[Footnote: I quote from the Spanish translation, Las Islas Canarias y el Valle Orotava, a highly popular work contrasting wonderfully with some of ours. The courteous Frenchman even promised that Morocco would be the Algeria of the Canaries. His observations for temperature, pressure, variation, hygrometry, and psychrometry of the Orotavan climate, which he chose for health, are valuable. He starts with a theory of the three conditions of salubrity—heat-and-cold, humidity, and atmospheric change. The average annual mean of Orotava is 66.34 degrees (F.), that of Southern France in September; it never falls below 54.5 degrees nor rises above 73.88 degrees, nor exceeds 13.88 degrees in variation.]
'in the murmurs of the breeze the legends of races long disappeared.'
Naturalists modestly assigned to the old Dragon 5,000 to 10,000 years, thus giving birth to fine reflections about its witnessing revolutions which our planet underwent prior to the advent of man. So Adamson made his calabash a contemporary of the Noachian Deluge, if that partial cataclysm [Footnote: The ancient Egyptians, who ignored the Babylonian Deluge, well knew that all cataclysms are local, not general, catastrophes.] ever reached Africa. The Orotava relic certainly was an old tree, prophetic withal, [Footnote: It was supposed infallibly to predict weather and to regulate sowing-time. Thus if the southern side flowered first drought was to be expected, and vice versa. Now the peasant refers to San Isidro, patron of Orotava: he has only changed the form of his superstition.] when De Lugo and the conquistadores entered the valley in 1493 and said mass in its hollow. But that event was only four centuries ago, and dates are ticklish things when derived from the rings and wrinkles of little-studied vegetation. Already Mr. Diston, in a letter to Professor Piazzi Smyth, [Footnote: 'Astronomical Experiment on the Peak of Tenerife,' Philosoph. Trans., part ii. for 1858.] declared that a young 'dragon,' which he had planted in 1818, became in 38 years so tall that a ladder was required to reach the head. And let us observe that Nature, though forbidden such style of progression by her savans, sometimes does make a local saltus, especially in the change of climates. Centuries ago, when the fires about Teyde were still alight, and the lava-fields about Orotava were still burning, the rate of draconian increase, under the influence of heat and moisture, might have been treble or quadruple what it would now be.
[Footnote: The patriarch was no 'giant of the forest.' Its stature did not exceed 60 feet. Humboldt made it only 45 French feet(= 47 ft. ll ins. English) round the base. Dr. Wilde (Narrative, p. 40) blames the measurer and gives about the same measurement, Professor Piazzi Smyth, who in 1856 reproduced it in an abominable photo-stenograph, reckons 48.5 feet at the level of the southern foot, 35.6 feet at 6 feet above the ground, and 28.8 feet at 14.5 feet, where branches spring from the rapidly narrowing conical trunk. The same are said to have been its proportions in the days of the conquest. In 1866 Mr. Addison made it 60 feet tall, 35.5 feet at 6 feet from the ground, and 49.5 in circumference at the base which he cleared. Mr. Barker Webb's sketch in 1830 was the best; but the tree afterwards greatly changed. Mr. J. J. Williams made a neat drawing in boarding-school style, with a background apparently borrowed from Richmond Hill.]
The Jardin de Aclimatacion, or Botanical Garden, mentioned by Humboldt
[Footnote: Page 59. It is regretable that his forecasts have failed. Neither of the ohinohonas (C. tanoifolia and C. oblongifolia) has been naturalised in Southern Europe. Nor has the Hill of Duragno yet sent us the 'protea, the psidium, the jambos, the chirimoya of Peru, the sensitive plant, the heliconia, and several beautiful species of glyoine from New Holland.']
as far back as 1799, still flourishes. It was founded in 1788-95 by an able savan, the Marquis de Villanueva del Pardo (D. Alonso de Nava y Grimon), who to a Government grant of 1,000l. added 4,000l. of his own, besides 400l. a year for an average generation. The place is well chosen, for the Happy Valley combines the flora of the north and the south, with a Nivaria of snow-land above it and a semi-tropical temperature on the shores of the 'Chronian Sea.'
CHAPTER VI. — THE ROUTINE ASCENT OF MOUNT ATLAS, THE 'PIKE' OF TENERIFE.
The trip was so far routine that we followed in the steps of all previous travellers, and so far not routine that we made it in March, when, according to all, the Mal Pais is impassable, and when furious winds threaten to sweep away intruders like dry leaves.