Between Matunza and Orotara the vegetation is magnificent, and the luxuriant foliage of the vine enhances the beauty of the view. Orotara is a small seaboard town, with a port affording but little shelter. It is well-built and laid out, and would be comfortable enough if the streets were not so steep as to make traffic all but impossible. After three-quarters of an hour's climb through well-cultivated fields, the Frenchmen reached the chestnut-tree region, beyond which begin the clouds, taking the form of a thick moist fog, very disagreeable to the traveller. Further on comes the furze region, beyond which the atmosphere again becomes clear, vegetation disappears, the ground becomes poorer and more barren. Here are met with decomposed lava, scoria, and pumice-stones in great abundance, whilst below stretches away the boundless sea of clouds.
Thus far hidden by clouds or by the lofty mountains surrounding it, the peak at last stands forth distinctly, the incline becomes less steep, and those vast plains of intensely melancholy appearance, called Cañadas by the Spanish, on account of their bareness, are crossed. A halt is made for lunch at the Pine grotto before climbing the huge blocks of basalt ranged in a circle about the crater, now filled in with ashes from the peak, and forming its enceinte. The peak itself is next attached, the ascent of which is broken one-third of the way up by a sort of esplanade called the Estancia de los Ingleses. Here our travellers passed the night, not perhaps quite so comfortably as they would have done in their berths, but without suffering too much from the feeling of suffocation experienced by other explorers. The fleas, however, were very troublesome, and their unremitting attacks kept the commander awake all night.
At four a.m. the ascent was resumed, and a second esplanade, called the Alta Vista, was soon reached, beyond which all trace of a path disappears, the rest of the ascent being over rough lava as far as the Chahorra Cone, with here and there, in the shade, patches of unmelted snow. The peak itself is very steep, and its ascent is rendered yet more arduous by the pumice-stone which rolls away beneath the feet.
"At thirty-five minutes past six," says M. Dumont d'Urville, "we arrived at the summit of the Chahorra, which is evidently a half-extinct crater. Its sides are thin and sloping, it is from sixty to eighty feet deep, and the whole surface is strewn with fragments of obsidian, pumice-stones, and lava. Sulphureous vapour, forming a kind of crown of smoke, is emitted from it, whilst the atmosphere at the bottom is perfectly cool. At the summit of the peak the thermometer marked 11°, but in my opinion it was affected by the presence of the fumerolles, for when at the bottom of the crater it fell rapidly from 19° in the sun to 9° 5' in the shade."
The descent was accomplished without accident by another route, enabling our travellers to examine the Cueva de la Nieve, and to visit the forest of Aqua Garcia, watered by a limpid stream, and in which D'Urville made a rich collection of botanical specimens.
In Major Megliorini's rooms at Santa Cruz the commander was shown, together with a number of weapons, shells, animals, fish, &c., a complete mummy of a Guanche, said to be that of a woman. The corpse was sewn up in skins, and seemed to be that of a woman five feet four high, with regular features and large hands. The sepulchral caves of the Guanches also contained earthenware, wooden vases, triangular seals of baked clay, and a great number of small discs of the same material, strung together like chaplets, which may have been used by this extinct race for the same purposes as the "quipos" of the Peruvians.
On the 21st June the Astrolabe once more set sail and touched at La Praya, and at the Cape Verd Islands, where D'Urville had hoped to meet Captain King, who would have been able to give him some valuable hints on the navigation of the coast of New Guinea. King, however, had left La Praya thirty-six hours previously, and the Astrolabe therefore resumed her voyage the next day, i.e. on the 30th June.
On the last day of July the rocks of Martin-Vaz and Trinity Island were sighted, and the latter appearing perfectly barren, a little dried-up grass and a few groups of stunted trees, dotted about amongst the rocks, being the only signs of vegetation.
D'Urville had been very anxious to make some botanical researches on this desert island, but the surf was so rough that he was afraid to risk a boat in it.
On the 4th August the Astrolabe sailed over the spot laid down as "Saxembourg" Island, which ought to be finally erased from French as it has been from English charts; and after a succession of squalls, which tried her sorely, she arrived off St. Paul and Amsterdam Islands, finally anchoring on the 7th October in King George's Sound, on the coast of Australia. In spite of the roughness of the sea, and constant bad weather throughout his voyage of 108 days, D'Urville had carried on all his usual observations on the height of the waves, which he estimated at 80 and occasionally as much as 100 feet, off Needle Bank; the temperature of the sea at various depths, &c.