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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Orotava, The Ancient Taoro Of The Guanches, Is Situated On A Very
Steep Declivity.
The streets seem deserted; the houses are solidly
built, and of a gloomy appearance.
We passed along a lofty
aqueduct, lined with a great number of fine ferns; and visited
several gardens, in which the fruit trees of the north of Europe
are mingled with orange trees, pomegranate, and date trees. We were
assured, that these last were as little productive here as on the
coast of Cumana. Although we had been made acquainted, from the
narratives of many travellers, with the dragon-tree of the garden
of M. Franqui, we were not the less struck with its enormous
magnitude. We were told, that the trunk of this tree, which is
mentioned in several very ancient documents as marking the
boundaries of a field, was as gigantic in the fifteenth century as
it is at the present time. Its height appeared to us to be about 50
or 60 feet; its circumference near the roots is 45 feet. We could
not measure higher, but Sir George Staunton found that, 10 feet
from the ground, the diameter of the trunk is still 12 English
feet; which corresponds perfectly with the statement of Borda, who
found its mean circumference 33 feet 8 inches, French measure. The
trunk is divided into a great number of branches, which rise in the
form of a candelabrum, and are terminated by tufts of leaves, like
the yucca which adorns the valley of Mexico. This division gives it
a very different appearance from that of the palm-tree.
Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, together with
the Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of the oldest inhabitants
of our globe. The baobabs are of still greater dimensions than the
dragon-tree of Orotava. There are some which near the root measure
34 feet in diameter, though their total height is only from 50 to
60 feet. But we should observe, that the Adansonia, like the
ochroma, and all the plants of the family of bombax, grow much more
rapidly* than the dracaena, the vegetation of which is very slow.
(* It is the same with the plane-tree (Platanus occidentalis) which
M. Michaux measured at Marietta, on the banks of the Ohio, and
which, at twenty feet from the ground, was 15.7 feet in diameter.
- "Voyage a l'Ouest des Monts Alleghany" 1804 page 93. The yew,
chestnut, oak, plane-tree, deciduous cypress, bombax, mimosa,
caesalpina, hymenaea, and dracaena, appear to me to be the plants
which, in different climates, present specimens of the most
extraordinary growth. An oak, discovered together with some Gallic
helmets in 1809, in the turf pits of the department of the Somme,
near the village of Yseux, seven leagues from Abbeville, was about
the same size as the dragon-tree of Orotava. According to a memoir
by M. Traullee, the trunk of this oak was 14 feet in diameter.)
That in M. Franqui's garden still bears every year both flowers and
fruit. Its aspect forcibly exemplifies "that eternal youth of
nature," which is an inexhaustible source of motion and of life.
The dracaena, which is seen only in cultivated spots in the Canary
Islands, at Madeira, and Porto Santo, presents a curious phenomenon
with respect to the migration of plants. It has never been found in
a wild state on the continent of Africa. The East Indies is its
real country. How has this tree been transplanted to Teneriffe,
where it is by no means common? Does its existence prove, that, at
some very distant period, the Guanches had connexions with other
nations originally from Asia?* (* The form of the dragon-tree is
exhibited in several species of the genus Dracaena, at the Cape of
Good Hope, in China, and in New Zealand. But in New Zealand it is
superseded by the form of the yucca; for the Dracaena borealis of
Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the appearance. The
astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of dragon's blood,
is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the produce of
several American plants, which do not belong to the same genus and
of which some are lianas. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in the
juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and are much
extolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state.)
On leaving Orotava, a narrow and stony pathway led us through a
beautiful forest of chestnut trees (el monte de Castanos), to a
site covered with brambles, some species of laurels, and
arborescent heaths. The trunks of the latter grow to an
extraordinary size; and the flowers with which they are loaded form
an agreeable contrast, during a great part of the year, to the
Hypericum canariense, which is very abundant at this height. We
stopped to take in our provision of water under a solitary
fir-tree. This station is known in the country by the name of Pino
del Dornajito. Its height, according to the barometrical
measurement of M. de Borda, is 522 toises; and it commands a
magnificent prospect of the sea, and the whole of the northern part
of the island. Near Pino del Dornajito, a little on the right of
the pathway, is a copious spring of water, into which we plunged
the thermometer, which fell to 15.4 degrees. At a hundred toises
distance from this spring is another equally limpid. If we admit
that these waters indicate nearly the mean heat of the place whence
they issue, we may fix the absolute elevation of the station at 520
toises, supposing the mean temperature of the coast to be 21
degrees, and allowing one degree for the decrement of caloric
corresponding under this zone to 93 toises. We should not be
surprised if this spring remained a little below the heat of the
air, since it probably takes its source in some more elevated part
of the peak, and possibly communicates with the small subterranean
glaciers of which we shall speak hereafter.
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