Notwithstanding the heat we felt in our feet on the edge of the

crater, the cone of ashes remains covered with snow during several

months in winter. It is probable, that under the cap of snow

considerable hollows are found, like those existing under the

glaciers of Switzerland, the temperature of which is constantly

less elevated than that of the soil on which they repose. The cold

and violent wind, which blew from the time of sunrise, induced us

to seek shelter at the foot of the Piton. Our hands and faces were

nearly frozen, while our boots were burnt by the soil on which we

walked. We descended in the space of a few minutes the Sugar-loaf

which we had scaled with so much toil; and this rapidity was in

part involuntary, for we often rolled down on the ashes. It was

with regret that we quitted this solitude, this domain where Nature

reigns in all her majesty. We consoled ourselves with the hope of

once again visiting the Canary Islands, but this, like many other

plans we then formed, has never been executed.

We traversed the Malpays but slowly; for the foot finds no sure

foundation on the loose blocks of lava. Nearer the station of the

rocks, the descent becomes extremely difficult; the compact

short-swarded turf is so slippery, that we were obliged to incline

our bodies continually backward, in order to avoid falling. In the

sandy plain of Retama, the thermometer rose to 22.5 degrees; and

this heat seemed to us suffocating in comparison with the cold,

which we had suffered from the air on the summit of the volcano. We

were absolutely without water; our guides, not satisfied with

drinking clandestinely the little supply of malmsey wine, for which

we were indebted to Don Cologan's kindness, had broken our water

jars. Happily the bottle which contained the air of the crater

escaped unhurt.

We at length enjoyed the refreshing breeze in the beautiful region

of the arborescent erica and fern; and we were enveloped in a thick

bed of clouds stationary at six hundred toises above the plain. The

clouds having dispersed, we remarked a phenomenon which afterwards

became familiar to us on the declivities of the Cordilleras. Small

currents of air chased trains of cloud with unequal velocity, and

in opposite directions: they bore the appearance of streamlets of

water in rapid motion and flowing in all directions, amidst a great

mass of stagnant water. The causes of this partial motion of the

clouds are probably very various; we may suppose them to arise from

some impulsion at a great distance; from the slight inequalities of

the soil, which reflects in a greater or less degree the radiant

heat; from a difference of temperature kept up by some chemical

action; or perhaps from a strong electric charge of the vesicular

vapours.

As we approached the town of Orotava, we met great flocks of

canaries.* (* Fringilla Canaria. La Caille relates, in the

narrative of his voyage to the Cape, that on Salvage Island these

canaries are so abundant, that you cannot walk there in a certain

season without breaking their eggs.) These birds, well known in

Europe, were in general uniformly green. Some, however, had a

yellow tinge on their backs; their note was the same as that of the

tame canary. It is nevertheless remarked, that those which have

been taken in the island of the Great Canary, and in the islet of

Monte Clara, near Lancerota, have a louder and at the same time a

more harmonious song. In every zone, among birds of the same

species, each flock has its peculiar note. The yellow canaries are

a variety, which has taken birth in Europe; and those we saw in

cages at Orotava and Santa Cruz had been bought at Cadiz, and in

other ports of Spain. But of all the birds of the Canary Islands,

that which has the most heart-soothing song is unknown in Europe.

It is the capirote, which no effort has succeeded in taming, so

sacred to his soul is liberty. I have stood listening in admiration

of his soft and melodious warbling, in a garden at Orotava; but I

have never seen him sufficiently near to ascertain to what family

he belongs. As to the parrots, which were supposed to have been

seen at the period of captain Cook's abode at Teneriffe, they never

existed but in the narratives of a few travellers, who have copied

from each other. Neither parrots nor monkeys inhabit the Canary

Islands; and though in the New Continent the former migrate as far

as North Carolina, I doubt whether in the Old they have ever been

met with beyond the 28th degree of north latitude.

Toward the close of day we reached the port of Orotava, where we

received the unexpected intelligence that the Pizarro would not set

sail till the 24th or 25th. If we could have calculated on this

delay, we should either have lengthened our stay on the Peak,* or

have made an excursion to the volcano of Chahorra. (* As a great

number of travellers who land at Santa Cruz, do not undertake the

excursion to the Peak, because they are ignorant of the time it

occupies, it may be useful to lay down the following data: In

making use of mules as far as the Estancia de los Ingleses, it

takes twenty-one hours from Orotava to arrive at the summit of the

Peak, and return to the port; namely, from Orotava to the Pino del

Dornajito three hours; from the Pino to the Station of the Rocks

six hours; and from this station to the Caldera three hours and a

half. I reckon nine hours for the descent. In this calculation I

count only the time employed in walking, without reckoning that

which is necessary for examining the productions of the Peak, or

for taking rest. Half a day is sufficient for going from Santa Cruz

to Orotava.) We passed the following day in visiting the environs

of Orotava, and enjoying the agreeable company we found at Don

Cologan's. We perceived that Teneriffe had attractions not only to

those who devote themselves to the study of nature: we found at

Orotava several persons possessing a taste for literature and

music, and who have transplanted into these distant climes the

amenity of European society. In these respects the Canary Islands

have no great resemblance to the other Spanish colonies, excepting

the Havannah.

We were present on the eve of St. John at a pastoral fete in the

garden of Mr. Little. This gentleman, who rendered great service to

the Canarians during the last famine, has cultivated a hill covered

with volcanic substances. He has formed in this delicious site an

English garden, whence there is a magnificent view of the Peak, of

the villages along the coast, and the isle of Palma, which is

bounded by the vast expanse of the Atlantic. I cannot compare this

prospect with any, except the views of the bays of Genoa and

Naples; but Orotava is greatly superior to both in the magnitude of

the masses and in the richness of vegetation. In the beginning of

the evening the slope of the volcano exhibited on a sudden a most

extraordinary spectacle. The shepherds, in conformity to a custom,

no doubt introduced by the Spaniards, though it dates from the

highest antiquity, had lighted the fires of St. John. The scattered

masses of fire and the columns of smoke driven by the wind, formed

a fine contrast with the deep verdure of the forests which covered

the sides of the Peak. Shouts of joy resounding from afar were the

only sounds that broke the silence of nature in these solitary

regions.

Don Cologan's family has a country-house nearer the coast than that

I have just mentioned. This house, called La Paz, is connected with

a circumstance that rendered it peculiarly interesting to us. M. de

Borda, whose death we deplored, was its inmate during his last

visit to the Canary Islands. It was in a neighbouring plain that he

measured the base, by which he determined the height of the Peak.

In this geometrical operation the great dracaena of Orotava served

as a mark. Should any well-informed traveller at some future day

undertake a new measurement of the volcano with more exactness, and

by the help of astronomical repeating circles, he ought to measure

the base, not near Orotava, but near Los Silos, at a place called

Bante. According to M. Broussonnet there is no plain near the Peak

of greater extent. In herborizing near La Paz we found a great

quantity of Lichen roccella on the basaltic rocks bathed by the

waters of the sea. The archil of the Canaries is a very ancient

branch of commerce; this lichen is however found in less abundance

in the island of Teneriffe than in the desert islands of Salvage,

La Graciosa, and Alegranza, or even in Canary and Hierro. We left

the port of Orotava on the 24th of June.

To avoid disconnecting the narrative of the excursion to the top of

the Peak, I have said nothing of the geological observations I made

on the structure of this colossal mountain, and on the nature of

the volcanic rocks of which it is composed. Before we quit the

archipelago of the Canaries, I shall linger for a moment, and bring

into one point of view some facts relating to the physical aspect

of those countries.

Mineralogists who think that the end of the geology of volcanoes is

the classification of lavas, the examination of the crystals they

contain, and their description according to their external

characters, are generally very well satisfied when they come back

from the mouth of a burning volcano. They return loaded with those

numerous collections, which are the principal objects of their

research. This is not the feeling of those who, without confounding

descriptive mineralogy (oryctognosy) with geognosy, endeavour to

raise themselves to ideas generally interesting, and seek, in the

study of nature, for answers to the following questions:--

Is the conical mountain of a volcano entirely formed of liquified

matter heaped together by successive eruptions, or does it contain

in its centre a nucleus of primitive rocks covered with lava, which

are these same rocks altered by fire? What are the affinities which

unite the productions of modern volcanoes with the basalts, the

phonolites, and those porphyries with bases of feldspar, which are

without quartz, and which cover the Cordilleras of Peru and Mexico,

as well as the small groups of the Monts Dores, of Cantal, and of

Mezen in France? Has the central nucleus of volcanoes been heated

in its primitive position, and raised up, in a softened state, by

the force of the elastic vapours, before these fluids communicated,

by means of a crater, with the external air? What is the substance,

which, for thousands of years, keeps up this combustion, sometimes

so slow, and at other times so active? Does this unknown cause act

at an immense depth; or does this chemical action take place in

secondary rocks lying on granite?

The farther we are from finding a solution of these problems in the

numerous works hitherto published on Etna and Vesuvius, the greater

is the desire of the traveller to see with his own eyes. He hopes

to be more fortunate than those who have preceded him; he wishes to

form a precise idea of the geological relations which the volcano

and the neighbouring mountains bear to each other: but how often is

he disappointed, when, on the limits of the primitive soil,

enormous banks of tufa and puzzolana render every observation on

the position and stratification impossible! We reach the inside of

the crater with less difficulty than we at first expect; we examine

the cone from its summit to its base; we are struck with the

difference in the produce of each eruption, and with the analogy

which still exists between the lavas of the same volcano; but,

notwithstanding the care with which we interrogate nature, and the

number of partial observations which present themselves at every

step, we return from the summit of a burning volcano less satisfied

than when we were preparing to visit it. It is after we have

studied them on the spot, that the volcanic phenomena appear still

more isolated, more variable, more obscure, than we imagine them

when consulting the narratives of travellers.

These reflections occurred to me on descending from the summit of

the peak of Teneriffe, the first unextinct volcano I had yet

visited. They returned anew whenever, in South America, or in

Mexico, I had occasion to examine volcanic mountains. When we

reflect how little the labours of mineralogists, and the

discoveries in chemistry, have promoted the knowledge of the

physical geology of mountains, we cannot help being affected with a

painful sentiment; and this is felt still more strongly by those,

who, studying nature in different climates, are more occupied by

the problems they have not been able to solve, than with the few

results they have obtained.

The peak of Ayadyrma, or of Echeyde,* (* The word Echeyde, which

signifies Hell in the language of the Guanches, has been corrupted

by the Europeans into Teyde.) is a conic and isolated mountain,

which rises in an islet of very small circumference. Those who do

not take into consideration the whole surface of the globe,

believe, that these three circumstances are common to the greater

part of volcanoes. They cite, in support of their opinion, Etna,

the peak of the Azores, the Solfatara of Guadaloupe, the

Trois-Salazes of the isle of Bourbon, and the clusters of volcanoes

in the Indian Sea and in the Atlantic. In Europe and in Asia, as

far as the interior of the latter continent is known, no burning

volcano is situated in the chains of mountains; all being at a

greater or less distance from those chains. In the New World, on

the contrary, (and this fact deserves the greatest attention,) the

volcanoes the most stupendous for their masses form a part of the

Cordilleras themselves. The mountains of mica-slate and gneiss in

Peru and New Grenada immediately touch the volcanic porphyries of

the provinces of Quito and Pasto. To the south and north of these

countries, in Chile and in the kingdom of Guatimala, the active

volcanoes are grouped in rows. They are the continuation, as we may

say, of the chains of primitive rocks, and if the volcanic fire has

broken forth in some plain remote from the Cordilleras, as in mount

Sangay and Jorullo,* (* Two volcanoes of the Provinces of Quixos

and Mechoacan, the one in the southern, and the other in the

northern hemisphere.) we must consider this phenomenon as an

exception to the law, which nature seems to have imposed on these

regions. I may here repeat these geological facts, because this

presumed isolated situation of every volcano has been cited in

opposition to the idea that the peak of Teneriffe, and the other

volcanic summits of the Canary Islands, are the remains of a

submerged chain of mountains. The observations which have been made

on the grouping of volcanoes in America, prove that the ancient

state of things represented in the conjectural map of the Atlantic

by M. Bory de St. Vincent* (* Whether the traditions of the

ancients respecting the Atlantis are founded on historical facts,

is a matter totally distinct from the question whether the

archipelago of the Canaries and the adjacent islands are the

vestiges of a chain of mountains, rent and sunk in the sea during

one of the great convulsions of our globe. I do not pretend to form

any opinion in favour of the existence of the Atlantis; but I

endeavour to prove, that the Canaries have no more been created by

volcanoes, than the whole body of the smaller Antilles has been

formed by madrepores.) is by no means contradictory to the

acknowledged laws of nature; and that nothing opposes the

supposition that the summits of Porto Santo, Madeira, and the

Fortunate Islands, may heretofore have formed, either a distinct

range of primitive mountains, or the western extremity of the chain

of the Atlas.

The peak of Teyde forms a pyramidal mass like Etna, Tungurahua, and

Popocatepetl. This physiognomic character is very far from being

common to all volcanoes. We have seen some in the southern

hemisphere, which, instead of having the form of a cone or a bell,

are lengthened in one direction, having the ridge sometimes smooth,

and at others bristled with small pointed rocks. This structure is

peculiar to Antisana and Pichincha, two burning mountains of the

province of Quito; and the absence of the conic form ought never to

be considered as a reason excluding the idea of a volcanic origin.

I shall develop, in the progress of this work, some of the

analogies, which I think I have perceived between the physiognomy

of volcanoes and the antiquity of their rocks. It is sufficient to

state, generally speaking, that the summits, which are still

subject to eruptions of the greatest violence, and at the nearest

periods to each other, are SLENDER PEAKS of a conic form; that the

mountains with LENGTHENED SUMMITS, and rugged with small stony

masses, are very old volcanoes, and near being extinguished; and

that rounded tops, in the form of domes, or bells, indicate those

problematic porphyries, which are supposed to have been heated in

their primitive position, penetrated by vapours, and forced up in a

mollified state, without having ever flowed as real lithoidal

lavas. To the first class belong Cotopaxi, the peak of Teneriffe,

and the peak of Orizava in Mexico. In the second may be placed

Cargueirazo and Pichincha, in the province of Quito; the volcano of

Puracey, near Popayan; and perhaps also Hecla, in Iceland. In the

third and last we may rank the majestic figure of Chimborazo, and,

(if it be allowable to place by the side of that colossus a hill of

Europe,) the Great Sarcouy in Auvergne.

In order to form a more exact idea of the external structure of

volcanoes, it is important to compare their perpendicular height

with their circumference. This, however, cannot be done with any

exactness, unless the mountains are isolated, and rising on a plain

nearly on a level with the sea. In calculating the circumference of

the peak of Teneriffe in a curve passing through the port of

Orotava, Garachico, Adexe, and Guimar, and setting aside the

prolongations of its base towards the forest of Laguna, and the

north-east cape of the island, we find that this extent is more

than 54,000 toises. The height of the Peak is consequently one

twenty-eighth of the circumference of its basis. M. von Buch found

a thirty-third for Vesuvius; and, which perhaps is less certain, a

thirty-fourth for Etna.* (* Gilbert, Annalen der Physik B. 5 page

455. Vesuvius is 133,000 palmas, or eighteen nautical miles in

circumference. The horizontal distance from Resina to the crater is

3700 toises. Italian mineralogists have estimated the circumference

of Etna at 840,000 palmas, or 119 miles. With these data, the ratio

of the height to the circumference would be only a seventy-second;

but I find on tracing a curve through Catania, Palermo, Bronte, and

Piemonte, only 62 miles in circumference, according to the best

maps. This increases the ratio to a fifty-fourth. Does the basis

fall on the outside of the curve that I assume?) If the slope of

these three volcanoes were uniform from the summit to the base, the

peak of Teyde would have an inclination of 12 degrees 29 minutes,

Vesuvius 12 degrees 41 minutes, and Etna 10 degrees 13 minutes, a

result which must astonish those who do not reflect on what

constitutes an average slope. In a very long ascent, slopes of

three or four degrees alternate with others which are inclined from

25 to 30 degrees; and the latter only strike our imagination, because

we think all the slopes of mountains more steep than they really are.

I may cite in support of this consideration the example of the

ascent from the port of Vera Cruz to the elevated plain of Mexico.

On the eastern slope of the Cordillera a road has been traced,

which for ages has not been frequented except on foot, or on the

backs of mules. From Encero to the small Indian village of Las

Vigas, there are 7500 toises of horizontal distance; and Encero

being, according to my barometric measurement, 746 toises lower

than Las Vigas, the result, for the mean slope, is only an angle of

5 degrees 40 minutes.

In the following note will be seen the results of some experiments

I have made on the difficulties arising from the declivities in

mountainous countries.*

(* In places where there were at the same time slopes covered with

tufted grass and loose sands, I took the following measures:--

5 degrees, slope of a very marked inclination. In France the high

roads must not exceed 4 degrees 46 minutes by law;

15 degrees, slope extremely steep, and which we cannot descend in a

carriage;

37 degrees, slope almost inaccessible on foot, if the ground be

naked rock, or turf too thick to form steps. The body falls

backwards when the tibia makes a smaller angle than 53 degrees with

the sole of the foot;

42 degrees, the steepest slope that can be climbed on foot in a

ground that is sandy, or covered with volcanic ashes.

When the slope is 44 degrees, it is almost impossible to scale it,

though the ground permits the forming of steps by thrusting in the

foot. The cones of volcanoes have a medium slope from 33 to 40

degrees. The steepest parts of these cones, either of Vesuvius, the

Peak of Teneriffe, the volcano of Pichincha, or Jorullo, are from

40 to 42 degrees. A slope of 55 degrees is quite inaccessible. If

seen from above it would be estimated at 75 degrees.)

Isolated volcanoes, in the most distant regions, are very analogous

in their structure. At great elevations all have considerable

plains, in the middle of which arises a cone perfectly circular.

Thus at Cotopaxi the plains of Suniguaicu extend beyond the farm of

Pansache. The stony summit of Antisana, covered with eternal snow,

forms an islet in the midst of an immense plain, the surface of

which is twelve leagues square, while its height exceeds that of

the peak of Teneriffe by two hundred toises. At Vesuvius, at three

hundred and seventy toises high, the cone detaches itself from the

plain of Atrio dei Cavalli. The peak of Teneriffe presents two of

these elevated plains, the uppermost of which, at the foot of the

Piton, is as high as Etna, and of very little extent; while the

lowermost, covered with tufts of retama, reaches as far as the

Estancia de los Ingleses. This rises above the level of the sea

almost as high as the city of Quito, and the summit of Mount

Lebanon.

The greater the quantity of matter that has issued from the crater

of a mountain, the more elevated is its cone of ashes in proportion

to the perpendicular height of the volcano itself. Nothing is more

striking, under this point of view, than the difference of

structure between Vesuvius, the peak of Teneriffe, and Pichincha. I

have chosen this last volcano in preference, because its summit*

enters scarcely within the limit of the perpetual snows. (* I have

measured the summit of Pichincha, that is the small mountain

covered with ashes above the Llano del Vulcan, to the north of Alto

de Chuquira. This mountain has not, however, the regular form of a

cone. As to Vesuvius, I have indicated the mean height of the

Sugar-loaf, on account of the great difference between the two

edges of the crater.) The cone of Cotopaxi, the form of which is

the most elegant and most regular known, is 540 toises in height;

but it is impossible to decide whether the whole of this mass is

covered with ashes.

TABLE 3: VOLCANOES:

Column 1: Name of the volcano.

Column 2: Total height in toises.

Column 3: Height of the cone covered with ashes.

Column 4: Proportion of the cone to the total height.

Vesuvius : 606 : 200 : 1/3.

Peak of Teneriffe : 1904 : 84 : 1/22.

Pichincha : 2490 : 240 : 1/10.

This table seems to indicate, what we shall have an opportunity of

proving more amply hereafter, that the peak of Teneriffe belongs to

that group of great volcanoes, which, like Etna and Antisana, have

had more copious eruptions from their sides than from their

summits. Thus the crater at the extremity of the Piton, which is

called the Caldera, is extremely small. Its diminutive size struck

M. de Borda, and other travellers, who took little interest in

geological investigations.

As to the nature of the rocks which compose the soil of Teneriffe,

we must first distinguish between productions of the present

volcano, and the range of basaltic mountains which surround the

Peak, and which do not rise more than five or six hundred toises

above the level of the ocean. Here, as well as in Italy, Mexico,

and the Cordilleras of Quito, the rocks of trap-formation* are at a

distance from the recent currents of lava (* The trap-formation

includes the basalts, green-stone (grunstein), the trappean

porphyries, the phonolites or porphyrschiefer, etc.); everything

shows that these two classes of substances, though they owe their

origin to similar phenomena, date from very different periods. It

is important to geology not to confound the modern currents of

lava, the heaps of basalt, green-stone, and phonolite, dispersed

over the primitive and secondary formations, with those porphyroid

masses having bases of compact feldspar,* which perhaps have never

been perfectly liquified, but which do not less belong to the

domain of volcanoes. (* These petrosiliceous masses contain

vitreous and often calcined crystals of feldspar, of amphibole, of

pyroxene, a little of olivine, but scarcely any quartz. To this

very ambiguous formation belong the trappean porphyries of

Chimborazo and of Riobamba in America, of the Euganean mountains in

Italy, and of the Siebengebirge in Germany; as well as the domites

of the Great-Sarcouy, of Puy-de-Dome, of the Little Cleirsou, and

of one part of the Puy-Chopine in Auvergne.)

In the island of Teneriffe, strata of tufa, puzzolana, and clay,

separate the range of basaltic hills from the currents of recent

lithoid lava, and from the eruptions of the present volcano. In the

same manner as the eruptions of Epomeo in the island of Ischia, and

those of Jorullo in Mexico, have taken place in countries covered

with trappean porphyry, ancient basalt, and volcanic ashes, so the

peak of Teyde has raised itself amidst the wrecks of submarine

volcanoes. Notwithstanding the difference of composition in the

recent lavas of the Peak, there is a certain regularity of

position, which must strike the naturalist least skilled in

geognosy. The great elevated plain of Retama separates the black,

basaltic, and earthlike lava, from the vitreous and feldsparry

lava, the basis of which is obsidian, pitch-stone, and phonolite.

This phenomenon is the more remarkable, inasmuch as in Bohemia and

in other parts of Europe, the porphyrschiefer with base of

phonolite* (* Klingstein. Werner.) covers also the convex summits

of basaltic mountains.

It has already been observed, that from the level of the sea to

Portillo, and as far as the entrance on the elevated plain of the

Retama, that is, two-thirds of the total height of the volcano, the

ground is so covered with plants, that it is difficult to make

geological observations. The currents of lava, which we discover on

the slope of Monte Verde, between the beautiful spring of Dornajito

and Caravela, are black masses, altered by decomposition, sometimes

porous, and with very oblong pores. The basis of these lower lavas

is rather wacke than basalt; when it is spongy, it resembles the

amygdaloids* of Frankfort-on-the-Main. (* Wakkenartiger

mandelstein. Steinkaute.) Its fracture is generally irregular;

wherever it is conchoidal, we may presume that the cooling has been

more rapid, and the mass has been exposed to a less powerful

pressure. These currents of lava are not divided into regular

prisms, but into very thin layers, not very regular in their

inclination; they contain much olivine, small grains of magnetic

iron, and augite, the colour of which often varies from deep

leek-green to olive green, and which might be mistaken for

crystallized olivine, though no transition from one to the other of

these substances exists.* (* Steffens, Handbuch der Oryktognosie

tome 1 s. 364. The crystals which Mr. Friesleben and myself have

made known under the denomination of foliated olivine (blattriger

olivin) belong, according to Mr. Karsten, to the pyroxene augite.

Journal des Mines de Freiberg 1791 page 215.) Amphibole is in

general very rare at Teneriffe, not only in the modern lithoid

lavas, but also in the ancient basalts, as has been observed by M.

Cordier, who resided longer at the Canaries than any other

mineralogist. Nepheline, leucite, idocrase, and meionite have not

yet been seen at the peak of Teneriffe; for a reddish-grey lava,

which we found on the slope of Monte Verde, and which contains

small microscopic crystals, appears to me to be a close mixture of

basalt and analcime.* (* This substance, which M. Dolomieu

discovered in the amygdaloids of Catania in Sicily, and which

accompanies the stilbites of Fassa in Tyrol, forms, with the

chabasie of Hauy, the genus Cubicit of Werner. M. Cordier found at

Teneriffe xeolite in an amygdaloid which covers the basalts of La

Punta di Naga.) In like manner the lava of Scala, with which the

city of Naples is paved, contains a close mixture of basalt,

nepheline, and leucite. With respect to this last substance, which

has hitherto been observed only at Vesuvius and in the environs of

Rome, it exists perhaps at the peak of Teneriffe, in the old

currents of lava now covered by more recent ejections. Vesuvius,

during a long series of years, has also thrown out lavas without

leucites: and if it be true, as M. von Buch has rendered very

probable, that these crystals are formed only in the currents which

flow either from the crater itself, or very near its brink, we must

not be surprised at not finding them in the lavas of the peak. The

latter almost all proceed from lateral eruptions, and consequently

have been exposed to an enormous pressure in the interior of the

volcano.

In the plain of Retama, the basaltic lavas disappear under heaps of

ashes, and pumice-stone reduced to powder. Thence to the summit,

from 1500 to 1900 toises in height, the volcano exhibits only

vitreous lava with bases of pitch-stone* (* Petrosilex resinite.

Hauy.) and obsidian. These lavas, destitute of amphibole and mica,

are of a blackish brown, often varying to the deepest olive green.

They contain large crystals of feldspar, which are not fissured,

and seldom vitreous. The analogy of those decidedly volcanic masses

with the resinite porphyries* (* Pechstein-porphyr. Werner.) of the

valley of Tribisch in Saxony is very remarkable; but the latter,

which belong to an extended and metalliferous formation of

porphyry, often contain quartz, which is wanting in the modern

lavas. When the basis of the lavas of the Malpays changes from

pitchstone to obsidian, its colour is paler, and is mixed with

grey; in this case, the feldspar passes by imperceptible gradations

from the common to the vitreous. Sometimes both varieties meet in

the same fragment, as we observed also in the trappean porphyries

of the valley of Mexico. The feldsparry lavas of the Peak, of a

much less black tinge than those of Arso in the island of Ischia,

whiten at the edge of the crater from the effect of the acid

vapours; but internally they are not found to be colourless like

that of the feldsparry lavas of the Solfatara at Naples, which

perfectly resemble the trappean porphyries at the foot of

Chimborazo. In the middle of the Malpays, at the height of the

cavern of ice, we found among the vitreous lavas with pitch-stone

and obsidian bases, blocks of real greenish-grey, or mountain-green

phonolite, with a smooth fracture, and divided into thin laminae,

sonorous and keen edged. These masses were the same as the

porphyrschiefer of the mountain of Bilin in Bohemia; we recognised

in them small long crystals of vitreous feldspar.

This regular disposition of lithoid basaltic lava and feldsparry

vitreous lava is analogous to the phenomena of all trappean

mountains; it reminds us of those phonolites lying in very ancient

basalts, those close mixtures of augite and feldspar which cover

the hills of wacke or porous amygdaloids: but why are the

porphyritic or feldsparry lavas of the Peak found only on the

summit of the volcano? Should we conclude from this position that

they are of more recent formation than the lithoid basaltic lava,

which contains olivine and augite? I cannot admit this last

hypothesis; for lateral eruptions may have covered the feldsparry

nucleus, at a period when the crater had ceased its activity. At

Vesuvius also, we perceive small crystals of vitreous feldspar only

in the very ancient lavas of the Somma. These lavas, setting aside

the leucite, very nearly resemble the phonolitic ejections of the

Peak of Teneriffe. In general, the farther we go back from the

period of modern eruptions, the more the currents increase both in

size and extent, acquiring the character of rocks, by the

regularity of their position, by their division into parallel

strata, or by their independence of the present form of the ground.

The Peak of Teneriffe is, next to Lipari, the volcano that has

produced most obsidian. This abundance is the more striking, as in

other regions of the earth, in Iceland, in Hungary, in Mexico, and

in the kingdom of Quito, we meet with obsidians only at great

distances from burning volcanoes. Sometimes they are scattered over

the fields in angular pieces; for instance, near Popayan, in South

America; at other times they form isolated rocks, as at Quinche,

near Quito. In other places (and this circumstance is very

remarkable), they are disseminated in pearl-stone, as at

Cinapecuaro, in the province of Mechoacan,* (* To the west of the

city of Mexico.) and at the Cabo de Gates, in Spain. At the peak of

Teneriffe the obsidian is not found towards the base of the

volcano, which is covered with modern lava: it is frequent only

towards the summit, especially from the plain of Retama, where very

fine specimens may be collected. This peculiar position, and the

circumstance that the obsidian of the Peak has been ejected by a

crater which for ages past has thrown out no flames, favour the

opinion, that volcanic vitrifications, wherever they are found, are

to be considered as of very ancient formation.

Obsidian, jade, and Lydian-stone,* (* Lydischerstein.) are three

minerals, which nations ignorant of the use of copper or iron, have

in all ages employed for making keen-edged weapons. We see that

wandering hordes have dragged with them, in their distant journeys,

stones, the natural position of which the mineralogist has not yet

been able to determine. Hatchets of jade, covered with Aztec

hieroglyphics, which I brought from Mexico, resemble both in their

form and nature those made use of by the Gauls, and those we find

among the South Sea islanders. The Mexicans dug obsidian from

mines, which were of vast extent; and they employed it for making

knives, sword-blades, and razors. In like manner the Guanches, (in

whose language obsidian was called tabona,) fixed splinters of that

mineral to the ends of their lances. They carried on a considerable

trade in it with the neighbouring islands; and from the consumption

thus occasioned, and the quantity of obsidian which must have been

broken in the course of manufacture, we may presume that this

mineral has become scarce from the lapse of ages. We are surprised

to see an Atlantic nation substituting, like the natives of

America, vitrified lava for iron. In both countries this variety of

lava was employed as an object of ornament: and the inhabitants of

Quito made beautiful looking-glasses with an obsidian divided into

parallel laminae.

There are three varieties of obsidian at the Peak. Some form

enormous blocks, several toises long, and often of a spheroidal

shape. We might suppose that they had been thrown out in a softened

state, and had afterwards been subject to a rotary motion. They

contain a quantity of vitreous feldspar, of a snow-white colour,

and the most brilliant pearly lustre. These obsidians are,

nevertheless, but little transparent on the edges; they are almost

opaque, of a brownish black, and of an imperfect conchoidal

fracture. They pass into pitch-stone; and we may consider them as

porphyries with a basis of obsidian. The second variety is found in

fragments much less considerable. It is in general of a greenish

black, sometimes of murky grey, very seldom of a perfect black,

like the obsidian of Hecla and Mexico. Its fracture is perfectly

conchoidal, and it is extremely transparent on the edges. I have

found in it neither amphibole nor pyroxene, but some small white

points, which seem to be feldspar. None of the obsidians of the

Peak appear in those grey masses of pearl or lavender-blue,

striped, and in separate wedge-formed pieces, like the obsidian of

Quito, Mexico, and Lipari, and which resemble the fibrous plates of

the crystalites of our glass-houses, on which Sir James Hall, Dr.

Thompson, and M. de Bellevue, have published some curious

observations.* (* The name crystalites has been given to the

crystalized thin plates observed in glass cooling slowly. The term

glastenized glass is employed by Dr. Thompson and others to

indicate glass which by slow cooling is wholly unvitrified, and has

assumed the appearance of a fossil substance, or real glass-stone.)

The third variety of obsidian of the Peak is the most remarkable of

the whole, from its connexion with pumice-stone. It is, like that

above described, of a greenish black, sometimes of a murky grey,

but its very thin plates alternate with layers of pumice-stone. Dr.

Thomson's fine collection at Naples contained similar examples of

lithoid lava of Vesuvius, divided into very distinct plates, only a

line thick. The fibres of the pumice-stone of the Peak are very

seldom parallel to each other, and perpendicular to the strata of

obsidian; they are most commonly irregular, asbestoidal, like

fibrous glass-gall; and instead of being disseminated in the

obsidian, like crystalites, they are found simply adhering to one

of the external surfaces of this substance. During my stay at

Madrid, M. Hergen showed me several specimens in the mineralogical

collection of Don Jose Clavijo; and for a long time the Spanish

mineralogists considered them as furnishing undoubted proofs, that

pumice-stone owes its origin to obsidian, in some degree deprived

of colour, and swelled by volcanic fire. I was formerly of this

opinion, which, however, must be understood to refer to one variety

only of pumice. I even thought, with many other geologists, that

obsidian, so far from being vitrified lava, belonged to rocks that

were not volcanic; and that the fire, forcing its way through the

basalts, the green-stone rocks, the phonolites, and the porphyries

with bases of pitchstone and obsidian, the lavas and pumice-stone

were no other than these same rocks altered by the action of the

volcanoes. The deprivation of colour and extraordinary swelling

which the greater part of the obsidians undergo in a forge-fire,

their transition into pitch-stone, and their position in regions

very distant from burning volcanoes, appear to be phenomena very

difficult to reconcile, when we consider the obsidians as volcanic

glass. A more profound study of nature, new journeys, and

observations made on the productions of burning volcanoes, have led

me to renounce those ideas.

It appears to me at present extremely probable, that obsidians, and

porphyries with bases of obsidian, are vitrified masses, the

cooling of which has been too rapid to change them into lithoid

lava. I consider even the pearlstone as an unvitrified obsidian:

for among the minerals in the King's cabinet at Berlin there are

volcanic glasses from Lipari, in which we see striated crystalites,

of a pearl-grey colour, and of an earthy appearance, forming

gradual approaches to a granular lithoid lava, like the pearlstone

of Cinapecuaro, in Mexico. The oblong bubbles observed in the

obsidians of every continent are incontestible proofs of their

ancient state of igneous fluidity; and Dr. Thompson possesses

specimens from Lipari, which are very instructive in this point of

view, because fragments of red porphyry, or porphyry lavas, which

do not entirely fill up the cavities of the obsidian, are found

enveloped in them. We might say, that these fragments had not time

to enter into complete solution in the liquified mass. They contain

vitreous feldspar, and augite, and are the same as the celebrated

columnar porphyries of the island of Panaria, which, without having

been part of a current of lava, seem raised up in the form of

hillocks, like many of the porphyries in Auvergne, in the Euganean

mountains, and in the Cordilleras of the Andes.

The objections against the volcanic origin of obsidians, founded on

their speedy loss of colour, and their swelling by a slow fire,

have been shaken by the ingenious experiments of Sir James Hall.

These experiments prove, that a stone which is fusible only at

thirty-eight degrees of Wedgwood's pyrometer, yields a glass that

softens at fourteen degrees; and that this glass, melted again and

unvitrified (glastenized), is fusible again only at thirty-five

degrees of the same pyrometer. I applied the blowpipe to some black

pumice-stone from the volcano of the isle of Bourbon, which, on the

slightest contact with the flame, whitened and melted into an

enamel.

But whether obsidians be primitive rocks which have undergone the

action of volcanic fire, or lavas repeatedly melted within the

crater, the origin of the pumice-stones contained in the obsidian

of the Peak of Teneriffe is not less problematic. This subject is

the more worthy of being investigated, since it is generally

interesting to the geology of volcanoes; and since that excellent

mineralogist, M. Fleuriau de Bellevue, after having examined Italy

and the adjacent islands with great attention, affirms, that it is

highly improbable that pumice-stone owes its origin to the swelling

of obsidian.

The experiments of M. da Camara, and those I made in 1802, tend to

support the opinion, that the pumice-stones adherent to the

obsidians of the Peak of Teneriffe do not unite to them

accidentally, but are produced by the expansion of an elastic

fluid, which is disengaged from the compact vitreous matter. This

idea had for a long time occupied the mind of a person highly

distinguished for his talents and reputation at Quito, who,

unacquainted with the labours of the mineralogists of Europe, had

devoted himself to researches on the volcanoes of his country. Don

Juan de Larea, one of those men lately sacrificed to the fury of

faction, had been struck with the phenomena exhibited by obsidians

exposed to a white heat. He had thought, that, wherever volcanoes

act in the centre of a country covered with porphyry with base of

obsidian, the elastic fluids must cause a swelling of the liquified

mass, and perform an important part in the earthquakes preceding

eruptions. Without adopting an opinion, which seems somewhat bold,

I made, in concert with M. Larea, a series of experiments on the

tumefaction of the volcanic vitreous substances at Teneriffe, and

on those which are found at Quinche, in the kingdom of Quito. To

judge of the augmentation of their bulk, we measured pieces exposed

to a forge-fire of moderate heat, by the water they displaced from

a cylindric glass, enveloping the spongy mass with a thin coating

of wax. According to our experiments, the obsidians swelled very

unequally: those of the Peak and the black varieties of Cotopaxi

and of Quinche increased nearly five times their bulk.

The colour of the pumice-stones of the Peak leads to another

important observation. The sea of white ashes which encircles the

Piton, and covers the vast plain of Retama, is a certain proof of

the former activity of the crater: for in all volcanoes, even when

there are lateral eruptions, the ashes and the rapilli issue

conjointly with the vapours only from the opening at the summit of

the mountain. Now, at Teneriffe, the black rapilli extend from the

foot of the Peak to the sea-shore; while the white ashes, which are

only pumice ground to powder, and among which I have discovered,

with a lens, fragments of vitreous feldspar and pyroxene,

exclusively occupy the region next to the Peak. This peculiar

distribution seems to confirm the observations made long ago at

Vesuvius, that the white ashes are thrown out last, and indicate

the end of the eruption. In proportion as the elasticity of the

vapours diminishes, the matter is thrown to a less distance; and

the black rapilli, which issue first, when the lava has ceased

running, must necessarily reach farther than the white rapilli. The

latter appear to have been exposed to the action of a more intense

fire.

I have now examined the exterior structure of the Peak, and the

composition of its volcanic productions, from the region of the

coast to the top of the Piton:--I have endeavoured to render these

researches interesting, by comparing the phenomena of the volcano

of Teneriffe with those that are observed in other regions, the

soil of which is equally undermined by subterranean fires. This

mode of viewing Nature in the universality of her relations is no

doubt adverse to the rapidity desirable in an itinerary; but it

appears to me that, in a narrative, the principal end of which is

the progress of physical knowledge, every other consideration ought

to be subservient to those of instruction and utility. By isolating

facts, travellers, whose labours are in every other respect

valuable, have given currency to many false ideas of the pretended

contrasts which Nature offers in Africa, in New Holland, and on the

ridge of the Cordilleras. The great geological phenomena are

subject to regular laws, as well as the forms of plants and

animals. The ties which unite these phenomena, the relations which

exist between the varied forms of organized beings, are discovered

only when we have acquired the habit of viewing the globe as a

great whole; and when we consider in the same point of view the

composition of rocks, the causes which alter them, and the

productions of the soil, in the most distant regions.

Having treated of the volcanic substances of the isle of Teneriffe,

there now remains to be solved a question intimately connected with

the preceding investigation. Does the archipelago of the Canary

Islands contain any rocks of primitive or secondary formation; or

is there any production observed, that has not been modified by

fire? This interesting problem has been considered by the

naturalists of Lord Macartney's expedition, and by those who

accompanied captain Baudin in his voyage to the Austral regions.

Their opinions are in direct opposition to each other; and the

contradiction is the more striking, as the question does not refer

to one of those geological reveries which we are accustomed to call

systems, but to a positive fact.

Doctor Gillan imagined that he observed, between Laguna and the

port of Orotava, in very deep ravines, beds of primitive rocks.

This, however, is a mistake. What Dr. Gillan calls somewhat

vaguely, mountains of hard ferruginous clay, are nothing but an

alluvium which we find at the foot of every volcano. Strata of clay

accompany basalts, as tufas accompany modern lavas. Neither M.

Cordier nor myself observed in any part of Teneriffe a primitive

rock, either in its natural place, or thrown out by the mouth of

the Peak; and the absence of these rocks characterizes almost every

island of small extent that has an unextinguishied volcano. We know

nothing positive of the mountains of the Azores; but it is certain,

that the island of Bourbon as well as Teneriffe, exhibits only a

heap of lavas and basalts. No volcanic rock rears its head, either

on the Gros Morne, or on the volcano of Bourbon, or on the colossal

pyramid of Cimandef, which is perhaps more elevated than the Peak

of the Canary Islands.

Bory St. Vincent nevertheless asserted, that lavas including

fragments of granite have been found on the elevated plain of

Retama; and M. Broussonnet informed me, that on a hill above

Guimar, fragments of mica-slate, containing beautiful plates of

specular iron, had been found. I can affirm nothing respecting the

accuracy of this latter statement, which it would be so much the

more important to verify, as M. Poli, of Naples, is in possession

of a fragment of rock thrown out by Vesuvius,* which I found to be

a real mica-slate. (* In the valuable collection of Dr. Thomson,

who resided at Naples till 1805, is a fragment of lava enclosing a

real granite, which is composed of reddish feldspar with a pearly

lustre like adularia, quartz, mica, hornblende, and, what is very

remarkable, lazulite. But in general the masses of known primitive

rocks, (I mean those which perfectly resemble our granites, our

gneiss, and our mica-slates) are very rare in lavas; the substances

we commonly denote by the name of granite, thrown out by Vesuvius,

are mixtures of nepheline, mica, and pyroxene. We are ignorant

whether these mixtures constitute rocks sui generis placed under

granite, and consequently of more ancient date; or simply form

either intermediate strata on veins, in the interior of the

primitive mountains, the tops of which appear at the surface of the

globe.) Every thing that tends to enlighten us with respect to the

site of the volcanic fire, and the position of rocks subject to its

action, is highly interesting to geology.

It is possible, that at the Peak of Teneriffe, the fragments of

primitive rocks thrown out by the mouth of the volcano may be less

rare than they at present appear to be, and may be heaped together

in some ravine, not yet visited by travellers. In fact, at

Vesuvius, these same fragments are met with only in one single

place, at the Fossa Grande, where they are hidden under a thick

layer of ashes. If this ravine had not long ago attracted the

attention of naturalists, when masses of granular limestone, and

other primitive rocks, were laid bare by the rains, we might have

thought them as rare at Vesuvius, as they are, at least in

appearance, at the Peak of Teneriffe.

With respect to the fragments of granite, gneiss, and mica-slate,

found on the shores of Santa Cruz and Orotava, they were probably

brought in ships as ballast. They no more belong to the soil where

they lie, than the feldsparry lavas of Etna, seen in the pavements

of Hamburg and other towns of the north. The naturalist is exposed

to a thousand errors, if he lose sight of the changes, produced on

the surface of the globe by the intercourse between nations. We

might be led to say, that man, when expatriating himself; is

desirous that everything should change country with him. Not only

plants, insects, and different species of small quadrupeds, follow

him across the ocean; his active industry covers the shores with

rocks, which he has torn from the soil in distant climes.

Though it be certain, that no scientific observer has hitherto

found at Teneriffe primitive strata, or even those trappean and

ambiguous porphyries, which constitute the bases of Etna, and of

several volcanoes of the Andes, we must not conclude from this

isolated fact, that the whole archipelago of the Canaries is the

production of submarine fires. The island of Gomera contains

mountains of granite and mica-slate; and it is, undoubtedly, in

these very ancient rocks, that we must seek there, as well as on

all other parts of the globe, the centre of the volcanic action.

Amphibole, sometimes pure and forming intermediate strata, at other

times mixed with granite, as in the basanites or basalts of the

ancients, may, of itself, furnish all the iron contained in the

black and stony lavas. This quantity amounts in the basalt of the

modern mineralogists only to 0.20, while in amphibole it exceeds 0.

30.

From several well-informed persons, to whom I addressed myself, I

learned that there are calcareous formations in the Great Canary,

Forteventura, and Lancerota.* (* At Lancerota calcareous stone is

burned to lime with a fire made of the alhulaga, a new species of

thorny and arborescent Sonchus.) I was not able to determine the

nature of this secondary rock; but it appears certain, that the

island of Teneriffe is altogether destitute of it; and that in its

alluvial lands it exhibits only clayey calcareous tufa, alternating

with volcanic breccia, said to contain, (near the village of La

Rambla, at Calderas, and near Candelaria,) plants, imprints of

fishes, buccinites, and other fossil marine productions. M. Cordier

brought away some of this tufa, which resembles that in the

environs of Naples and Rome, and contains fragments of reeds. At

the Salvages, which islands La Perouse took at a distance for

masses of scoriae, even fibrous gypsum is found.

I had seen, while herborizing between the port of Orotava and the

garden of La Paz, heaps of greyish calcareous stones, of an

imperfect conchoidal fracture, and analogous to that of Mount Jura

and the Apennines. I was informed that these stones were extracted

from a quarry near Rambla; and that there were similar quarries

near Realejo, and the mountain of Roxas, above Adexa. This

information led me into an error. As the coasts of Portugal consist

of basalts covering calcareous rocks containing shells, I imagined

that a trappean formation, like that of the Vicentin in Lombardy,

and of Harutsh in Africa, might have extended from the banks of the

Tagus and Cape St. Vincent as far as the Canary Islands; and that

the basalts of the Peak might perhaps conceal a secondary

calcareous stone. These conjectures exposed me to severe

animadversions from M. G.A. de Luc, who is of opinion that every

volcanic island is only an accumulation of lavas and scoriae. M. de

Luc declares it is impossible that real lava should contain

fragments of vegetable substances. Our collections, however,

contain pieces of trunks of palm-trees, enclosed and penetrated by

the very liquid lava of the isle of Bourbon.

Though Teneriffe belongs to a group of islands of considerable

extent, the Peak exhibits nevertheless all the characteristics of a

mountain rising on a solitary islet. The lead finds no bottom at a

little distance from the ports of Santa Cruz, Orotava, and

Garachico: in this respect it is like St. Helena. The ocean, as

well as the continents, has its mountains and its plains; and, if

we except the Andes, volcanic cones are formed everywhere in the

lower regions of the globe.

As the Peak rises amid a system of basalts and old lava, and as the

whole part which is visible above the surface of the waters

exhibits burnt substances, it has been supposed that this immense

pyramid is the effect of a progressive accumulation of lavas; or

that it contains in its centre a nucleus of primitive rocks. Both

of these suppositions appear to me ill-founded. I think there is as

little probability that mountains of granite, gneiss, or primitive

calcareous stone have existed where we now see the tops of the

Peak, of Vesuvius, and of Etna, as in the plains where almost in

our own time has been formed the volcano of Jorullo, which is more

than a third of the height of Vesuvius. On examining the

circumstances which accompanied the formation of the new island,

called Sabrina, in the archipelago of the Azores;* (* At Sabrina

island, near St. Michael's, the crater opened at the foot of a

solid rock, of almost a cubical form. This rock, surmounted by a

small elevated plain perfectly level, is more than two hundred

toises in breadth. Its formation was anterior to that of the

crater, into which, a few days after its opening, the sea made an

irruption. At Kameni, the smoke was not even visible till

twenty-six days after the appearance of the upheaved rocks.

Philosophical Transactions volume 26 pages 69 and 200, volume 27

page 353. All these phenomena, on which Mr. Hawkins collected very

valuable observations during his abode at Santorino, are

unfavourable to the idea commonly entertained of the origin of

volcanic mountains. They are usually ascribed to a progressive

accumulation of liquified matter, and the diffusion of lavas

issuing from a central mouth.) on carefully reading the minute and

simple narrative, given by the Jesuit Bourguignon of the slow

appearance of the islet of the little Kameni, near Santorino; we

find that these extraordinary eruptions are generally preceded by a

swelling of the softened crust of the globe. Rocks appear above the

waters before the flames force their way, or lavas issue from the

crater: we must distinguish between the nucleus raised up, and the

mass of lavas and scoriae, which successively increases its

dimensions.

It is true that from all existing records of revolutions of this

kind, the perpendicular height of the stony nucleus appears never

to have exceeded one hundred and fifty or two hundred toises; even

taking into the account the depth of the sea, the bottom of which

had been lifted up: but when considering the great effects of

nature, and the intensity of its forces, the bulk of the masses

must not deter the geologist in his speculations. Every thing

indicates that the physical changes of which tradition has

preserved the remembrance, exhibit but a feeble image of those

gigantic catastrophes which have given mountains their present

form, changed the positions of the rocky strata, and buried

sea-shells on the summits of the higher Alps. Doubtless, in those

remote times which preceded the existence of the human race, the

raised crust of the globe produced those domes of trappean

porphyry, those hills of isolated basalt on vast elevated plains,

those solid nuclei which are clothed in the modern lavas of the

Peak, of Etna, and of Cotopaxi. The volcanic revolutions have

succeeded each other after long intervals, and at very different

periods: of this we see the vestiges in the transition mountains,

in the secondary strata, and in those of alluvium. Volcanoes of

earlier date than the sandstone and calcareous rocks have been for

ages extinguished; those which are yet in activity are in general

surrounded only with breccias and modern tufas; but nothing hinders

us from admitting, that the archipelago of the Canaries may exhibit

some real rocks of secondary formation, if we recollect that

subterranean fires have been there rekindled in the midst of a

system of basalts and very ancient lavas.

We seek in vain in the Periplus of Hanno or of Scylax for the first

written notions on the eruptions of the Peak of Teneriffe. Those

navigators sailed timidly along the coast, anchoring every evening

in some bay, and had no knowledge of a volcano distant fifty-six

leagues from the coast of Africa. Hanno nevertheless relates, that

he saw torrents of light, which seemed to fall on the sea; that

every night the coast was covered with fire; and that the great

mountain, called the Car of the Gods, appeared to throw up sheets

of flame, which rose even to the clouds. But this mountain,

situated northward of the island of the Gorilli, formed the western

extremity of the Atlas chain; and it is also very uncertain whether

the flames seen by Hanno were the effect of some volcanic eruption,

or whether they must be attributed to the custom, common to many

nations, of setting fire to the forests and dry grass of the

savannahs. In our own days similar doubts were entertained by the

naturalists, who, in the voyage of d'Entrecasteaux, saw the island

of Amsterdam covered with a thick smoke. On the coast of the

Caracas, trains of reddish fire, fed by the burning grass, appeared

to me, for several nights, under the delusive semblance of a

current of lava, descending from the mountains, and dividing itself

into several branches.

Though the narratives of Hanno and Scylax, in the state in which

they have reached us, contain no passage which we can reasonably

apply to the Canary Islands, it is very probable that the

Carthaginians, and even the Phoenicians, had some knowledge of the

Peak of Teneriffe. In the time of Plato and Aristotle, vague

notions of it had reached the Greeks, who considered the whole of

the coast of Africa, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as thrown into

disorder by the fire of volcanoes. The Abode of the Blessed, which

was sought first in the north, beyond the Riphaean mountains, among

the Hyperboreans, and next to the south of Cyrenaica, was supposed

to be situated in regions that were considered to be westward,

being the direction in which the world known to the ancients

terminated. The name of Fortunate Islands was long in as vague

signification, as that of El Dorado among the conquerors of

America. Happiness was thought to reside at the end of the earth,

as we seek for the most exquisite enjoyments of the mind in an

ideal world beyond the limits of reality.* (* The idea of the

happiness, the great civilization, and the riches of the

inhabitants of the north, was common to the Greeks, to the people

of India, and to the Mexicans.)

We must not be surprised that, previous to the time of Aristotle,

we find no accurate notion respecting the Canary Islands and the

volcanoes they contain, among the Greek geographers. The only

nation whose navigations extended toward the west and the north,

the Carthaginians, were interested in throwing a veil of mystery

over those distant regions. While the senate of Carthage was averse

to any partial emigration, it pointed out those islands as a place

of refuge in times of trouble and public misfortune; they were to

the Carthaginians what the free soil of America has become to

Europeans amidst their religious and civil dissensions.

The Canaries were not better known to the Romans till eighty-four

years before the reign of Augustus. A private individual was

desirous of executing the project, which wise foresight had

dictated to the senate of Carthage. Sertorius, conquered by Sylla,

and weary of the din of war, looked out for a safe and peaceable

retreat. He chose the Fortunate Islands, of which a delightful

picture had been drawn for him on the shores of Baetica. He

carefully combined the notions he acquired from travellers; but in

the little that has been transmitted to us of those notions, and in

the more minute descriptions of Sebosus and Juba, there is no

mention of volcanoes or volcanic eruptions. Scarcely can we

recognise the isle of Teneriffe, and the snows with which the

summit of the Peak is covered in winter, in the name of Nivaria,

given to one of the Fortunate Islands. Hence we might conclude,

that the volcano at that time threw out no flames, if it were

allowable so to interpret the silence of a few authors, whom we

know only by short fragments or dry nomenclatures. The naturalist

vainly seeks in history for documents of the first eruptions of the

Peak; he nowhere finds any but in the language of the Guanches, in

which the word Echeyde denotes, at the same time, hell and the

volcano of Teneriffe.

Of all the written testimonies, the oldest I have found in relation

to the activity of this volcano dates from the beginning of the

sixteenth century. It is contained in the narrative of the voyage

of Aloysio Cadamusto, who landed at the Canaries in 1505. This

traveller was witness of no eruptions, but he positively affirms

that, like Etna, this mountain burns without interruption, and that

the fire has been seen by christians held in slavery by the

Guanches of Teneriffe. The Peak, therefore, was not at that time in

the state of repose in which we find it at present; for it is

certain that no navigator or inhabitant of Teneriffe has seen issue

from the mouth of the Peak, I will not say flames, but even any

smoke visible at a distance. It would be well, perhaps, were the

funnel of the Caldera to open anew; the lateral eruptions would

thereby be rendered less violent, and the whole group of islands

would be less endangered by earthquakes.

The eruptions of the Peak have been very rare for two centuries

past, and these long intervals appear to characterize volcanoes

highly elevated. The smallest one of all, Stromboli, is almost

always burning. At Vesuvius, the eruptions are rarer than formerly,

though still more frequent than those of Etna and the Peak of

Teneriffe. The colossal summits of the Andes, Cotopaxi and

Tungurahua, scarcely have an eruption once in a century. We may

say, that in active volcanoes the frequency of the eruptions is in

the inverse ratio of the height and the mass. The Peak also had

seemed extinguished during ninety-two years, when, in 1798, it made

its last eruption by a lateral opening formed in the mountain of

Chahorra. In this interval Vesuvius had sixteen eruptions.

The whole of the mountainous part of the kingdom of Quito may be

considered as an immense volcano, occupying more than seven hundred

square leagues of surface, and throwing out flames by different

cones, known under the particular denominations of Cotopaxi,

Tungurahua, and Pichincha. The group of the Canary Islands is

situated on the same sort of submarine volcano. The fire makes its

way sometimes by one and sometimes by another of these islands.

Teneriffe alone contains in its centre an immense pyramid

terminating in a crater, and throwing out, from one century to

another, lava by its flanks. In the other islands, the different

eruptions have taken place in various parts; and we nowhere find

those isolated mountains to which the volcanic effects are

confined. The basaltic crust, formed by ancient volcanoes, seems

everywhere undermined; and the currents of lava, seen at Lancerota

and Palma, remind us, by every geological affinity, of the eruption

which took place in 1301 at the island of Ischia, amid the tufas of

Epomeo.

The exclusively lateral action of the peak of Teneriffe is a

geological phenomenon, the more remarkable as it contributes to

make the mountains which are backed by the principal volcano appear

isolated. It is true, that in Etna and Vesuvius the great flowings

of lava do not proceed from the crater itself, and that the

abundance of melted matter is generally in the inverse ratio of the

height of the opening whence the lava is ejected. But at Vesuvius

and Etna a lateral eruption constantly terminates by flashes of

flame and by ashes issuing from the crater, that is, from the

summit of the mountain. At the Peak this phenomenon has not been

witnessed for ages: and yet recently, in the eruption of 1798, the

crater remained quite inactive. Its bottom did not sink in; while

at Vesuvius, as M. von Buch has observed, the greater or less depth

of the crater is an infallible indication of the proximity of a new

eruption.

I might terminate these geological sketches by enquiring into the

nature of the combustible which has fed for so many thousands of

years the fire of the peak of Teneriffe;--I might examine whether

it be sodium or potassium, the metallic basis of some earth,

carburet of hydrogen, or pure sulphur combined with iron, that

burns in the volcano;--but wishing to limit myself to what may be

the object of direct observation, I shall not take upon me to solve

a problem for which we have not yet sufficient data. We know not

whether we may conclude, from the enormous quantity of sulphur

contained in the crater of the Peak, that it is this substance

which keeps up the heat of the volcano; or whether the fire, fed by

some combustible of an unknown nature, effects merely the

sublimation of the sulphur. What we learn from observation is, that

in craters which are still burning, sulphur is very rare; while all

the ancient volcanoes end in becoming sulphur-pits. We might

presume that, in the former, the sulphur is combined with oxygen,

while, in the latter, it is merely sublimated; for nothing hitherto

authorises us to admit that it is formed in the interior of

volcanoes, like ammonia and the neutral salts. When we were yet

unacquainted with sulphur, except as disseminated in the

muriatiferous gypsum and in the Alpine limestone, we were almost

forced to the belief, that in every part of the globe the volcanic

fire acted on rocks of secondary formation; but recent observations

have proved that sulphur exists in great abundance in those

primitive rocks which so many phenomena indicate as the centre of

the volcanic action. Near Alausi, at the back of the Andes of

Quito, I found an immense quantity in a bed of quartz, which formed

a layer of mica-slate. This fact is the more important, as it is in

strict conformity with the conclusions deduced from the observation

of those fragments of ancient rocks which are thrown out intact by

volcanoes.

We have just considered the island of Teneriffe merely in a

geological point of view; we have seen the Peak towering amid

fractured strata of basalt and mandelstein; let us examine how

these fused masses have been gradually adorned with vegetable

clothing, what is the distribution of plants on the steep declivity

of the volcano, and what is the aspect or physiognomy of vegetation

in the Canary Islands.

In the northern part of the temperate zone, the cryptogamous plants

are the first that cover the stony crust of the globe. The lichens

and mosses, that develop their foliage beneath the snows, are

succeeded by grumina and other phanerogamous plants. This order of

vegetation differs on the borders of the torrid zone, and in the

countries between the tropics. We there find, it is true, whatever

some travellers may have asserted, not only on the mountains, but

also in humid and shady places, almost on a level with the sea,

Funaria, Dicranum, and Bryum; and these genera, among their

numerous species, exhibit several which are common to Lapland, to

the Peak of Teneriffe, and to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. (This

extraordinary fact was first observed by M. Swarz. It was confirmed

by M. Willdenouw when he carefully examined our herbals, especially

the collection of cryptogamous plants, which we gathered on the

tops of the Andes, in a region of the world where organic life is

totally different from that of the old world.) Nevertheless, in

general, it is not by mosses and lichens that vegetation in the

countries near the tropics begins. In the Canary Islands, as well

as in Guinea, and on the rocky coasts of Peru, the first vegetation

which prepares the soil are the succulent plants; the leaves of

which, provided with an infinite number of orifices* (* The pores

corticaux of M. Decandolle, discovered by Gleichen, and figured by

Hedwig.) and cutaneous vessels, deprive the ambient air of the

water it holds in solution. Fixed in the crevices of volcanic

rocks, they form, as it were, that first layer of vegetable earth

with which the currents of lithoid lava are clothed. Wherever these

lavas are scorified, and where they have a shining surface, as in

the basaltic mounds to the north of Lancerota, the development of

vegetation is extremely slow, and many ages may pass away before

shrubs can take root. It is only when lavas are covered with tufa

and ashes, that the volcanic islands, losing that appearance of

nudity which marks their origin, bedeck themselves in rich and

brilliant vegetation.

In its present state, the island of Teneriffe, the Chinerfe* (* Of

Chinerfe the Europeans have formed, by corruption, Tchineriffe and

Teneriffe.) of the Guanches, exhibits five zones of plants, which

we may distinguish by the names--region of vines, region of

laurels, region of pines, region of the retama, and region of

grasses. These zones are ranged in stages, one above another, and

occupy, on the steep declivity of the Peak, a perpendicular height

of 1750 toises; while fifteen degrees farther north, on the

Pyrenees, snow descends to thirteen or fourteen hundred toises of

absolute elevation. If the plants of Teneriffe do not reach the

summit of the volcano, it is not because the perpetual snow and the

cold of the surrounding atmosphere mark limits which they cannot

pass; it is the scorified lava of the Malpays, the powdered and

barren pumice-stone of the Piton, which impede the migration of

plants towards the brink of the crater.

The first zone, that of the vines, extends from the sea-shore to

two or three hundred toises of height; it is that which is most

inhabited, and the only part carefully cultivated. In the low

regions, at the port of Orotava, and wherever the winds have free

access, the centigrade thermometer stands in winter, in the months

of January and February, at noon, between fifteen and seventeen

degrees; and the greatest heats of summer do not exceed twenty-five

or twenty-six degrees. The mean temperature of the coasts of

Teneriffe appears at least to rise to twenty-one degrees (16.8

degrees Reaumur); and the climate in those parts keeps at the

medium between the climate of Naples and that of the torrid zone.

The region of the vines exhibits, among its vegetable productions,

eight kinds of arborescent Euphorbia; Mesembrianthema, which are

multiplied from the Cape of Good Hope to the Peloponnesus; the

Cacalia Kleinia, the Dracaena, and other plants, which in their

naked and tortuous trunks, in their succulent leaves, and their

tint of bluish green, exhibit distinctive marks of the vegetation

of Africa. It is in this zone that the date-tree, the plantain, the

sugar-cane, the Indian fig, the Arum Colocasia, the root of which

furnishes a nutritive fecula, the olive-tree, the fruit trees of

Europe, the vine, and corn are cultivated. Corn is reaped from the

end of March to the beginning of May: and the culture of the

bread-fruit tree of Otaheite, that of the cinnamon tree of the

Moluccas, the coffee-tree of Arabia, and the cacao-tree of America,

have been tried with success. On several points of the coast the

country assumes the character of a tropical landscape; and we

perceive that the region of the palms extends beyond the limits of

the torrid zone. The chamaerops and the date-tree flourish in the

fertile plains of Murviedro, on the coasts of Genoa, and in

Provence, near Antibes, between the thirty-ninth and forty-fourth

degrees of latitude; a few trees of the latter species, planted

within the walls of the city of Rome, resist even the cold of 2.5

degrees below freezing point. But if the south of Europe as yet

only partially shares the gifts lavished by nature on the zone of

palms, the island of Teneriffe, situated on the parallel of Egypt,

southern Persia, and Florida, is adorned with the greater part of

the vegetable forms which add to the majesty of the landscape in

the regions near the equator.

On reviewing the different tribes of indigenous plants, we regret

not finding trees with small pinnated leaves, and arborescent

gramina. No species of the numerous family of the sensitive-plants

has migrated as far as the archipelago of the Canary Islands, while

on both continents they have been seen in the thirty-eighth and

fortieth degrees of latitude. On a more careful examination of the

plants of the islands of Lancerota and Forteventura, which are

nearest the coast of Morocco, we may perhaps find a few mimosas

among many other plants of the African flora.

The second zone, that of the laurels, comprises the woody part of

Teneriffe: this is the region of the springs, which gush forth

amidst turf always verdant, and never parched with drought. Lofty

forests crown the hills leading to the volcano, and in them are

found four species of laurel,* (* Laurus indica, L. foetens, L.

nobilis, and L. Til. With these trees are mingled the Ardisia

excelsa, Rhamnus glandulosus, Erica arborea and E. texo.) an oak

nearly resembling the Quercus Turneri* (* Quercus canariensis,

Broussonnet.) of the mountains of Tibet, the Visnea mocanera, the

Myrica Faya of the Azores, a native olive (Olea excelsa), which is

the largest tree of this zone, two species of Sideroxylon, the

leaves of which are extremely beautiful, the Arbutus callicarpa,

and other evergreen trees of the family of myrtles. Bindweeds, and

an ivy very different from that of Europe (Hedera canariensis)

entwine the trunks of the laurels; at their feet vegetate a

numberless quantity of ferns,* (* Woodwardia radicans, Asplenium

palmatum, A. canariensis, A. latifolium, Nothalaena subcordata,

Trichomanes canariensis, T. speciosum, and Davallia canariensis.)

of which three species* (* Two Acrostichums and the Ophyoglossum

lusitanicum.) alone descend as low as the region of the vines. The

soil, covered with mosses and tender grass, is enriched with the

flowers of the Campanula aurea, the Chrysanthemum pinnatifidum, the

Mentha canariensis, and several bushy species of Hypericum.* (*

Hypericum canariense, H. floribundum, and H. glandulosum.)

Plantations of wild and grafted chestnut-trees form a broad border

round the region of the springs, which is the greenest and most

agreeable of the whole.

In the third zone (beginning at nine hundred toises of absolute

height), the last groups of Arbutus, of Myrica Faya, and of that

beautiful heath known to the natives by the name of Texo, appear.

This zone, four hundred toises in breadth, is entirely filled by a

vast forest of pines, among which mingles the Juniperus cedro of

Broussonnet. The leaves of these pines are very long and stiff, and

they sprout sometimes by pairs, but oftener by threes in one

sheath. Having had no opportunity of examining the fructification,

we cannot say whether this species, which has the appearance of the

Scotch fir, is really different from the eighteen species of pines

with which we are already acquainted in Europe. M. Decandolle is of

opinion that the pine of Teneriffe is equally distinct from the

Pinus atlantica of the neighbouring mountains of Mogador, and from

the pine of Aleppo,* (* Pinus halepensis. M. Decandolle observes,

that this species, which is not found in Portugal, but grows on the

Mediterranean shores of France, Spain, and Italy, in Asia Minor,

and in Barbary, would be better named Pinus mediterranea. It

composes the principal part of the pine-forests of the south-east

of France, where Gouan and Gerard have confounded it with the Pinus

sylvestris. It comprehends the Pinus halepensis, Mill., Lamb., and

Desfont., and the Pinus maritima, Lamb.) which belongs to the basin

of the Mediterranean, and does not appear to have passed the

Pillars of Hercules. We met with these last pines on the slope of

the Peak, near twelve hundred toises above the level of the sea. In

the Cordilleras of New Spain, under the torrid zone, the Mexican

pines extend to the height of two thousand toises. Notwithstanding

the similarity of structure existing between the different species

of the same genus of plants, each of them requires a certain degree

of temperature and rarity in the ambient air to attain its due

growth. If in temperate climates, and wherever snow falls, the

uniform heat of the soil be somewhat above the mean heat of the

atmosphere, it is probable that at the height of Portillo the roots

of the pines draw their nourishment from a soil, in which, at a

certain depth, the thermometer rises at most to nine or ten

degrees.

The fourth and fifth zones, the regions of the retama and the

gramina, occupy heights equal to the most inaccessible summits of

the Pyrenees. It is the sterile part of the island where heaps of

pumice-stone, obsidian, and broken lava, form impediments to

vegetation. We have already spoken of those flowery tufts of alpine

broom (Spartium nubigenum), which form oases amidst a vast desert

of ashes. Two herbaceous plants, the Scrophularia glabrata and the

Viola cheiranthifolia, advance even to the Malpays. Above a turf

scorched by the heat of an African sun, an arid soil is overspread

by the Cladonia paschalis. Towards the summit of the Peak the

Urceolarea and other plants of the family of the lichens, help to

work the decomposition of the scorified matter. By this unceasing

action of organic force the empire of Flora is extended over

islands ravaged by volcanoes.

On surveying the different zones of the vegetation of Teneriffe, we

perceive that the whole island may be considered as a forest of

laurels, arbutus, and pines, containing in its centre a naked and

rocky soil, unfit either for pasturage or cultivation. M.

Broussonnet observes, that the archipelago of the Canaries may be

divided into two groups of islands; the first comprising Lancerota

and Forteventura, the second Teneriffe, Canary, Gomera, Ferro, and

Palma. The appearance of the vegetation essentially differs in

these two groups. The eastern islands, Lancerota and Forteventura,

consist of extensive plains and mountains of little elevation; they

have very few springs, and bear the appearance, still more than the

other islands, of having been separated from the continent. The

winds blow in the same direction, and at the same periods: the

Euphorbia mauritanica, the Atropa frutescens, and the arborescent

Sonchus, vegetate there in the loose sands, and afford, as in

Africa, food for camels. The western group of the Canaries presents

a more elevated soil, is more woody, and is watered by a greater

number of springs.

Though the whole archipelago contains several plants found also in

Portugal,* (* M. Willdenouw and myself found, among the plants of

the peak of Teneriffe, the beautiful Satyrium diphyllum (Orchis

cordata, Willd.) which Mr. Link discovered in Portugal. The

Canaries have, in common with the Flora of the Azores, not the

Dicksonia culcita, the only arborescent heath found at the

thirty-ninth degree of latitude, but the Asplenium palmatum, and

the Myrica Faya. This last tree is met with in Portugal, in a wild

state. Count Hoffmansegg has seen very old trunks of it; but it was

doubtful whether it was indigenous, or imported into that part of

our continent. In reflecting on the migrations of plants, and on

the geological possibility, that lands sunk in the ocean may have

heretofore united Portugal, the Azores, the Canaries, and the chain

of Atlas, we conceive, that the existence of the Myrica Faya in

western Europe is a phenomenon at least as striking as that of the

pine of Aleppo would be at the Azores.), in Spain, at the Azores,

and in the north-west of Africa, yet a great number of species, and

even some genera, are peculiar to Teneriffe, to Porto Santo, and to

Madeira. Such are the Mocanera, the Plocama, the Bosea, the

Canarina, the Drusa, and the Pittosporum. A form which may be

called northern, that of the cruciform plant (Among the small

number of cruciform species contained in the Flora of Teneriffe, we

shall here mention Cheiranthus longifolius, l'Herit.; Ch.

fructescens, Vent.; Ch. scoparius, Brouss.; Erysimum bicorne,

Aiton; Crambe strigosa, and C. laevigata, Brouss.), is much rarer

in the Canaries than in Spain and in Greece. Still farther to the

south, in the equinoctial regions of both continents, where the

mean temperature of the air rises above twenty-two degrees, the

cruciform plants are scarcely ever to be seen.

A question highly interesting to the history of the progressive

marks of organization on the globe has been very warmly discussed

in our own times, that of ascertaining whether the polymorphous

plants are more common in the volcanic islands. The vegetation of

Teneriffe is unfavourable to the hypothesis that nature in new

countries is but little subject to permanent forms. M. Broussonnet,

who resided so long at the Canaries, asserts that the variable

plants are not more common there than in the south of Europe. May

it not to be presumed, that the polymorphous species, which are so

abundant in the isle of Bourbon, are assignable to the nature of

the soil and climate rather than to the newness of the vegetation?

Before we take leave of the old world to pass into the new, I must

advert to a subject which is of general interest, because it

belongs to the history of man, and to those fatal revolutions which

have swept off whole tribes from the face of the earth. We inquire

at the isle of Cuba, at St. Domingo, and in Jamaica, where is the

abode of the primitive inhabitants of those countries? We ask at

Teneriffe what is become of the Guanches, whose mummies alone,

buried in caverns, have escaped destruction? In the fifteenth

century almost all mercantile nations, especially the Spaniards and

the Portuguese, sought for slaves at the Canary Islands, as in

later times they have been sought on the coast of Guinea.* (* The

Spanish historians speak of expeditions made by the Huguenots of

Rochelle to carry off Guanche slaves. I have some doubt respecting

these expeditions, which are said to have taken place subsequently

to the year 1530.) The Christian religion, which in its origin was

so highly favourable to the liberty of mankind, served afterwards

as a pretext to the cupidity of Europeans. Every individual, made

prisoner before he received the rite of baptism, became a slave. At

that period no attempt had yet been made to prove that the blacks

were an intermediate race between man and animals. The swarthy

Guanche and the African negro were simultaneously sold in the

market of Seville, without a question whether slavery should be the

doom only of men with black skins and woolly hair.

The archipelago of the Canaries was divided into several small

states hostile to each other, and in many instances the same island

was subject to two independent princes. The trading nations,

influenced by the hideous policy still exercised on the coast of

Africa, kept up intestine warfare. One Guanche then became the

property of another, who sold him to the Europeans; several, who

preferred death to slavery, killed themselves and their children.

The population of the Canaries had considerably suffered by the

slave trade, by the depredations of pirates, and especially by a

long period of carnage, when Alonzo de Lugo completed the conquest

of the Guanches. The surviving remnants of the race perished mostly

in 1494, in the terrible pestilence called the modorra, which was

attributed to the quantity of dead bodies left exposed in the open

air by the Spaniards after the battle of La Laguna. The nation of

the Guanches was extinct at the beginning of the seventeenth

century; a few old men only were found at Candelaria and Guimar.

It is, however, consoling to find that the whites have not always

disdained to intermarry with the natives; but the Canarians of the

present day, whom the Spaniards familiarly call Islenos

(Islanders), have very powerful motives for denying this mixture.

In a long series of generations time effaces the characteristic

marks of a race; and as the descendants of the Andalusians settled

at Teneriffe are themselves of dark complexion, we may conceive

that intermarriages cannot have produced a perceptible change in

the colour of the whites. It is very certain that no native of pure

race exists in the whole island. It is true that a few Canarian

families boast of their relationship to the last shepherd-king of

Guimar, but these pretensions do not rest on very solid

foundations, and are only renewed from time to time when some

Canarian of more dusky hue than his countrymen is prompted to

solicit a commission in the service of the king of Spain.

A short time after the discovery of America, when Spain was at the

highest pinnacle of her glory, the gentle character of the Guanches

was the fashionable topic, as we in our times laud the Arcadian

innocence of the inhabitants of Otaheite. In both these pictures

the colouring is more vivid than true. When nations, wearied with

mental enjoyments, behold nothing in the refinement of manners but

the germ of depravity, they are pleased with the idea, that in some

distant region, in the first dawn of civilization, infant society

enjoys pure and perpetual felicity. To this sentiment Tacitus owed

a part of his success, when he sketched for the Romans, subjects of

the Caesars, a picture of the manners of the inhabitants of

Germany. The same sentiment gives an ineffable charm to the

narrative of those travellers who, at the close of the last

century, visited the South Sea Islands.

The inhabitants of those islands, too much vaunted (and previously

anthropophagi), resemble, under more than one point of view, the

Guanches of Teneriffe. Both nations were under the yoke of feudal

government. Among the Guanches, this institution, which facilitates

and renders a state of warfare perpetual, was sanctioned by

religion. The priests declared to the people: "The great Spirit,

Achaman, created first the nobles, the achimenceys, to whom he

distributed all the goats that exist on the face of the earth.

After the nobles, Achaman created the plebeians, achicaxnas. This

younger race had the boldness to petition also for goats; but the

supreme Spirit answered, that this race was destined to serve the

nobles, and that they had need of no property." This tradition was

made, no doubt, to please the rich vassals of the shepherd-kings.

The faycan, or high priest, also exercised the right of conferring

nobility; and the law of the Guanches expressed that every

achimencey who degraded himself by milking a goat with his own

hands, lost his claim to nobility. This law does not remind us of

the simplicity of the Homeric age. We are astonished to see the

useful labours of agriculture, and of pastoral life, exposed to

contempt at the very dawn of civilization.

The Guanches, famed for their tall stature, were the Patagonians of

the old world. Historians exaggerated the muscular strength of the

Guanches, as, previous to the voyage of Bougainville and Cordoba,

colossal proportions were attributed to the tribe that inhabited

the southern extremity of America. I never saw Guanche mummies but

in the cabinets of Europe. At the time I visited the Canaries they

were very scarce; a considerable number, however, might be found if

miners were employed to open the sepulchral caverns which are cut

in the rock on the eastern slope of the Peak, between Arico and

Guimar. These mummies are in a state of desiccation so singular,

that whole bodies, with their integuments, frequently do not weigh

above six or seven pounds; or a third less than the skeleton of an

individual of the same size, recently stripped of the muscular

flesh. The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to

that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the incisive

teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the mummies found

on the banks of the Nile. But this form of teeth is the result of

art; and on examining more carefully the physiognomy of the ancient

Canarians, Blumenbach and other able anatomists have recognized in

the cheek bones and the lower jaw perceptible differences from the

Egyptian mummies. On opening those of the Guanches, remains of

aromatic plants are discovered, among which the Chenopodium

ambrosioides is constantly perceived: the bodies are often

decorated with small laces, to which are hung little discs of baked

earth, which appear to have served as numerical signs, and resemble

the quippoes of the Peruvians, the Mexicans, and the Chinese.

The population of islands being in general less exposed than that

of continents to the effect of migrations, we may presume that, in

the time of the Carthaginians and the Greeks, the archipelago of

the Canaries was inhabited by the same race of men as were found by

the Norman and Spanish conquerors. The only monument that can throw

any light on the origin of the Guanches is their language; but

unhappily there are not above a hundred and fifty words extant, and

several express the same object, according to the dialect of the

different islanders. Independently of these words, which have been

carefully noted, there are still some valuable fragments existing

in the names of a great number of hamlets, hills, and valleys. The

Guanches, like the Biscayans, the Hindoos, the Peruvians, and all

primitive nations, named places after the quality of the soil, the

shape of the rocks, the caverns that gave them shelter, and the

nature of the tree that overshadowed the springs.*

(* It has been long imagined, that the language of the Guanches had

no analogy with the living tongues; but since the travels of

Hornemann, and the ingenious researches of Marsden and Venturi,

have drawn the attention of the learned to the Berbers, who, like

the Sarmatic tribes, occupy an immense extent of country in the

north of Africa, we find that several Guanche words have common

roots with words of the Chilha and Gebali dialects. We shall cite,

for instance, the words:

TABLE OF WORDS.

Column 1: Word.

Column 2: In Guanche.

Column 3: In Berberic.

Heaven : Tigo : Tigot.

Milk : Aho : Acho.

Barley : Temasen : Tomzeen.

Basket : Carianas : Carian.

Water : Aenum : Anan.

I doubt whether this analogy is a proof of a common origin; but it

is an indication of the ancient connexion between the Guanches and

Berbers, a tribe of mountaineers, in which the ancient Numidians,

Getuli, and Garamanti are confounded, and who extend themselves

from the eastern extremity of Atlas by Harutsh and Fezzan, as far

as the oasis of Siwah and Augela. The natives of the Canary Islands

called themselves Guanches, from guan, man; as the Tonguese call

themselves bye, and tongui, which have the same signification as

guan. Besides the nations who speak the Berberic language are not

all of the same race; and the description which Scylax gives, in

his Periplus, of the inhabitants of Cerne, a shepherd people of

tall stature and long hair, reminds us of the features which

characterize the Canarian Guanches.)

The greater attention we direct to the study of languages in a

philosophical point of view, the more we must observe that no one

of them is entirely distinct. The language of the Guanches would

appear still less so, had we any data respecting its mechanism and

grammatical construction; two elements more important than the form

of words, and the identity of sounds. It is the same with certain

idioms, as with those organized beings that seem to shrink from all

classification in the series of natural families. Their isolated

state is merely apparent; for it ceases when, on embracing a

greater number of objects, we come to discover the intermediate

links. Those learned enquirers who trace Egyptians wherever there

are mummies, hieroglyphics, or pyramids, will imagine perhaps that

the race of Typhon was united to the Guanches by the Berbers, real

Atlantes, to whom belong the Tibboes and the Tuarycks of the

desert: but this hypothesis is supported by no analogy between the

Berberic and Coptic languages, which are justly considered as

remnants of the ancient Egyptian.

The people who have succeeded the Guanches are descended from the

Spaniards, and in a more remote degree from the Normans. Though

these two races have been exposed during three centuries past to

the same climate, the latter is distinguished by the fairer

complexion. The descendants of the Normans inhabit the valley of

Teganana, between Punta de Naga and Punta de Hidalgo. The names of

Grandville and Dampierre are still pretty common in this district.

The Canarians are a moral, sober, and religious people, of a less

industrious character at home than in foreign countries. A roving

and enterprising disposition leads these islanders, like the

Biscayans and Catalonians, to the Philippines, to the Ladrone

Islands, to America, and wherever there are Spanish settlements,

from Chile and La Plata to New Mexico. To them we are in a great

measure indebted for the progress of agriculture in those colonies.

The whole archipelago does not contain 160,030 inhabitants, and the

Islenos are perhaps more numerous in the new continent than in

their own country.