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 Spent Two Hours And A Half In Crossing The Llano Del Retama,
Which Appears Like An Immense Sea Of Sand.
Notwithstanding the
elevation of this site, the centigrade thermometer rose in the
shade toward sunset, to 13.8 degrees, or 3.7 degrees higher than
toward noon at Monte Verde.
This augmentation of heat could be
attributed only to the reverberation from the ground, and the
extent of the plain. We suffered much from the suffocating dust of
the pumice-stone, in which we were continually enveloped. In the
midst of this plain are tufts of the retama, which is the Spartium
nubigenum of Aiton. M. de Martiniere, one of the botanists who
perished in the expedition of Laperouse, wished to introduce this
beautiful shrub into Languedoc, where firewood is very scarce. It
grows to the height of nine feet, and is loaded with odoriferous
flowers, with which the goat hunters, that we met in our road, had
decorated their hats. The goats of the peak, which are of a deep
brown colour, are reckoned delicious food; they browse on the
spartium, and have run wild in the deserts from time immemorial.
They have been transported to Madeira, where they are preferred to
the goats of Europe.
As far as the rock of Gayta, or the entrance of the extensive Llano
del Retama, the peak of Teneriffe is covered with beautiful
vegetation. There are no traces of recent devastation. We might
have imagined ourselves scaling the side of some volcano, the fire
of which had been extinguished as remotely as that of Monte Cavo,
near Rome; but scarcely had we reached the plain covered with
pumice-stone, when the landscape changed its aspect, and at every
step we met with large blocks of obsidian thrown out by the
volcano. Everything here speaks perfect solitude. A few goats and
rabbits only bound across the plain. The barren region of the peak
is nine square leagues; and as the lower regions viewed from this
point retrograde in the distance, the island appears an immense
heap of torrefied matter, hemmed round by a scanty border of
vegetation.
From the region of the Spartium nubigenum we passed through narrow
defiles, and small ravines hollowed at a very remote time by the
torrents, first arriving at a more elevated plain (el Monton de
Trigo), then at the place where we intended to pass the night. This
station, which is more than 1530 toises above the coast, bears the
name of the English Halt (Estancia de los Ingleses* (* This
denomination was in use as early as the beginning of the last
century. Mr. Eden, who corrupts all Spanish words, as do most
travellers in our own times, calls it the Stancha: it is the
Station des Rochers of M. Borda, as is proved by the barometrical
heights there observed. These heights were in 1803, according to M.
Cordier, 19 inches 9.5 lines; and in 1776, according to Messrs.
Borda and Varela, 19 inches 9.8 lines; the barometer at Orotava
keeping within nearly a line at the same height.)), no doubt
because most of the travellers, who formerly visited the peak, were
Englishmen.
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