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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Those
Navigators Sailed Timidly Along The Coast, Anchoring Every Evening
In Some Bay, And Had No Knowledge Of A Volcano Distant Fifty-Six
Leagues From The Coast Of Africa.
Hanno nevertheless relates, that
he saw torrents of light, which seemed to fall on the sea; that
every night the coast was covered with fire; and that the great
mountain, called the Car of the Gods, appeared to throw up sheets
of flame, which rose even to the clouds.
But this mountain,
situated northward of the island of the Gorilli, formed the western
extremity of the Atlas chain; and it is also very uncertain whether
the flames seen by Hanno were the effect of some volcanic eruption,
or whether they must be attributed to the custom, common to many
nations, of setting fire to the forests and dry grass of the
savannahs. In our own days similar doubts were entertained by the
naturalists, who, in the voyage of d'Entrecasteaux, saw the island
of Amsterdam covered with a thick smoke. On the coast of the
Caracas, trains of reddish fire, fed by the burning grass, appeared
to me, for several nights, under the delusive semblance of a
current of lava, descending from the mountains, and dividing itself
into several branches.
Though the narratives of Hanno and Scylax, in the state in which
they have reached us, contain no passage which we can reasonably
apply to the Canary Islands, it is very probable that the
Carthaginians, and even the Phoenicians, had some knowledge of the
Peak of Teneriffe.
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