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 73 of 407 - First - Home
The Peak Is Covered With Snow During Part Of The Year;
We Ourselves Found It Still So In The Plain Of Rambleta.
Messrs.
O'Donnel and Armstrong discovered in 1806 a very abundant spring in
the Malpays, a hundred toises above the cavern of ice, which is
perhaps fed partly by this snow.
Everything consequently leads us
to presume that the peak of Teneriffe, like the volcanoes of the
Andes, and those of the island of Manilla, contains within itself
great cavities, which are filled with atmospherical water, owing
merely to filtration. The aqueous vapours exhaled by the Narices
and crevices of the crater, are only those same waters heated by
the interior surfaces down which they flow.
We had yet to scale the steepest part of the mountain, the Piton,
which forms the summit. The slope of this small cone, covered with
volcanic ashes, and fragments of pumice-stone, is so steep, that it
would have been almost impossible to reach the top, had we not
ascended by an old current of lava, the debris of which have
resisted the ravages of time. These debris form a wall of scorious
rock, which stretches into the midst of the loose ashes. We
ascended the Piton by grasping these half-decomposed scoriae, which
often broke in our hands. We employed nearly half an hour to scale
a hill, the perpendicular height of which is scarcely ninety
toises. Vesuvius, three times lower than the peak of Teneriffe, is
terminated by a cone of ashes almost three times higher, but with a
more accessible and easy slope. Of all the volcanoes which I have
visited, that of Jorullo, in Mexico, is the only one that is more
difficult to climb than the Peak, because the whole mountain is
covered with loose ashes.
When the Sugar-loaf (el Piton) is covered with snow, as it is in
the beginning of winter, the steepness of its declivity may be very
dangerous to the traveller. M. Le Gros showed us the place where
captain Baudin was nearly killed when he visited the Peak of
Teneriffe. That officer had the courage to undertake, in company
with the naturalists Advenier, Mauger, and Riedle, an excursion to
the top of the volcano about the end of December, 1797. Having
reached half the height of the cone, he fell, and rolled down as
far as the small plain of Rambleta; happily a heap of lava, covered
with snow, hindered him from rolling farther with accelerated
velocity. I have been told, that in Switzerland a traveller was
suffocated by rolling down the declivity of the Col de Balme, over
the compact turf of the Alps.
When we gained the summit of the Piton, we were surprised to find
scarcely room enough to seat ourselves conveniently. We were
stopped by a small circular wall of porphyritic lava, with a base
of pitchstone, which concealed from us the view of the crater.* (*
Called La Caldera, or the caldron of the peak, a denomination which
recalls to mind the Oules of the Pyrenees.) The west wind blew with
such violence that we could scarcely stand.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 73 of 407
Words from 37458 to 37977
of 211363