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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We There Found M. Le Gros, The French
Vice-Consul, Who Had Often Scaled The Summit Of The Peak, And Who
Served Us As An Excellent Guide.
He was accompanying captain Baudin
in a voyage to the West Indies, when a dreadful tempest, of which
M. Le Dru has given an account in the narrative of his voyage to
Porto Rico, forced the vessel to put into Teneriffe.
There M. Le
Gros was led by the beauty of the spot to settle. It was he who
augmented scientific knowledge by the first accurate ideas of the
great lateral eruption of the Peak, which has been very improperly
called the explosion of the volcano of Chahorra. This eruption took
place on the 8th of June, 1798.
The establishment of a botanical garden at Teneriffe is a very
happy idea, on account of the influence it is likely to have on the
progress of botany, and on the introduction of useful plants into
Europe. For the first conception of it we are indebted to the
Marquis de Nava. He undertook, at an enormous expense, to level the
hill of Durasno, which rises as an amphitheatre, and which was
begun to be planted in 1795. The marquis thought that the Canary
Islands, from the mildness of their climate and geographical
position, were the most suitable place for naturalising the
productions of the East and West Indies, and for inuring the plants
gradually to the colder temperature of the south of Europe. The
plants of Asia, Africa, and South America, may easily be brought to
Orotava; and in order to introduce the bark-tree* into Sicily,
Portugal, or Grenada, it should be first planted at Durasno, or at
Laguna, and the shoots of this tree may afterwards be transported
into Europe from the Canaries.
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