VI
TENERIFFE (continued)
Icod de los Vinos, a little town on the coast, some seventeen miles from Orotava, was in the days of its prosperity a great centre of the wine and cochineal trade. Its prosperous days are a thing of the past, and to-day it appears to be rather a sleepy little town; but possibly for just this reason it is more picturesque than some of its richer neighbours, whose inhabitants can afford to build modern and most unsightly houses.
The drive from Orotava to Icod is by far the most beautiful drive in the island. Once the dusty stretch of carretera between the junction of the road from Tacoronte to the Puerto is left behind, the drive becomes full of interest. The road passes below the picturesque little village of Realejo Bajo, skirts the towering cliffs on which is perched the little village of Icod el Alto some 1700 ft. above, and winds along the sea shore. Every turn of the road brings into sight a fresh view of the deeply indented coast-line between the storm-bent old tamarisk trees which edge the road for miles. The long avenues of eucalyptus trees, with their ragged bark hanging in strips, will always be associated in my mind with all the carriage roads in Teneriffe. Early in March the vegetation reminds one that spring has begun. The geraniums in the cottage gardens are showing promise of their summer glory, fringing the walls or hanging in long trails from the little flat roof tops. The winter rains have washed the dust off the hedge-rows and banks, and in places where water is dripping from the rocks they are draped with a thick coating of maiden-hair fern, and the pale lilac blossoms of the wild coltsfoot, Cineraria tussilaginis, stud the banks. I should imagine this to have been the parent of the variety known in cultivation as Cineraria stellata, so much grown of late years in English greenhouses. The rocks themselves are studded with the curious flat Sempervivum tabulæformæ, looking like great green nail heads, and S. canariensis was just throwing up flower-spikes from its rosettes of cabbage-like leaves. Here and there a little waterfall gives welcome moisture to water-loving plants. Common brambles, encouraged by the dampness, grow to vast dimensions and hang in rich profusion, winding themselves into cords until they look like the lianes of a tropical forest. Far down in the crevasse below the stone bridges, the long fronds of ferns, the untorn leaves of a seedling banana, with the large leaves of the common yam, suggest a sub-tropical garden.
Between the road and the sea are great stretches of land cultivated with bananas, a mine of wealth to their owners, who now no longer visit their summer residences on these estates. Neglected gardens tell a tale of departed glories, and many of the houses are left to fall to rack and ruin, or are merely inhabited by the medianero who has rented the ground.
Near the outskirts of San Juan de la Rambla a stone arch crosses the road, and just beyond, the deep Barranco Ruiz cuts into the mountain sides. It is a grand rocky ravine, and by a steep narrow path which winds up the side it is possible to reach Icod el Alto at the top of the barranco.
The little town of San Juan de la Rambla is very picturesquely situated, and every traveller is shown the beautifully carved latticed balcony on an old house, as the carriage rattles through the little narrow street. We are told that luckily the balcony is made of the very hard and durable wood of the beautiful native pine, Pinus canariensis, which is rapidly becoming a rare tree in the lower parts of the island. The wood itself is locally called tea, and the trees are called teasolas by the country people, who know no other name for them.
Once San Juan is passed the Peak becomes the centre of interest. The luxuriant vegetation is left behind, the beauty of the coast is forgotten, and the completely different aspect which the Peak presents from this side absorbs one’s attention. The foreground is nothing but rocky ground, but numbers of Cistus Berthelotianus brighten up the barren ground with their bushes of showy rose-coloured flowers. In places they were interspersed with great quantities of asphodels, whose branching spikes of starry white and brownish flowers seem hardly worthy of their romantic name. In reality they have always sadly shattered my mental picture of the asphodel—the chosen flower of the ancients, the flower of blessed oblivion—this surely should have been a superb lily, pure white, and “fields of asphodels” which we read of should be rich green meadows full of moisture, where the lilies should grow knee deep, not arid tufa slopes where erect rods of this strange blossom rise from a cluster of half-starved narrow leaves. The local name is gamona, and in Grand Canary where they abound, one large tract of land is called El llano de las gamonas, the plain of asphodels.
At a higher level begins the Pinar or forest of that most beautiful of all pines, the native Pinus canariensis. Here on the lower cultivated ground the few specimens that remain, having escaped complete destruction, are mostly mutilated, having had all their lower branches cut for firewood or possibly for fear they should shade some little patch of potatoes or onions, and the younger trees resemble a mop more than a tree, with nothing left but a tuft of fluffy branches at the top.
The little town of Icod de los Vinos is prettily situated, being built on a great slope, intersected by many streams of lava. There is a very picturesque Plaza with a little garden and fountain in front of the old convent of San Augustin, whose façade has several carved latticed balconies which are the great beauty of all the old houses in Teneriffe.