Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 31 of 208 - First - Home
The Valley Of Tacoronte Is The Entrance Into That Charming Country,
Of Which Travellers Of Every Nation Have Spoken With Rapturous
Enthusiasm.
Under the torrid zone I found sites where nature is
more majestic, and richer in the display of organic
Forms; but
after having traversed the banks of the Orinoco, the Cordilleras of
Peru, and the most beautiful valleys of Mexico, I own that I have
never beheld a prospect more varied, more attractive, more
harmonious in the distribution of the masses of verdure and of
rocks, than the western coast of Teneriffe.
The sea-coast is lined with date and cocoa trees. Groups of the
musa, as the country rises, form a pleasing contrast with the
dragon-tree, the trunks of which have been justly compared to the
tortuous form of the serpent. The declivities are covered with
vines, which throw their branches over towering poles. Orange trees
loaded with flowers, myrtles, and cypress trees encircle the
chapels reared to devotion on the isolated hills. The divisions of
landed property are marked by hedges formed of the agave and the
cactus. An innumerable quantity of cryptogamous plants, among which
ferns are the most predominant, cover the walls, and are moistened
by small springs of limpid water. In winter, when the volcano is
buried under ice and snow, this district enjoys perpetual spring.
In summer, as the day declines, the breezes from the sea diffuse a
delicious freshness. The population of this coast is very
considerable; and it appears to be still greater than it is,
because the houses and gardens are distant from each other, which
adds to the picturesque beauty of the scene. Unhappily the real
welfare of the inhabitants does not correspond with the exertions
of their industry, or with the advantages which nature has lavished
on this spot. The farmers are not land-owners; the fruits of their
labour belong to the nobles; and those feudal institutions, which,
for so long a time, spread misery throughout Europe, still press
heavily on the people of the Canary Islands.
From Tegueste and Tacoronte to the village of St. Juan de la Rambla
(which is celebrated for its excellent malmsey wine), the rising
hills are cultivated like a garden. I might compare them to the
environs of Capua and Valentia, if the western part of Teneriffe
was not infinitely more beautiful on account of the proximity of
the peak, which presents on every side a new point of view. The
aspect of this mountain is interesting not merely from its gigantic
mass; it excites the mind, by carrying it back to the mysterious
source of its volcanic agency. For thousands of years, no flames or
light have been perceived on the summit of the Piton, nevertheless
enormous lateral eruptions, the last of which took place in 1798,
are proofs of the activity of a fire still far from being
extinguished. 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. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 31 of 208
Words from 30585 to 31620
of 211363