Like those Hesperian gardens famed of old,
Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales,
Thrice happy isles.—Paradise Lost, Book iii.
This track is, generally speaking, about the most pleasant in the Atlantic Ocean; fine sunny weather and fresh north-east trade winds, which blow with tolerable regularity nearly the whole year round, rendering it very easy sailing indeed, and proportionably agreeable to passengers, who may be supposed by this time to have attained their sea-legs. In our case the wind was, unfortunately too light to be of much use, as a vessel going from ten to eleven knots, under steam, must have a very strong breeze to get a-head of such speed and assist the machinery, as well as obtain another knot or two. We pass the Canaries (or Fortunate Isles, as they were called,) to windward, having in view the far-famed Peak of Teneriffe, upheaving high its giant bulk 12,182 feet, and keeping our course direct for St. Vincent. The Canaries are naturally associated with our earliest school-boy notions, as the original home of the charming little universal household songster,[37] to whom they have given their name, but here called thistle-finch, and having for its companions the blackbird, linnet, and others of the same tuneful and now Saxonized family. The real Canary of these islands, however, the Fringilla Canaria of Linnæus, and which still abounds here, is not of the saffron or yellow colour it attains in Europe; but is, in its wild state, the colour of our common field or grey linnet, the yellow hue being the result of repeated crossings in its artificial state amongst us. The Canaries are amongst several other islands that were known to the ancients, but not discovered by modern Europe until the middle of the fifteenth century, when, after a brave resistance from the natives, the Spaniards conquered and have since retained them.
Though not exactly in the route of the Argentina, nor intended to be touched at by any of the company’s vessels, still being comparatively so near the Canaries, and especially of that particular one whereof mention is made by the great English bard, in verse as majestic as the phenomenon he speaks of:
On the other side, Satan, alarmed,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:
His stature reach’d the sky, and on his crest
Sat horror plumed.—Paradise Lost, Book iv.