The Canary Islands

by Florence Du Cane

A SPANISH GARDEN

Hierro, the Isle of Iron, is to the extreme south-west of the Canary Archipelago, and for several centuries was probably regarded by ancient navigators as the most western point in the world—beyond lay the unknown. The name is a corruption by the Spaniards of the word heres, which in the language of the original Ben-bachirs, whose name was in its turn changed to Bembachos, meant a small reservoir or tank for collecting rain water. As the island is almost entirely dependent on the rainfall these tanks were of the greatest value to the natives, and in old records it is stated that a here was much more valued in a marriage settlement than land. The theory that the island was called hierro, meaning iron, because of the presence of the metal in the island is not much regarded, as we are especially told by old historians that when Bethencourt attacked the island the natives were armed with lances which had not iron heads, and the historian adds, the only iron these natives knew was from the chains of their oppressors, who appear to have treated them with great cruelty.

The excessive moisture of the air and the presence of a fair amount of wooded country which attracts the moisture, enables the flocks of sheep to live on the natural vegetation. The only water they get is from eating leaves of plants when saturated with dew, their principal fodder being the leaves and even roots of asphodel, also mulberry and fig leaves. Hierro is especially celebrated for its figs, which are the best grown in any of the islands, and extremely free fruiting. One tree alone may bear 400 lb. of fruit.

The best-known springs are those of Los Llanillos, which furnishes the best drinking water in the islands, being said to be always clear and cold, and the spring of Sabinosa. The latter is warm, smells of sulphur, and has a bitter taste and medicinal properties. One of Bethencourt’s chaplains mentions that it has a great merit: “When you have eaten till you can eat no more, you then drink a glass of this water, and after an hour all the meat is digested, and you feel just as hungry as you did before you began, and can begin all over again!”

There is no sea-port village, the landing-place consisting merely of a small cove sheltered by masses of fallen rock, and the little capital of Valverde lies two hours distant on foot. As practically no accommodation is to be relied on, those who are bent on exploring the island are recommended to provide themselves with a tent. The vegetation is said to be of great interest to botanists, and they appear to be the only travellers who ever visit the island.

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HISTORICAL SKETCH

Few people, until they are proposing to pay a visit to the “Fortunate Islands,” a name by which the group of seven Canary Islands seems to have been known since very early days, ever trouble themselves to learn anything of their history. Beyond the fact that they belong to Spain, a piece of information probably surviving from their school-room days, they have never troubled their heads about them, and I have known a look of surprise come over the face of an Englishwoman on hearing a Spaniard mention a fact which probably dated “from before the Conquest, quite five centuries ago,” entirely forgetting that “the Conquest” could mean anything but the English conquest, instead of the conquest of the Canary Islands by the Spaniards at the latter end of the fifteenth century.

Possibly the reason that so few authentic records remain of their ancient history is that though the outlying islands of the group are only some 80 or 100 miles from the African coast, still they were on the extreme limit of the ancient world. The various theories that they were really the home of the Hesperides, or the garden of Atlas, King of Mauretania, where the golden apple was guarded by the dragon, the Peak being the Mount Atlas of mythology, or again that they were merely the remains of the sunken continent of Atlantis, can never really be settled, but it seems almost certain that they were not entirely unknown to the ancients. The fact that Homer mentions an island “beyond the Pillars of Hercules,” as the Straits of Gibraltar were called, has caused the adoption of the Pillars of Hercules, with a small island in the distance surmounted with Oce ano, as one of the coats-of-arms of the Islands, though the more correct one appears to be the two large dogs (because of the two native dogs which were taken back to King Juba about 50 B.C., when he sent ships from Mauretania to inspect Canaria) supporting a shield on which is depicted the seven islands. Herodotus in his description of the countries beyond Libya says that, “the world ends where the sea is no longer navigable, in that place where are the gardens of the Hesperides, where Atlas supports the sky on a mountain as conical as a cylinder.” Hesiod says that “Jupiter sent dead heroes to the end of the world, to the Fortunate Islands, which are in the middle of the ocean.” There is no doubt that the Romans, on re-discovering the Islands, christened them Insulæ Fortunatæ, which name has clung to them ever since.