During the descent we had a fair prospect of the Canarian Triquetra. Somewhat like Madeira, it has a longitudinal spine of mountains, generically called Las Cañádas; but, whilst the volcanic ridge of the Isle of Wood runs in a latitudinal line, the Junonian Cordillera has a whorl, the ancient as well as the modern seat of eruption. Around the island appeared to be a rim, as if the sea-horizon formed a raised saucer—a common optical delusion at these altitudes.
As we advanced the Mal Pais became more broken: the 'bad step' was ugly climbing, and we often envied our men, who wore heelless shoes of soft untanned leather with soles almost as broad as they were long. The roughness of the trachytic blocks, however, rendered a slip impossible. At 6.45 we reached the second floor of this three-storied volcano, here 11,721 feet high. The guides call it the Pico del Pilon, because it is the ancient Peak-Crater, and strangers the Rambleta (not Rembleta) Volcano, which strewed Las Cañádas with fiery pumice, and which shot up the terminal head 'conical as a cylinder.' It has now become an irregular and slightly convex plain a mile in diameter, whose centre is the terminal chimney. Its main peculiarity is in the fumaroles, or escapes of steam, and mofetti, mephitic emanations of limpid water and sulphur-vapour. Of these we counted five narices within as many hundred yards. Their temperature greatly varies, 109° and 158° Fahr. being, perhaps, the extremes; my thermometer showed 130°. These soupiraux or respiradouros are easily explained. The percolations from above are heated to steam by stones rich in 'grough brimstone.' Here it was that Humboldt saw apparent lateral shiftings and perpendicular oscillations of fixed stars; and our Admiralty, not wishing to be behind him, directed Professor P. Smyth's attention to 'scintillations in general.' Only the youngest of travellers would use such a place as an observatory; and only the youngest of observers would have considered this libration of the stars an extraordinary phenomenon.
Directed by a regular line of steam-puffs, we attacked El Pilon, the third story, the most modern cone of eruption, the dwarf chimney which looks like a thimble from the sea. The lower third was of loose crumbling pumice, more finely comminuted than we had yet seen; this is what Humboldt calls 'ash-cones.' There was also a strew of porphyritic lava-chips covered with a red (ochreous?) crust. Presently we reached a radiating rib of lately ejected lava, possibly the ridge of a dyke, brown below and gradually whitening with sulphuric acid as it rose towards the crater-walls. The resting took longer than the walking up the steep talus; and at 7.45: after a total of nine hours and a morning's work of two hours and a half, which occupied two in descending, we stood upon the corona or lip of 'Teyde.'
The height of the Tenerife Pike, once held the loftiest in the world, is 12,198 feet, in round numbers 12,200. Thus it stands nearly at the altitude of Mont Blanc (15,784 feet) above the Chamounix valley, a figure of 12,284 feet. The slope from the base is 1 in 4.6. The direct distance from Orotava on the map measures 10.5 miles; along the road 18, according to the guides. The terminal chimney and outlet for vapours which would erupt elsewhere, rises 520 feet from its pedestal, the central Rambleta, and its ascent generally occupies an hour. One visitor has reduced this montagne pelée to 60-70 feet, and compares it with the dome of a glass-house. From below it resembles nothing so much as a cone of dirty brown cassonade, and travellers are justified in calling it a sugarloaf. I can hardly rest satisfied with Von Buch's description. 'Teyde is a pointed tower surrounded by a ditch and a circular chain of bastions.'
The word Teyde is supposed to be a corruption of Echeyde, meaning Hades: hence the title Isla Infierno, found in a map of A.D. 1367. The Guanches also called it Ayadyrma, and here placed their pandemonium, under Guayota, the head-fiend. The country-folk still term the crater-ring 'la caldera de los diablos en que se cuecen todas las provisiones del Infierno' (the Devil's caldron, wherein are cooked all the rations of the infernals). Seen by moonlight, or on a star-lit night, the scenery would be weird and ghostly enough to suggest such fancies, which remind us of Etna and Lipari.
I had been prepared by descriptions for a huge chasm-like crater or craters like those on Theon Ochéma, Camerones Peak. I found a spoon-shaped hollow, with a gradual slope to the centre, 100 × 150 feet deep, the greater length of the oval running north-east, where the side is higher, to south-west, where there is also a tilt of the cup. The floor was a surface of burning marl and whitish earthy dough-like paste, the effect of sulphurous acid vapours upon the argile of the lava. This stratum was in places more than 80 feet thick; and fumes rose fetid with sulphuric acid, and sulphates of soda, alumina, and ammonia from the dead white, purple red, vivid green, and brilliant yellow surface of the solfatara. Hence the puffs of vapour seen from below against the sparkling blue sky, and disappearing like huge birds upon the wings of the wind: hence, too, the tradition of the mast and the lateen sail. A dig with the Guanche magada or lanza, the island alpen-stock, either outside or inside the crater, will turn up, under the moist white clay, lovely trimetric crystals of sulphur, with the palest straw tint, deepening to orange, and beautifully disposed in acicular shapes. The acid eats paper, and the colours fade before they leave the cone.
[Footnote: Dr. Wilde (1837) analysed the sulphur as follows: Silica, 81·13; water, 8·87; and a trace of lime. Others have obtained from the mineral, when condensed upon a cold surface, minute crystals of alum. Mr. Addison found in the 'splendid crystals of octahedral sulphur' a glistening white substance of crystalline structure, yet somewhat like opal. When analysed it proved to contain 91 per cent. silex and the rest water.]
When sitting down it is advisable to choose a block upon which dew-drops pearl. A few minutes of rest upon a certain block of marl, whose genial warmth is most grateful, squatting in the sharp cold air, neatly removes all cloth in contact with the surface. More than one excursionist has shown himself in that Humphrey Clinker condition which excited the wrath of Count Tabitha. It is evident that Teyde is by no means exhausted, and possibly it may return to the state of persistent eruption described by the eye-witness Ca da Mosto, who landed on the Canaries in A.D. 1505.
Not at all impressed with the grandeur of the Inferno, we walked round the narrow rim of the crater-cirque, and were shown a small breach in the wall of porphyritic lava facing west. Mrs. Murray's authorities describe the Caldera as being 'without any opening:' if this be the case the gap has lately formed. The cold had driven away the lively little colony of bees, birds, and butterflies which have been seen disporting themselves about the bright white cauldron. There was not a breath of the threatened wind. Manoel pointed out Mount Bermeja as the source of the lateral lava-stream whose 'infernal avalanche,' on May 5, 1706, [Footnote: Preceding Ca da Mosto's day another eruption (1492) was noted by Columbus, shortly before his discovery of the Antilles. Garachico was the only port in Tenerife, with a breakwater of rocky isle and water so deep that the yardarms of men-of-war could almost touch the vineyards. Its quays were bordered by large provision-stores, it had five convents, and its slopes were dotted with villas. After an earthquake during the night a lava-stream from several cones destroyed the village Del Tanque at 3:30 A.M., and at 9 P.M. another flood entered Garachico at seven points, drove off the sea, ruined the mole, and filled the port. It was followed by a cascade of fire at 8 A.M. on the 13th of the same month, and the lava remained incandescent for forty days.] overwhelmed 'Grarachico, pueblo rico,'
[Footnote: Alluding to the curse of the Franciscan Friar, who devoted the town to destruction in these words:—