 Astronomical harvest, 319 Atmospheric indications, 105 Atmospheric refraction, 219 Australia, 410 Austrian ship, 9 Autumn in Excelsis, 317 Babinet, M., 292 Balloon ascents, 434 Bananas, 31, 270, 439 442 INDEX. Band, military, 58 Barker-Webb, Mr., 63, 143, 429 Barometer, marine, 15 Barometer, 101, 241, 319, 322, 345, 380, 397 Barometric observations, 384 pressure, 381 Barrels, water, 61, 329 Battle of the Clouds, 280 Beaumont, Elie de, 385 Bedouins, 22 Beef, 379 Beg alms, 409 Bell, Mr. Charles, 424 Belvedere, 438 Berth elot, 63, 143, 307, 429 Bifurcation, 421 Bird-cage, 47 Bird, charming little, 129 Black bulb thermometers, 170, 282, 409 lava streams, 167, 243, lines of spectrum, 199, 200 stones, 248 Blue butterflies, 117, 130 mountains, 434 Boiling temperature, 307, 380 Bombs, 377 Botanical geography, 268 Bouguer, M., 341 Brambles, 271, 418 Briareus-handed, 57 Broom, 74 Buildings, 36 Building walls, 100, 112, 134 Butter, 253 Cactus, 120, 406, 409 Calculus, 393 Caloric, 208 Camera, 54 Camel, 30 Canadas, 75, 84, 225 Canada del I cod, 262 Canarian Archipelago, 11, 158 Canary group, 19, 74, 423 Canarian guides, 374 Cape boers, 177 Colony, 247, 424, 430 of Good Hope, 23, 344, 430 de Verdes, 158 Capricorni a 2 , 287 Captain-general of the Canaries, 438 Carboniferous period, 414 Careful drawings, 201 Carriages, 430 Carriers, 53, 61 Casa Inglesa, 354 Catastrophic geologists, 414 Cats, 56 Cause, a sufficient, 345 Cavern, 31, 117, 355, 361, 365 Cavernous hollows, 393 Chajorra, 103, 146, 154, 311, 393 Champagne, 20 Chasna, 122, 139, 165, 221 Chemical rays, 402 Chocolate, 397 Churches, 35 Church bells, Spanish, 58 Cinder cone, 237 Cirrous mist, 186, 275 Climate, 436 Clinometer, ship, 15 Cloud deluge, 246 level, 247 sea, 178, 184 Clouds, 275, 288, 290, 315, 319, 331, 432, 440 electric, 8 lines, 11 cirri, 7, 115, 284 cirro-cumuli, 115 cirro-cumulo-stratus, 7, 185, 279 cirrostrati, 7, 284, 382 cumuloni, 3, 10, 20, 186, 208, 279, 382 • cumulostrati, 9 cumulus, 10 : — cumuli, 279, 287, 398 INDEX. 443 Clouds, lightning-cumuli, 8, 208 Coast of Africa, 22 France, 6 Grand Canary, 22 Portugal, 6, 11 Scottish, 21 Cochineal, 120, 406, 407 Codeso, 73, 136 Colossal ruins, 229 Comets, 173 Condensed gases, 388 Conical channels, 357 trunk, 420 Consul, acting Vice-, 45, 53 English, 40 Continental schools, 385 Continued struggle, 281 Cooke, Mr., 282 Coolies, 153, 439 Cordier, M., 310 Corke, Captain, 167, 437 Cosmical egotism, 200 Cosmos Journal, 216 Cotopaxi, 341 Country peasants, 189 Crabs, swimming, 7 Craters, parasitic, 40, 65 Crater, great, 77, 140, 156. 164, 245 of elevation, 150, 157, 368, 384, 389, 439 of eruption, 150, 237, 345, 368, 384, 439 Crosses, 56, 351 Crows, 130, 138, 143, 162 Culinary department, 377, 379 Currents, sea, 22, 320 wind, 169, 170, 280, 432 Cycle, Admiral Smyth’s, test objects from, 192, 287, 293 Cyclones, 183 Cygni, X, 287 Cypresses, 419 Cytisus nubigenus, 74, 135 Daguerre, M., 426 Damsels’ silk attire, 412 Dana, M., 228 Daniell, Mr., Jun., 54 1 — Professor, 175, 434 Darwin, Mr., 24, 158 Date Palm, 413, 428, 429 Day star observations, 187 De la Beche, Sir Henry, 363 De la Rue, Mr., 292 Deluge, 70, 417 Descent into the ice cavern, 352 Deserts of lava and pumice, 430 Dew point depression, 186, 192, 241, 325, 434 Diatom es, 6 Direction of whirl, 182 Distaffs, 35 Distant photography, 401 Doctrine, 410 Dog experiment, 371 Dog-fish, 39 Dogs, 56 Dons of Orotava, 273 Doom booms, 74, 135 Dormitory, 137 Double stars, 287 Draccena Draco, 411, 420 Dragon’s blood, 411 Dragonian theory, 423 Dragonier, 272, 426 Dragon-tree, 412, 419 Drought and light, 195 Druids, 233, 257 Drummond, Lieut., 98 Drummond light, 252 Dry bulb thermometer, 188 Dryness of the air, 115, 133, 192, 241, 275, 434 Dust haze, 102, 105, 126, 133, 174, 278 Dye, elaboration of, 411 Dynamic force, 183, 215 trace, 318 Edinburgh, 114, 131, 186, 192, 206 444 INDEX. Effects of drought, 198, 199 rare atmosphere, 381 Eggs, 380 Egypt, 412, 428 Elastic gases, 365 Electric clouds, 8 Electrical hypothesis, 183 Electricity, 115, 183, 184 Electrometer, 184, 185, 198 Elephant, 404 Endogenous trunk, 413 England, 440 Enthusiasm, 408 Equator, 90, 110 Equatorial, 51, 67, 110, 170 moisture, 207 Equulei, 5, 192 C of /3, 192 B of j8, 287 Erection of the telescope, 283 Errors, 426 Eruptions, 150 Estancia de los Ingleses, 202, 263, 339, 434 Etna, 315, 354 European traveller, 385 Euphorbia Canariensis, 272, 404 Evaporation, 381 Excelsior, 24 Exogenous growth, 414 Expedition, objects of, 48 Experiment, 407 Facts of the case, 341 Fairyland, 140 Fans, 58 Fahrenheit’s thermometer, 213 Ferns, 69, 268 Fetes, 56 Fete, Sunday, 59 Fibrous coverings, 406 Fiction of the ladder, 427 Fiery flood, 366 Figs, 137 Fig trees, 34, 68, 271, 405 Fine definition telescope, 131 Fires, 193, 210 Fires of fishermen, 41 Fire places, 134, 221 wood, 134 Fitzroy, Admiral, 398 Fleas, 63 Flies, 130 Flight of visitors, 323 Flood, 245, 417 Fountain, 31 Forbes, Professor, 355 Forteventura, 299, 315 Fossils, 226 Frauenhofer’s lines, 199 Free-revolver stand, 17 Fringilla Teydensis, 308 Fuel, 378 Fumarole, 54 Furor, 407 Gale, 169 Gallic school, 415 Galileo, 13 Gaimard, Paul, 355 . Garachico, 27, 243 Garden walls, 34, 63 cultivation, 429 Gassiot, J. P., 210 Gautier, M., 36 Gazelle, 404 Generalization, 433 Gigantic roller, 431 Glacier, 146, 356 Glas, Captain, 191, 296 Goats, 69, 117, 164, 188, 231 Goat-herds, 165, 188, 264 Goat’s-milk, 333 Gofio, 191 Gomera, 106, 184, 315 Goodall, Mr., 45, 212, 272, 415, 438 Gordian method, 143 Goths, 420 Grand Canary, 106, 208, 244, 279, 315 Grand mule-path, 437 Grand Mulets, 146 Grand square, 58 INDEX. 445 Grasses, 68, 270, 407, 433 Grasshoppers, 130 Great Bear, 131 Britain, 344 crater, 197, 225, 385 flood, 63, 76 dragonier, 415, 422, 439 Geysir, 376 Greece, 412 Greeks, 30 Green, Mr., 434 Greenstone, 167 Grenadilla, 138 Grooved rocks, 231 Grower, 408 Guajara, 50, 77, 143, 157, 193, 203, 209, 222, 315, 391 Guanche, 189, 191, 197, 365, 374, 391, 420, 423 Guerilla- looking passes, 189 Guides, 295, 301, 336 Guimar, 243 Gum, 411 Hadley, 12 Hail, fall of, 321 Hall, Captain Basil, 206 Hamilton, Mr. , 168, 437 Hawks, 86, 130 Head-dress, 29 Heat, 31 Heaths, 68, 267, 401 Hebrides, 429 Heliacal hypothesis, 215 Heliocentric ring, 298 Heliotropes, 236 Hemispheres, 291 Herschel, Sir John, 14, 124, 175, 208, 426 Hesperides, 415 Hidalgos, 371 Hiero, 106, 315 Hindoo temple, 54 Hollow dome, 357 Hollow trunk, 420, 427 Holy mass, 420 Honduras, 407 Honey, 397 Honeycombed masses, 358 Horses, 276 Horizontal plane, 181 Hottentots, 153 Humboldt, Baron, 32, 196, 296, 311, 337, 373, 425 Hurricanes, 180 Hydrostatic pressure, 361, 367 Hygrometer, 434 Hypericum, 68, 268 Hypsometer, 345 Hypsometric zones, 433 Hypothesis, 347 Iceberg, 146 Ice-cavern, 252, 340, 351, 362, 372, 388 Ice-cavern analogy, 389 Ice-foot, 245 Icelandic example, 355 Ice and water action, 71 Icod, 370 Icod el Alto, 52 Idiosyncrasies, 426 Igneous action, 227 Illustrations to theory, 369 Immersions of stars, 131 India, 220, 422 Indian corn, 271 Indigenous tree, 411 Industry of inhabitants, 429 Infraction of nature’s laws, 247 Inn, 44 Innovation, 407 Inosculating, 414, 422 Insect, 408, 409, 411 Instruments, 273 Instrumental observation, 217 Interior of Teneriffe, 393 Interpreter, 193, 203, 222, 241, 283 Interpretation of the hollows, 365 Island produce, 406 Island supplies, 139 Islenos, 46, 189, 374 446 INDEX. Japan, 215, 220 Jinn, 175 Jukes, Mr., 387 Jupiter, 89, 290 Jupiter’s satellites at sea, 13, 19 Kane, Dr., 245 Karroo, 234 Khamies-berg, 422 Kilauea, 228, 311 King Solomon, 175 Kintel, 408 Koker-boom, 424 Kreitz, Herr, 273, 322 La Condamine, M., 341 Laguna, 34, 242, 340, 431, 437 Lancerote, 105, 158, 299, 315, 341 Land-cloud, 25, 68, 244, 269, 274 Language of drawing, 426 Lateral refraction, 336, 337, 341 Latitudes, 169, 216, 293 Laurels, 69, 269, 419 Lava black, 167 brilliant, 229 caverns, 361 dykes, 64 sheets of, 38 Lava streams, 83, 147, 362, 403 Lawson, Rankin, 286 Lee, Dr. 170 Lenticular form, 217, 298 Lethal, 405 Letters, 206, 333, 338 Lichens, 358 Light, 31, 77, 233, 237, 257 Lightning, 8 Lightning protection, 183 Lily, 412 Lilyencrinites, 414 Lines of cloud, 11 Little craters, 383 Lizards, 130 Lombardy poplar, 419 Longitude, 10 Look-out, 242 Los Corales, 142 Lowth, Bishop, 235 Luminous points, 341 Lunar dawn, 219 heat, 209, 213 Lunarians, 188 Lunar physics, 318 rainbow, 219 “rocks,” 141, 226, 390 striae, 228 Lyrae, a, 192 , D of 13, 192 Madeira, 19, 158, 405 McGillivray, Professor, 424 Magnetic, 198 needle, 211 Magnetometer, 198 Mahometan cosmogony, 104 Malpays, 294, 297, 302, 340, 351, 356, 363 Man missing, 159 Mantilla, 58 Maps, 143 Marketable dye, 411 Marchais, M., 425 Mason, 175 Mathematics, 436 Mathieu, Admiral, 425 Mauna Loa, 361 Maury, Lieut., 3 Mean temperature, 399 Mechanical energy, 182 Mechanics, practical, 17 Medicinal springs, 139 Medusa’s head, 66, 275 Medusae, 5 Melloni, M., 209 Mental effect, 246 Mephitic exhalations, 305 Mesembryanthemum Crystalli- num, 39 Meteoric stones, 215 Meteorologic interregnum, 82 instruments, 241, 260, 278, 297, 324, 398 Meteorological observations, 274 INDEX. 447 Meteorological observatory, 124, 259, 276 Mexican Mines, 35 Microscope, 6, 7 Mirage, 342 Mist stratum, 245 Models, 16, 30 Mode of growth of dracoena, 421 Moist weather, 239 Moisture, 31 Mole, 27, 39, 437 Mont Blanc, 175, 230 Montana Blanco, 154, 230, 249, 275, 311, 393 Monte Somma, 227 Moon, 109, 208, 317 Moon’s rays, 210 Moorish, 31, 37 Morocco, 424 Mosses, white, 270 Mountain flood, 417 Mountains, 436 Mountain sport, 141 Moving, preparations for, 221 Mulberries, 397 Mules, 51, 221 Mule-paths, 271 Muleteers, 52, 60, 237, 265, 271 Mural cliffs, 85, 226 cultivation, 67 Murillo-like groups, 188 Museum of Botany, 420 Myrtle, 31, 419 Nairne, Mr., 14 Narix, 302, 340, 345 Native assistants, 193 Navigation, 22 Nebulous ring, 220 Neptune, 257 Neptunian hills, 65, 93 Neveros, 352, 364, 371 New road, 431 Newton, Sir Isaac, 347, 434, 436 Nimbus cloud, 179 Nineveh, 369 Non-secular progress, 406 Numerical observations, 434 Oasis, 31 Obsidian, 197, 236, 255 Oleander, 31, 428 Omnibus, 430 Optical experiments, 241 questions, 199 room, 200 Optician, 272, 282 Opuntia tuna, 406 Orange, 31, 68, 272 Orotava, 34, 41, 48, 197, 339, 427, 440 Oscillations of stars, 338, 341 Oven, 408 Oxen, 30 Ozone, M., 425 Pack-saddles, 60 Palma, 106, 158, 183, 315 Palm-tree, 34, 57, 414 Panorama, 266 Papau, 397 Parallel observations, 343 Parasitic craters, 40, 65 Pascal, M , 437 Pattinson’s Equatorial, 51, 126, 193, 258, 272, 288, 318, 344 Peaches, 428 Peak of Teyde, 20, 24, 88, 103, 114, 193, 202, 230, 384, 391, 400, 419, 438, 440 Pears, 138 Pichincha, 341 Pecho, 323 Pendulums at sea, 15 Pentacrinites, 414 Penultimate lavas, 261 Peripatetic observatory, 259 Perruque cloud, 185 Peru ores, 35 Phalangium spiniferum, 254 Phenomenon, 215, 220, 335, 341, 343, 344, 355 Phoenix dactylifera, 428 Photographical excursion, 349 448 INDEX. Photographic action, 202 camera, 401, 402 Photo-stereograph, 55, 63, 131, 134, 140, 144, 167, 172, 248, 254, 256, 284, 285, 297, 316, 325, 351, 363, 403, 406, 414 Physical advance, 37 5 astronomy, 150 Physics, 436 Physiological necessity, 42 Pigeons, 87 Pine-trees, 86, 267 Pinus teydensis, 314 Piton crest, 311 Plans, discussion of, 49 Plants, 291 Plant-zones, 433 Plums, 138 Plutonic modus operandi, 367 Pneumatics, 437 Polar bergs, 159 currents, 183 influence, 169 regions, 245, 400 wind, 206 Polarity, 198 Polarization of light, 204 Polyommatus Webbianus, 117 Pompeian side, 386 Portadores, 52 Portillo, 416, 417, 439 Precipice, 163, 166 Price’s candle-lamps, 379 Prickly pears, 138 Prince Adalbert of Prussia, 344 Principles of geology, 392 Projectiles, 376 Proofs of elevation, 391 Proportions of Vesuvius and Tene- riffe, 313 Protea mellifera, 433 Protean cloud, 179 Providential aspect, 406 Pteroplatea Canariensis, 39 Puerto, 418 Pumice, 225, 230, 234, 240, 262, 284, 349, 359, 386, 392 Pumpkins, 34 Quartz train, 202 objective in a camera, 202 Radiation, 174, 177, 232, 242, 354, 409 Radicles, 421 Rain, 204, 266, 283, 325, 359, 360, 417, 431 Ram, 130 Rambleta, 147, 230, 236, 294, 303, 311, 362, 365, 393 Rampart of Icod, 263 Rapilli, 80, 403 craters, 243, 438 Rasca, 315 Ravine, 69, 86, 156, 266, 274, 279, 408, 416 Realejo, 271 Re-ascent, 275 Reconnoitring results, 203 Red dye, 409 Redfield, Mr., 181 Refractive disturbance, 346 Registers, 398 Reid, Colonel, 181 Reiterated question, 333 Relation historique, 346 Relative ages of lava-streams, 149, 151 Rembrandt, 108 Resting-place, 269 Retama, 74, 78, 79, 230, 233, 264, 266 Ride to Villa, 415 Ridge of lava, 372 Rising sun, 177, 400 Rival dyes, 411 Road, 51, 271, 430 of the Guanche kings, 194 Rodriguez, Don Martin, 118, 213, 293, 333, 338 Rolling of ships at sea, 4, 12, 18 Royal Astronomical Society, 338 Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 16 Ruins of a cliff, 167 Rhumkorff, M., 179 Russian furnaces, 378 INDEX, 449 Sabine, General, 175, 434 Sahara, 75 Sailor assistants, 47, 349 Salvages, 20 Santa Cruz, 23, 32, 37, 40, 321, 339, 364, 427, 437 Saturn, 289, 292, 344 Saturation of moisture, 435 Saussure, M., 175, 402, 434 Sauzal, Marquis of, 419, 439 Saxon, 30, 329, 375 Scandinavian, 375 Scarfs, crimson, 29, 64, 188 Scarlet, 28 Scenery of plants, 429 Scientific supervision, 245 Scintillations in general, 308 Scottish macadamizers, 431 Screw-drivers, 273 Sea cloud, 25 Sea of clouds, 106, 133, 244, 279 Seaman observer, 173 Seasons, 373, 397 Secular progress, 150, 158, 393 Sempervivum urbicum, 431 Sextant, 342 Shadow, 108, 233 Sharks, 9 Sheepshanks telescope, 51, 125, 257 Sicily, 315 Sicilian lettiga, 51 Sidereal observations, 193 Sieve, 356 Silence, 211 Sirius, 187 Skapter Jokiill, 375, Sketches, 103, 106 Sledges, 30 Slow growing tree, 411 Small crater, 196, 198 Smith, Mr. Charles, 48, 153, 414 Smoke, 139, 235, 357 Smyth’s, Admiral, Cycle test ob- jects, 192, 287, 293 Snow, 173, 253, 353, 358, 369 Solar heat, 215 illumination, 219 light, 201, 237 radiation, 124, 172, 175, 259, 263, 320 Southern rains, 205 South-west alarm, 110 Spanish guides, 89 maledictions, 276, 405 nun, 252 — peasants, 333 — servants, 259 welcome, 221 Spaniards, 37, 89, 112, 189, 430 Spartacus, 157 Spiders, 130, 254 Spirit lamp, 378 Spoor, 232 Spring of water, 86, Stars, 187, 192, 248, 289, 319 Station on Gruajara, 93, 96 Steam, 235, 244, 304, 346 Stellar light, 288 Stephenson, Mr., 3, 47, 348, 376 Stereotyped route, 227 Stokes, Professor, 202 Stone dykes, 416 shooting of Volcanoes, 377 Storm, 331 Stormy night, 327 Strange light, 257 similitudes, 251 Stratified cliffs, 80 Stratified walls, 242 Streets, 43 Struve, M., 293 Sub-aerial, 387 Submarine, 387 formations, 155, 196 Subsidence, 265 Subterranean tunnel, 391 Sudden light, 416 Sugar-loaf cone, 304, 343 Sulphurous acid vapours, 304 G G 450 INDEX. Sulphur, 30T Summer rain, 205 temperature, 399 Summit of the Peak, 304 Sun, 31, 187, 397 Sunday, 122 Sunrise, 99, 299, 343 Sunset, 300 at sea, 10 Surf, 21, 398 Surtshellir grotto, 355, 361 Suspension, free and stiff, 14, 16 Swallows, 130 Sympathetic eruptions, 243 Sympiesometer, 77 Syria, 428 Tablecloth cloud, 185 Table Mountain, 23, 73, 433 Tables at sea, 14 Tacoronte, 432 Talbot, Mr., 426 Taoro, 383, 403, 427, 439 Tea, 378, 381 Telescopes, 283, 3C2, 333, 4S6, 437, 438 at sea, 12 , 17 Telescope, Sheepshanks, 51, 186 Telescopic vision, 436 Temperature, differences in, 399 of noon and night, 177 of shade, 125, 132, 133, 174, 354 Teno, 315 Tents, 89, 112, 136, 168, 189, 204 Term-day work, 124, 282, 319, 341 Terminal crater, 305 Terrestrial magnetism, 199 Terrible flood, 416 Theory at fault, 337 Thermometer, 209, 241, 275, 379 Thermomultiplier, 209, 213 Thermotic theory, 236 Tide guage, 437, Tigayga, 266, 400, 403, 438 Tiger, 267 Tiro del Guanches, 154 Titania yacht, 3, 16, 167, 438 Tongues of flame, 194 Torrents, 63, 211, 416 Trachyte, 134, 156, 167 mountains, 196 Trachytic lava, 183, 221 Trade-wind, 3, 10, 21, 107, 183,206,382,398, 429 cloud, 107, 109, 186, 435 current, 183 Transparent air, 109, 257 medium, 209 Travelled blocks, 236, 249 Treadmill, 381 Triangular figure, 390 Trough ton, 342 Trumpets, 365, Turf, 269 Turner, 11, 108, 114 Twilight, 109, 132, 215, 343 Tycho, 228 Umbrella, 32, 97, 386 of flame, 379 Uncertainties of text, 347 Unpacking, 273 Upper clouds, 113, 133 Ursse majoris, 7 , 131 5, 132 a, 132 Yal del Bove, 265 Vaporous clouds, 208 Vapour-foot, 266, 345 Vegetation zones, 433 Vent, 243, 345, 365 Verandah, 278 Vesuvian analogies, 157 Vesuvius, 209, 262 Vice-consul’s son, 426 Villa, 418, 439 Vines. 409, 433 INDEX. 451 Vine disease, 407 producing, 406 Viola Teydensis, 116 Visitors, 163, 188 Volcanic, 238 cones, 55 desert, 81 fire, 196, 261 forces, 243 heat, 355 museum, 256 scene, 230 scum, 363 Volcanoes, 40, 65, 311, 317, 388 Von Buch, 143, 155, 158, 226, 296, 368, 387, 432, 439 Voltaic arrangement, 210 Vultures, 162, 175 Waggon, 67 Walls, 100, 262 Wanderer’s return, 165 Water, 116, 252, 269 Water action, 359 barrels, 61, 329, 352 spout, 418 Watteau, 114 Waves, 3, 11, 19, 27, 41, 366, 383, 416 Welsh, Mr., 434 Wet-bulb thermometer, 188, 199 Whales, 5 Wheeled vehicle, 430 Whirlwinds, 180, 184 Wilderness, 233 Wilde, Dr., 296, 400 Wilkes, Capt., 361 Wind, 110, 168, 181, 221, 260, 275, 319, 325, 331, 431, 438 Windmills, 432 Wine, 407 Wollaston, Dr., 199 Yacht, 3, 42, 167, 321, 438 Young dragon-trees, 413 Yuccas, 413 Zach, Baron, 342 Zeal, 398 Zodiacal light, 215, 298, 343 Zone of calms, 5 vegetation, 263 Zoophyte, 414 Zoroaster, 215 THE END. 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