The scattered growths were composed of the broomy Codeso and Retama. The former (Adenocarpus frankenoides), a leguminous plant, showed only dense light-green leaves without flower, and consequently without their heavy, cloying perfume. The woody stem acts in these regions as the doornboom of South Africa, the wild sage of the western prairies, and the shih (absinthium) of the Arabian desert. The Arabic Retama, or Alpine broom (Cytisus fragrans, Lam.; Cyt. nubigenus, Decan.; Spartium nubigenum, Alton and Von Buch), is said to be peculiar to Tenerife, where it is not found under one vertical mile of height. Some travellers divide it into two species, Spartium monospermum and S. nubigenum. The bush, 9 to 10 feet tall by 7 to 15 inches diameter, is easily distinguished from the Codeso by its denser and deeper green. This pretty rounded growth, with its short brown stem throwing out lateral branches which trail on the ground, flavours meat, and might be naturalised in Europe. From June till August it is covered with a profusion of white blossoms, making Las Canadas a Hymettus, an apiarian heaven. It extends as far as the second cone, but there it shrinks to a foot in height. We did not see the tree growing, but we met a party of Chasna men, [Footnote: A romantic tale is told of the origin of Chasna. In 1496, before the wars ended, one Pedro de Bracamonte, a captain under De Lugo, captured a 'belle sauvage,' who made her escape after a few days. He went about continually repeating, 'Vi la flor del valle' (I saw the valley flower), and died after three months. His soldiers buried him and priests said masses for the soul of this 'hot amorist.'] driving asses like onagers, laden with the gummy wood of the Tea or Tiya pine (P. canariensis). The valuable material, which resists damp and decay for centuries, and which Decandolle declares would grow in Scotland, is rapidly disappearing from the Pinals. The travellers carried cochineal-seed, for which their village is famous, and a hive which might have been Abyssinian. It was a hollow cylinder of palm-bole, closed with board at either end; in July and August it is carried up the mountain, where the bees cannot destroy the grapes. We searched in vain for M. Broussonet's white violet (V. teydensis), [Footnote: Humboldt's five zones of vegetation on the Pike are vines, laurels, pines, broom, and grasses (p. 116). Mr. Addison modifies this scale to vines, laurels, pines and junipers, mountain-brooms and pumice-plains, I should distribute the heights as growing cochineal, potatoes, and cereals, chestnuts, pines, heaths, grasses, and bare rock.] and for the lilac-coloured Viola cheiranthifolia, akin to V. decumbens.
The average annual temperature of Las Canadas is that of N. latitude 53 degrees, Holland and Hanover; in fact, here it is the Pyrenees, and below it Africa. The sun blazed from a desert of blue, and the waving heat-reek rose trembling and quivering from the tawny sides of the foregrounds. The clouds, whose volumes were disposed like the leaves of a camellia, lay far down to the north-east, as if unable to face the fires of day. And now the great trachytic dome, towering in the translucent air, was the marking feature. Its angle, 35 to 42 degrees, or double that of the lower levels, suggests distant doubts as to its practicability, nor could we believe that it rises 3,243 feet above its western base, Las Cañádas. The summit, not including the terminal Pilon—a comparatively dwarf cone [Footnote: There is a very bad sketch of the Pike in Mr. Scrope's popular work on Volcanoes (p. 5); the eruptive chimney is far too regularly conical.]—is ribboned with clinker, and streaked at this season with snow-lines radiating, like wheel-spokes from a common centre. Here and there hang, at an impossible angle, black lava-streams which were powerless to reach the plain: they resembled nothing so much as the gutterings of a candle hardening on the outside of its upright shaft. Evidently they had flowed down the slope in a half fluid state, and had been broken by contraction when cooling. In places, too, the surface was streaked with light yellow patches, probably of sun-gilt tosa or pumice.
On our right, or to the north-north-east of the Pike, rose La Fortaleza, alias the Golliada del Cedro. The abrupt wall had salient and re-entering angles, not unlike the Palisades of the Hudson River, with intercalated strata and a smooth glacis at the base, except between the east and north-west, where the periphery has been destroyed. It is apparently basalt, as we may expect in the lower levels before reaching the trachytic region. The other notable features were Monte Tigayga, with its vertical cliff, trending northwards to the sea; the gap through which the Orotava lava-bed burst the crater-margin; the Llano de Maja ('Manja' in Berthelot), a strip of Las Canadas, and the horizontally striated Peak of Guajara (8,903 feet).
Riding over the 'pumice-beach of a once fiery sea,' whose glare and other accidents suggested the desert between Cairo and Suez, we made our way towards the Rastrojito. This 'Little Stubble' is a rounded heap of pumice, a southern offset of the main mountain. On the left rose the Montana Negra (Black Mountain) and the Lomo de la Nieve ('Snow Ridge),' a dark mass of ribbed and broken lavas (8,970 feet), in which summer-snow is stored. A little black kid, half wild, was skipping over the rocks. Our men pursued it with the garrotes (alpenstocks), loudly shouting,' Tio Jose!': 'Uncle Joseph,' however, escaped, running like a Guanche. Here it is allowed to shoot the animals on condition of leaving a shilling with the skin. The latter is used in preparing the national gofio, the Guanche ahoren, the kuskusu of north-western Africa, the polenta, or daily bread, of the Neo-Latins.
Climbing the Rastrojito slopes, we sighted the Pedras Negras: these are huge travelled rocks of basalt, jet-black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture, and showing debris like onion-coats about their base. The aspect was fantastic, resembling nothing so much as skulls 10 to 15 feet high. They are doubtless the produce of the upper slopes, which by slow degrees gravitated to the present pumice-beds.
The first step of the Pike is Las Canadas, whose glacis forms the Cumbre, or pumice-plains (6,500 feet), the long dorsum, which shows far out at sea. Bending abruptly to the east, we began to breast the red pumice-bed leading to the Estancia de Abajo or de los Inglezes. 'El es Inglez porque subio al Pico' ('he is English, because he climbed the Pike'), say the people. This ramp, whose extreme angle is 26 degrees, bordered by thick bands of detached lava-rocks, is doubtless the foundation-matter of the Pike. Hence the latter is picturesquely termed 'Hijo de las Canadas.' [Footnote: Especially by D. Benigno Carballo Wanguement in his work, Las Afortunadas (Madrid, 1862), a happy title borrowed from D. Francisco Escobar. Heyley (Cosmography), quoted by Glas and Mrs. Murray, tells us of an English ambassador who, deeming his own land the 'Fortunate Islands,' protested against Pope Clement VI. so entitling the Canaries in a deed of gift to D. Luis de la Cerda, the 'Disinherited' Conde de Claramonte. The latter was deprived of the Crown of Castile by his uncle, Sancho IV., and became the founder of the Medina Celi house.]
After a total climb and ride of six hours, we reached the 'English station.' M. Eden (Aug. 13, 1715) [Footnote: Trans. Royal Soc. of London, 1714-16.] calls it simply Stancha, and M. Borda 'Station des Rochers.' Pere Feutree, a Frenchman who ascended in 1524, and wrote the earliest scientific account, had baptised it Station de St. Francois de Paul, and set up a cross. It is a shelf in the pumice-slope, 9,930 feet high, and protected against the cold night-winds of the north-north-east, the lower or polar current, by huge boulders of obsidian, like gigantic sodawater-bottles. The routine traveller sleeps upon this level a few hundred yards square, because the guides store their fuel in an adjacent bed of black rocks. Humboldt miscalls the station 'a kind of cavern;' and a little above it he nearly fell on the slippery surface of the 'compact short-swarded turf' which he had left 4,000 feet below him.
The bât-mules were unpacked and fed; and a rough bed was made up under the lea of the tallest rock, where a small curral of dry stone kept off the snow. This, as we noticed in Madeira, is not in flakes, nor in hail-like globes: it consists of angular frozen lumps, and the selvage becomes the hardest ice. Some have compared it with the Swiss 'firn,' snow stripped of fine crystals and granulated by time and exposure. In March the greatest depth we saw in the gullies radiating from the mountain-top was about three feet. But in the cold season all must be white as a bride-cake; and fatal accidents occur in the Canada drifts. Professor Piazzi Smyth characterises the elevated region as cold enough at night, and stormy beyond measure in winter, when the south-wester, or equatorial upper current, produces a fearful climate. Yet the Pike summit lies some 300 feet below the snow-line (12,500 feet).
The view was remarkable: we were in sight of eighty craters. At sunset the haze cleared away from the horizon, which showed a straight grey-blue line against a blushing sky of orange, carmine, pale pink, and tender lilac, passing through faint green into the deep dark blue of the zenith. In this cumbre, or upper region, the stars did not surprise us by their brightness. At 6 P.M. the thermometer showed 32 degrees F.; the air was delightfully still and pure, [Footnote: We had no opportunity of noticing what Mr. Addison remarks, the air becoming sonorous and the sound of the sea changing from grave to acute after sunset and during the night. He attributes this increased intensity to additional moisture and an equability of temperature in the atmospheric strata. Perhaps the silence of night may tend to exaggerate the impression.] and Death mummifies, but does not decay.
A bright fire secured us against the piercing dry night-cold; and the arrieros began to sing like capirotes [Footnote: The Capirote or Tinto Negro, a grey bird with black head (Sylvia atricapilla), is also found in Madeira, and much resembles the Eastern bulbul or Persian nightingale. It must be caged when young, otherwise it refuses to sing, and fed upon potatos and bread with milk, not grain. An enthusiast, following Humboldt (p. 87), describes the 'joyous and melodious notes' of the bird as 'the purest incense that can ascend to heaven.'] (bulbuls), sundry seguidillas, and El Tajaraste. The music may be heard everywhere between Morocco and Sind. It starts with the highest possible falsetto and gradually falls like a wail, all in the minor clef.