Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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There Is Also Something That Leaves A Melancholy
Impression On Beholding A Crater In The Centre Of A Fertile And
Well Cultivated Country.
The history of the globe informs us, that
volcanoes destroy what they have been a long series of ages in
creating.
Islands, which the action of submarine fires has raised
above the waters, are by degrees clothed in rich and smiling
verdure; but these new lands are often laid waste by the renewed
action of the same power which caused them to emerge from the
bottom of the ocean. Islets, which are now but heaps of scoriae and
volcanic ashes, were once perhaps as fertile as the hills of
Tacoronte and Sauzal. Happy the country, where man has no distrust
of the soil on which he lives!
Pursuing our course to the port of Orotava, we passed the smiling
hamlets of Matanza and Victoria. These names are mingled together
in all the Spanish colonies, and they form an unpleasing contrast
with the peaceful and tranquil feelings which those countries
inspire. Matanza signifies slaughter, or carnage; and the word
alone recalls the price at which victory has been purchased. In the
New World it generally indicates the defeat of the natives: at
Teneriffe, the village of Matanza was built in a place* (* The
ancient Acantejo.) where the Spaniards were conquered by those same
Guanches who soon after were sold as slaves in the markets of
Europe.
Before we reached Orotava, we visited a botanic garden at a little
distance from the port.
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