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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The Abode Of The Blessed, Which
Was Sought First In The North, Beyond The Riphaean Mountains, Among
The Hyperboreans, And Next To The South Of Cyrenaica, Was Supposed
To Be Situated In Regions That Were Considered To Be Westward,
Being The Direction In Which The World Known To The Ancients
Terminated.
The name of Fortunate Islands was long in as vague
signification, as that of El Dorado among the conquerors of
America.
Happiness was thought to reside at the end of the earth,
as we seek for the most exquisite enjoyments of the mind in an
ideal world beyond the limits of reality.* (* The idea of the
happiness, the great civilization, and the riches of the
inhabitants of the north, was common to the Greeks, to the people
of India, and to the Mexicans.)
We must not be surprised that, previous to the time of Aristotle,
we find no accurate notion respecting the Canary Islands and the
volcanoes they contain, among the Greek geographers. The only
nation whose navigations extended toward the west and the north,
the Carthaginians, were interested in throwing a veil of mystery
over those distant regions. While the senate of Carthage was averse
to any partial emigration, it pointed out those islands as a place
of refuge in times of trouble and public misfortune; they were to
the Carthaginians what the free soil of America has become to
Europeans amidst their religious and civil dissensions.
The Canaries were not better known to the Romans till eighty-four
years before the reign of Augustus. A private individual was
desirous of executing the project, which wise foresight had
dictated to the senate of Carthage. Sertorius, conquered by Sylla,
and weary of the din of war, looked out for a safe and peaceable
retreat. He chose the Fortunate Islands, of which a delightful
picture had been drawn for him on the shores of Baetica. He
carefully combined the notions he acquired from travellers; but in
the little that has been transmitted to us of those notions, and in
the more minute descriptions of Sebosus and Juba, there is no
mention of volcanoes or volcanic eruptions. Scarcely can we
recognise the isle of Teneriffe, and the snows with which the
summit of the Peak is covered in winter, in the name of Nivaria,
given to one of the Fortunate Islands. Hence we might conclude,
that the volcano at that time threw out no flames, if it were
allowable so to interpret the silence of a few authors, whom we
know only by short fragments or dry nomenclatures. The naturalist
vainly seeks in history for documents of the first eruptions of the
Peak; he nowhere finds any but in the language of the Guanches, in
which the word Echeyde denotes, at the same time, hell and the
volcano of Teneriffe.
Of all the written testimonies, the oldest I have found in relation
to the activity of this volcano dates from the beginning of the
sixteenth century. It is contained in the narrative of the voyage
of Aloysio Cadamusto, who landed at the Canaries in 1505. This
traveller was witness of no eruptions, but he positively affirms
that, like Etna, this mountain burns without interruption, and that
the fire has been seen by christians held in slavery by the
Guanches of Teneriffe. The Peak, therefore, was not at that time in
the state of repose in which we find it at present; for it is
certain that no navigator or inhabitant of Teneriffe has seen issue
from the mouth of the Peak, I will not say flames, but even any
smoke visible at a distance. It would be well, perhaps, were the
funnel of the Caldera to open anew; the lateral eruptions would
thereby be rendered less violent, and the whole group of islands
would be less endangered by earthquakes.
The eruptions of the Peak have been very rare for two centuries
past, and these long intervals appear to characterize volcanoes
highly elevated. The smallest one of all, Stromboli, is almost
always burning. At Vesuvius, the eruptions are rarer than formerly,
though still more frequent than those of Etna and the Peak of
Teneriffe. The colossal summits of the Andes, Cotopaxi and
Tungurahua, scarcely have an eruption once in a century. We may
say, that in active volcanoes the frequency of the eruptions is in
the inverse ratio of the height and the mass. The Peak also had
seemed extinguished during ninety-two years, when, in 1798, it made
its last eruption by a lateral opening formed in the mountain of
Chahorra. In this interval Vesuvius had sixteen eruptions.
The whole of the mountainous part of the kingdom of Quito may be
considered as an immense volcano, occupying more than seven hundred
square leagues of surface, and throwing out flames by different
cones, known under the particular denominations of Cotopaxi,
Tungurahua, and Pichincha. The group of the Canary Islands is
situated on the same sort of submarine volcano. The fire makes its
way sometimes by one and sometimes by another of these islands.
Teneriffe alone contains in its centre an immense pyramid
terminating in a crater, and throwing out, from one century to
another, lava by its flanks. In the other islands, the different
eruptions have taken place in various parts; and we nowhere find
those isolated mountains to which the volcanic effects are
confined. The basaltic crust, formed by ancient volcanoes, seems
everywhere undermined; and the currents of lava, seen at Lancerota
and Palma, remind us, by every geological affinity, of the eruption
which took place in 1301 at the island of Ischia, amid the tufas of
Epomeo.
The exclusively lateral action of the peak of Teneriffe is a
geological phenomenon, the more remarkable as it contributes to
make the mountains which are backed by the principal volcano appear
isolated. It is true, that in Etna and Vesuvius the great flowings
of lava do not proceed from the crater itself, and that the
abundance of melted matter is generally in the inverse ratio of the
height of the opening whence the lava is ejected.
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