The next morning the Guanches made a part of the company which gave escort to Yermah, as he essayed climbing the still smoking peak. After they had passed the line of vegetation there was naught to be seen save a sea of red rocks, and thirsty yellow pumice.
The scorching sun and blue, unvaried sky condemned everything far and near to barrenness and desolation forever.
Climbing higher, there was no solid rock, no soft earth—nothing but black stones, piled one upon the other so loosely that under the crenellated edge of the sky-line were frequent glimpses of daylight.
It was not necessary for the Guanches to explain that a marvelous bombardment of the heavens had but recently taken place. The wrenching and heaving, when the crater of eruption was active, had cracked the cooling and hardening surface repeatedly, sending masses of cinders and stones rattling down only to be caught and piled one over another fathoms deep.
The granular lava had crystals of white felspar mixed in it, liked chopped straw, which were formed into spherical shells, veined, curved and frothy. Under the varying effects of pressure, the still pasty mass was rolling, falling and crystallizing in grotesque cascades.
In some places the trade-winds had hardened them into wild, dreamlike faces, while some were pictures of contending beasts. Yermah could hear them grinding and crushing in low snarls and growls as they rolled heavily downward.
Many times these writhing and twisting forms threatened to remain forever suspended in mid-air.
The Dorado imagined that he recognized some of the effigies, and was made dizzy and seasick by their ceaseless progression in a community of pain.
How inexpressibly varied were the colors, bathed in the brilliant light of a vertical tropical sun, undimmed by impurities of the lower atmosphere!
The tired and thirsty party halted at the Guajara Springs near the spectral Lunar Rocks of the Cañadas, standing like white teeth newly cast from a granite mouth opened wide enough to admit a tongue of lava thousands of feet higher in air.