[Sidenote: Cardanus] For In Caira (Or Capira) Also, The Highest Toppes Of The Mountaine Are Sayd Continually To Be White With Snowe:

And those in Veragua likewise, which are fiue miles high, and neuer without snowe, being distant notwithstanding but onely 10 degrees from the equinoctiall.

We haue heard that either of the forsayd Prouinces standeth neere vnto Paria. What, if in Teneriffa (which is one of the Canarie or fortunate Islands) the Pike [Footnote: The Peak.] so called, arising into the ayre, according to Munster, eight or nine Germaine miles in height, and continually flaming like Aetna: yet (as Benzo an Italian, and Historiographer of the West Indies witnesseth) is it not able to melt the girdle of snowe embracing the middest thereof. Which thing, what reason haue we more to admire in the mountaine of Hecla? And thus much briefly concerning firie mountaines.

Now that also is to be amended, whereas they write that these mountaines are lifted vp euen vnto the skies. For they haue no extraordinarie height beyond the other mountaines of Island, but especially that third mountaine, called by Munster Helga, and by vs Helgafel, that is the holy mount, standing iust by a monastery of the same name, being couered with snowe, vpon no part thereof in Summer time, neither deserueth it the name of an high mountaine, but rather of an humble hillocke, neuer yet as I sayd in the beginning of this section, so much as once suspected of burning. Neither yet ought perpetuall snowe to be ascribed to Hecla onely, or to a few others; for Island hath very many such snowy mountaines, all which the Cosmographer (who hath so extolled and admired these three) should not easily find out, and reckon vp in a whole yere. And that also is not to be omitted, that mount Hecla standeth not towards the West, as Munster and Ziegler haue noted, but betweene the South and the East: neither is it an headland, but rather a mid-land hill.

[Sidenote: The chronicles of Island.] Continueth alwayes burning &c. whosoeuer they be that haue ascribed vnto Hecla perpetuall belching out of flames, they are farre besides the marke: insomuch that as often as it hath bene enflamed, our countreymen haue recorded it in their yerely Chronicles for a rare accident: namely in the yeeres of Christ 1104, 1157, 1222, 1300, 1341, 1362, and 1389: For from that yeere we neuer heard of the burning of this mountaine vntill the yeere 1558, which was the last breaking foorth of fire in that mountaine. In the meane time I say not that is impossible, but that the bottome of the hill may inwardly breed and nourish flames, which at certaine seasons (as hath bene heretofore obserued) haue burst out, and perhaps may do the like hereafter. [Footnote: The surface of the country is very mountainous, but there are no definite ranges, the isolated volcanic masses being separated by elevated plateaux of greater or less size. The whole centre is, in fact, an almost continuous desert fringed by a belt of pasture land, lying along the coast and running up the valleys of several of the greater riuers.

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