“Matanza signifies slaughter, or carnage, and the word alone recalls the price at which victory has been purchased. In the New World it generally indicates the defeat of the natives; at Teneriffe the village Matanza was built in a place where the Spaniards were conquered by those same Guanches who soon after were sold as slaves in the markets of Europe.”
In early winter the terraced ridges, which are cultivated with wheat and potatoes, are a blot in the landscape, brown and bare, but in spring, after the winter rains, these slopes will be transformed into sheets of emerald green, and it is then that the valley looks its best. For a few days, all too few, the almond trees are smothered with their delicate pale pink blooms, but one night’s rain or a few hours’ rough wind will scatter all their blossoms, and nothing will remain of their rosy loveliness but a carpet of bruised and fallen petals.
The valley soon reveals traces of the upheavals of Nature in a bygone age; broad streams of lava, which at some time poured down the valley, remain grey and desolate-looking, almost devoid of vegetation, and the two cinder heaps or fumaroles resembling huge blackened mole-hills, though not entirely bare, cannot be admired. No one seems to know their exact history or age, but it appears pretty certain that they developed perfectly independently of any eruption of the Peak itself, though perhaps not “growing in a single night,” as I was once solemnly assured they had done. One theory, which sounded not improbable, was that the bed of lava on which several English villas, the church and the Grand Hotel have been built, was originally spouted out of one of these cinder heaps, and the hill on which the hotel stands was in former days the edge of the cliff. The lava is supposed to have flowed over the edge and accumulated to such a depth in the sea below that it formed the plateau of low-lying ground on which the Puerto now stands.
The little town is not without attraction, though its streets are dusty and unswept, being only cleaned once a year, in honour of the Feast of Corpus Christi, on which day at the Villa carpets of elaborate design, arranged out of the petals of flowers, run down the centre of the streets where the processions are to pass. My first impression of the town was that it appeared to be a deserted city, hardly a foot passenger was to be seen, and my own donkey was the only beast of burden in the main street of the town. Gorgeous masses of bougainvillea tumbled over garden walls, and glimpses were to be seen through open doorways of creeper-clad patios. The carved balconies with their little tiled roofs are inseparable from all the old houses, more or less decorated according to the importance of the house. The soft green of the woodwork of the houses, and more especially of the solid green shutters or postijos, behind which the inhabitants seem to spend many hours gazing into the streets, was always a source of admiration to me. The main street ends with the mole, and looking seawards the surf appears to dash up into the street itself. The town wakes to life when a cargo steamer comes into the port, and then one long stream of carts, drawn by the finest oxen I have ever seen, finds its way to the mole, to unload the crates of bananas which are frequently sold on the quay itself to the contractors.
THE PEAK, FROM VILLA OROTAVA
II
TENERIFFE (continued)
About a thousand feet above the Puerto de Orotava, on the long gradual slope which sweeps down from Pedro Gil forming the valley of Orotava, lies the villa or town of Orotava. This most picturesque old town is of far more interest than the somewhat squalid port, being the home of many old Spanish families, whose beautiful houses are the best examples of Spanish architecture in the Canaries. Besides their quiet patios, which are shady and cool even on the hottest summer days, the exterior of many of the houses is most beautiful. The admirable work of the carved balconies and shutters, the iron-work and carved stone-work cannot fail to make every one admire houses which are rapidly becoming unique. The Spaniards have, alas! like many other nations, lost their taste in architecture, and the modern houses which are springing up all too quickly make one shudder to contemplate. Some had been built to replace those which had been burnt, others were merely being built by men who had made a fortune in the banana trade. Not satisfied with their old solid houses, with their fine old stone doorways and overhanging wooden balconies, they are ruthlessly destroying them to build a fearsome modern monstrosity, possibly more comfortable to live in, but most offending to the eye. The love of their gardens seems also to be dying out, and as I once heard some one impatiently exclaim, “They have no soul above bananas,” and it is true that the culture of bananas is at the moment of all-absorbing interest.
Though the patios of the houses may be decked with plants, the air being kept cool and moist by the spray of a tinkling fountain, many of the little gardens at the back of these old family mansions have fallen into a sad state of disorder and decay. The myrtle and box hedges, formerly the pride of their owners, are no longer kept trim and shorn, and the little beds are no longer full of flowers. One garden remains to show how, when even slightly tended, flowers grow and flourish in the cooler air of the Villa. In former days a giant chestnut tree was the pride of this garden, only its venerable trunk now remains to tell of its departed glories; but the poyos (double walls) are full of flowers all the year, and the native Pico de paloma (Lotus Berthelotii) flourishes better here than in any other garden; it drapes the walls and half smothers the steps and stone seats with its garlands of soft grey-green, and in spring is covered with its deep red “pigeons’ beaks.” The walls are gay with stocks, carnations, verbenas, lilies, geraniums, and hosts of plants. Long hedges of Libonia floribunda, the bandera d’España of the natives, as its red and yellow blossoms represent the national colours of Spain, line the entrance, and in unconsidered damp corners white arum lilies grow, the rather despised orejas de burros, or donkeys’ ears, of the country people, who give rather apt nick-names to not only flowers, but people.