After four days I left Santa Cruz by a stage-coach, travelling directly across the middle of the island to Orotava, a small port on the other side. Orotava is situated at the base of the great Teneriffe Peak, one of the greatest in the world, which rises to a height of 12,500 feet above the sea and is supposed to be the Mt. Atlas of ancient fable. Above the town the broad landscape, on which the quaint hut of the toiling peasant contrasts with stately English homes, rises at first slowly and then more rapidly, until at last it sweeps upward far above the clouds. On a hill three miles from the town towards the Peak stands the magnificent English hotel, where I stayed, surrounded with many acres of the loveliest flowers in terraced gardens. It is a perfect fairy-land. The hotel is immense in size, and in winter it is filled with English guests; but I was there in summer and I was the only guest.
The hotel commands the finest view of the Peak. It is usually hidden behind the clouds by day, and is visible in the evening. As one sees it first, in the late afternoon, a white cloud is stretched across its middle height, concealing the mountain all but the very summit which appears like a celestial island floating upon radiant clouds in the high heavens. It is fifteen miles to the summit. There is a good road and one can make the ascent on a donkey, all but the last three miles, which most people prefer to walk. Near the summit the ground is hot a few inches below the surface, which is usually the only evidence that it is still an active volcano. But two years ago there issued from the crater for several mouths a volume of smoke which at the distance of the hotel, fifteen miles, appeared as large as the funnel of an ocean steamer.
The distance from Santa Cruz to Orotava is twenty-six miles; and the road of course passes up and down the mountain grades, in some places very steep. We were nine hours on the way. The old coach, a relic of bygone ages, was so “romantic” that I doubted whether it would ever reach its destination. It was drawn by three scraggy horses, a little older than the coach, at whom the driver never ceased shouting, as he cracked his long-lashed whip about their heads. The harness was of sundry materials, leather straps, ropes and chains, tied and knotted any place and everywhere. And they were continually parting, especially in critical ascents of the road, at which the driver would spring from his seat in a panic, as if such a casualty had never happened before, notwithstanding the evidence of many previous knots. Then seeing the excitement of the passengers, who were trying to scramble out, but in such disorder that they jammed together and each one prevented the others, he would block the coach and proceed to repair the harness, in which art he ought to have been an expert, if practice makes perfect. No sooner did we reach the next ascent, however, than as if by the spell of some malignant sprite all the knots untied at the same moment, and again the passengers were thrown into a state of panic.—But one gets used to being killed. We had two relays of horses on the way.
The coach was apparently intended for four persons, but for a considerable part of the distance was occupied by seven, four of whom smoked cheap cigars, although the windows were closed much of the time. For we ascended the mountain to a great height, and night coming on at the same time, it was very cold, much more so than I had prepared for, and being fresh from the equator, I suffered as if I had been thrust into the Arctic zone. Ndong had a high fever, and I had to wrap my travelling-rug around him. The result was that for the next ten days I had one of the severest colds I have ever had in my life. The coach was so crowded that I could only save Ndong from being crushed or sat upon by holding him on my knee, but he was very much exhausted by the journey.
Before reaching Orotava I left the coach which did not pass the Grand Hotel, to which I was bound. I took a carriage, which carried some of the mails from that point, and which passed the hotel. The driver was told to leave me at the hotel. But he forgot and took me on down the steep grade, a mile further towards the town. Then, recalling the order he had received he suddenly stopped, and pointing to the lights of the hotel up the steep height behind us invited me to get out. I kept my seat and requested him to drive me back to the hotel. A “palaver” ensued in which neither of us understood in particular what the other was saying. For he spoke only Spanish, of which I did not know a sentence. I had no money accessible before reaching the hotel. I tried to tell him that I would pay him; but he probably did not understand. Then I thought that the matter might as well be cut short; so pointing to the hotel I gave him a peremptory order in the English language, but the accent was universal. In reply he whipped his horses and drove straight on to the town. Reaching his destination, on the main street, he jumped down and with violent gesticulation proceeded to throw all my baggage into the street, which was a sufficient inducement for me to follow; and I found myself, at eleven o’clock at night, miserably cold, with a sick child in my arms, and with all my baggage, in the street of a foreign town where there was no person with whom I could speak a word.
Several loafers who were still abroad gathered around, and recalling by mere chance the name of a Spanish hotel in the town, I directed them to carry my baggage and the child, and show me the way to it. Fortunately it was quite near. I remained there that night, and next day went to the Grand.
In the community there was a physician, whose services I requested, Dr. Ingram, a Scotchman, who was residing there for his health. He found that one of Ndong’s lungs was completely congested, and he advised that I should send him to a hospital three miles further up the mountainside and close to his home. Accordingly I took Ndong to the hospital where he remained for a week.
I went every day to see him, riding the six miles, to the hospital and back, on a donkey, which added another chapter of novel experience. The Canary Island donkey is a very diminutive quadruped, the colour of a mouse and as innocent looking as a lamb. Its ears are about as long as its legs. The price of the donkey’s hire includes the owner, who runs behind and shouts, and prods him with a stick. After two days’ experience I concluded that shouting and prodding were of no use whatever, and realizing that the moral man in me was rapidly degenerating, I decided on the third day to leave the driver at home and even pay a higher price if necessary for the donkey without a driver, intending myself to assume the management of this soft-eyed creature, who perhaps only needed a little petting, for those eyes bespoke a peaceful temper. The owner readily assented to the proposition and very wisely requested me to pay in advance.
In a few minutes I had experienced to the full the pain of misplaced confidence. My donkey was a facsimile of the immortal Modestine. Having patted the donkey kindly and exchanged with her a long look of mutual regard, I mounted. She started off on an easy trot until the owner was out of sight. Then she stopped and stood still and declined to go on in spite of coaxing, kicking and whipping, until I seriously thought of building a fire under her to get her to move. While I was reflecting upon the adaptation of means to ends and for the time had ceased from all measures of coercion, she started as suddenly as she had stopped and with as little reason. She seemed to be clear outside the principle of causality that inheres in the universe. And having started, she ran anywhere and in every direction, evincing neither purpose nor method in her going except a marked predilection for hedges and brambles.
In less than two minutes, however, she reverted to her natural gait, which, like that of Modestine, was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run. Under cruel and continuous beating I forced her to maintain a gait that I hoped would carry me to the hospital and back before night, six miles in an entire afternoon. Occasionally my spirit revolted from the ignoble occupation of so maltreating a poor dumb animal. But the moment I relaxed she turned aside from the road and began to browse. Each peasant that passed me threw back his head and laughed. An inward consciousness that I would have laughed myself if I had been in their place only added to my misery. “But O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!” Under the influence of their laughter and the perversity of Modestine humanity died in my heart and I belaboured her with all the strength and vivacity that my health would allow, stopping only to get my breath and to mop the perspiration from my superheated brow. Of course, I might better have walked the rocky ascent; but in one thing I was as obstinate as the donkey—I would not give up my undertaking to ride her to the hospital and back. Besides, I kept hoping that, as she could not do worse, she might possibly do better; otherwise my arm should have failed me for despair. And to think that I was paying for all this disservice! By some strange fortuity of circumstances we actually reached the hospital, and afterwards the hotel, where I took final leave of her, a weary but a wiser man. At parting she again turned to me with an affectionate look of lamb-like innocence; but a deep sense of injury together with aching limbs rendered me insensible to her magnanimity.