To The Gold Coast for Gold Volume I Part 7

After a total climb and ride of six hours, we reached the 'English station.' M. Eden (Aug. 13, 1715) [Footnote: Trans. Royal Soc. of London, 1714-16.] calls it simply Stancha, and M. Borda 'Station des Rochers.' Pere Feutree, a Frenchman who ascended in 1524, and wrote the earliest scientific account, had baptised it Station de St. Francois de Paul, and set up a cross. It is a shelf in the pumice-slope, 9,930 feet high, and protected against the cold night-winds of the north-north-east, the lower or polar current, by huge boulders of obsidian, like gigantic sodawater-bottles. The routine traveller sleeps upon this level a few hundred yards square, because the guides store their fuel in an adjacent bed of black rocks. Humboldt miscalls the station 'a kind of cavern;' and a little above it he nearly fell on the slippery surface of the 'compact short-swarded turf' which he had left 4,000 feet below him.

The bat-mules were unpacked and fed; and a rough bed was made up under the lea of the tallest rock, where a small _curral_ of dry stone kept off the snow. This, as we noticed in Madeira, is not in flakes, nor in hail-like globes: it consists of angular frozen lumps, and the selvage becomes the hardest ice. Some have compared it with the Swiss 'firn,' snow stripped of fine crystals and granulated by time and exposure. In March the greatest depth we saw in the gullies radiating from the mountain-top was about three feet. But in the cold season all must be white as a bride-cake; and fatal accidents occur in the Canada drifts. Professor Piazzi Smyth characterises the elevated region as cold enough at night, and stormy beyond measure in winter, when the south-wester, or equatorial upper current, produces a fearful climate. Yet the Pike summit lies some 300 feet below the snow-line (12,500 feet).

The view was remarkable: we were in sight of eighty craters. At sunset the haze cleared away from the horizon, which showed a straight grey-blue line against a blushing sky of orange, carmine, pale pink, and tender lilac, pa.s.sing through faint green into the deep dark blue of the zenith. In this _c.u.mbre_, or upper region, the stars did not surprise us by their brightness. At 6 P.M. the thermometer showed 32 degrees F.; the air was delightfully still and pure, [Footnote: We had no opportunity of noticing what Mr. Addison remarks, the air becoming sonorous and the sound of the sea changing from grave to acute after sunset and during the night. He attributes this increased intensity to additional moisture and an equability of temperature in the atmospheric strata. Perhaps the silence of night may tend to exaggerate the impression.] and Death mummifies, but does not decay.

A bright fire secured us against the piercing dry night-cold; and the _arrieros_ began to sing like _capirotes_ [Footnote: The _Capirote_ or _Tinto Negro_, a grey bird with black head (_Sylvia atricapilla_), is also found in Madeira, and much resembles the Eastern bulbul or Persian nightingale. It must be caged when young, otherwise it refuses to sing, and fed upon potatos and bread with milk, not grain. An enthusiast, following Humboldt (p. 87), describes the 'joyous and melodious notes' of the bird as 'the purest incense that can ascend to heaven.'] (bulbuls), sundry _seguidillas_, and _El Tajaraste_. The music may be heard everywhere between Morocco and Sind. It starts with the highest possible falsetto and gradually falls like a wail, all in the minor _clef_.

We rose next morning with nipped feet and hands, which a cup of hot coffee, 'with,' speedily corrected, and were _en route_ at 4.30 A.M. Formerly animals were left at the lower _estancia_; now they are readily taken on to Alta Vista. My wife rode a sure-footed black nag, I a mule which was perfect whilst the foot-long lever acting curb lay loose on its neck. Returning, we were amazed at the places they had pa.s.sed during the moonless night.

Our path skirted the Estancia de los Alemanos, about 300 yards higher than the English, and zig-zagged sharply up the pumice-slope. The talus now narrowed; the side-walls of dark trachytic blocks pinching it in. At this grisly hour they showed the quaintest figures--towers and pinnacles, needles and tree-trunks, veiled nuns and monstrous beasts. Amongst them were huge bombs of obsidian, and ma.s.ses with translucent, vitreous edges that cut like gla.s.s. Most of them contained crystals of felspar and pyroxene.

After half an hour we reached the dwarf platform of Alta Vista, 700 feet above the Estancia and 10,730, in round numbers, above sea-level. The little shelf, measuring about 100 to 300 yards, at the head of the fork where the north-eastern and the south-western lava-streams part, is divided by a medial ledge. Here we saw the parent rock of the pumice fragments, an outcrop of yellowish brown stone, like fractured and hardened clay. The four-footed animals were sent back: one rides up but not down such places.

Pa.s.sing in the lower section the sh.e.l.l of a house where the Astronomer's

[Footnote: The author came out in 1856 to make experiments in astronomical observations. Scientific men have usually a contempt for language: we find the same in _Our Inheritanse_, &c. (Dalby & Co., London, 1877), where the poor modern hierogrammats are not highly appreciated. But it is a serious blemish to find 'Montana Blanco,'

'Malpays,' 'Chahzorra' (for Chajorra), and 'Tiro del Guanches.' The author also is wholly in error about Guanche mummification. He derides (p. 329) the shivering and shaking of his Canarian guide under a cloudy sky of 40F., when the sailor enjoyed it in their 'glorious strength of Saxon (?) const.i.tution.' But when the latter were oppressed and discouraged by dry heat and vivid radiation, Manoel was active as a chamois. Why should enduring cold and not heat be held as a test of manliness?]

experiment had been tried, Guide Manoel pointed out the place where stood the _tormentos_, as he called the instruments. Thence we toiled afoot up the Mal Pais. This 'bad country' is contradictorily described by travellers. Glas (A.D. 1761) makes it a sheet of rock cracked cross-wise into cubes. Humboldt (1799) says, 'The lava, broken into sharp pieces, leaves hollows in which we risked falling up to our waists.' Von Buch (1815) mentions 'the sharp edges of gla.s.sy obsidian, as dangerous as the blades of knives.' Wilde (1857) tamely paints the scene as a 'magnified rough-cast.' Prof. Piazzi Smyth is, as usual, exact, but he suggests more difficulty than the traveller finds. I saw nothing beyond a succession of ridge-backs and shrinkage-creva.s.ses, disposed upon an acute angle. These ragged, angular, and mostly cuboidal blocks, resembling the ice-pack of St. Lawrence River, have apparently been borne down by subsequent lava-currents, which, however, lacked impetus to reach the lower levels of Las Canadas.

Springing from boulder to boulder, an exhilarating exercise for a time, over a 'surface of horrible roughness,' as Prof. Dana says of Hawaii, we halted to examine the Cueva de Hielo, whose cross has long succ.u.mbed to the wintry winds. The 'ice-house' in a region of fire occupies a little platform like the ruined base of a Pompey's Pillar. This is the table upon which the _neveros_ pack their stores of snow. The cave, a mere hole in the trachytic lava, opens to the east with an entrance some four feet wide. The general appearance was that of a large bubble in a baked loaf. Inside we saw a low ceiling spiky with stalact.i.tes, possibly icicles, and a coating of greenish ice upon the floor. A gutter leads from the mouth, showing signs of water-wear, and the blocks of trachyte are so loaded with glossy white felspar that I attempted to dust them before sitting down.

Local tradition connects this ice-cave with the famous burial-cavern near Ycod, on the northern coast; this would give a tunnel 8 miles long and 11,040 feet high. Many declare that the meltings ebb and flow with the sea-tide, and others recount that lead and lines of many fathoms failed to touch bottom. We are told about the normal dog which fell in and found its way to the sh.o.r.e through the cave of Ycod de los Vinos. In the latter a M. Auber spent four hours without making much way; in parts he came upon scatters of Guanche bones. Mr. Robert Edwards, of Santa Cruz, recounted another native tradition--that before the eruption of A.D. 1705 there was a run of water but no cave. Mr. Addison was let down into it, and found three branches or lanes, the longest measuring 60-70 feet. What the _neveros_ call _el hombre de nieve_ (the snow-man) proved to be a honeycombed ma.s.s of lava revetted with ice-drippings. He judged the cave to be a crater of emission; and did not see the smoke or steam issuing from it as reported by the ice-collectors.

Professor P. Smyth goes, I think, a little too far in making this contemptible feature compose such a quarrel as that between the English eruptionist and the Continental upheavalist. Deciding a disputed point, that elevation is a force and a method in nature, he explains the cave by the explosion of gases, which blew off the surface of the dome, 'when the heavy sections of the lava-roof, unsupported from below, fell downward again, wedging into and against each other, so as nearly to reform their previous figure.' But the unshattered state of the stones and the rounded surfaces of the sides show no sign of explosion. The upper _Piton_ is unfitted for retaining water, which must percolate through its cinders, pumices, and loose matter into many a reservoir formed by blowing-holes. Snow must also be drifted in and retain, the cold. Moisture would be kept in the cavern by the low conducting power of its walls; so Lyell found, on Etna, a bed of solid ice under a lava-current. Possibly also this cave has a frozen substratum, like many of the ice-pools in North America.

We then toiled up to another little _estancia_, a sheltered, rock-girt hollow. The floor of snow, or rather frozen rain, was sprinkled with red dust, and fronts the wind, with sharp icy points rising at an angle of 45. Here, despite the penetrating cold, we gravely seated ourselves to enjoy at ease the hardly won pleasures of the sunrise. The pallid white gleam of dawn had grown redder, brighter and richer. An orange flush, the first breaking of the beams faintly reflected from above, made the sky, before a deep and velvety black-blue, look like a gilt canopy based upon a rim of azure mist. The brilliancy waxed golden and more golden still; the blending of the colours became indescribably beautiful; and, lastly, the sun's upper limb rose in brightest saffron above the dimmed and spurious horizon of north-east cloud. The panorama below us emerged dimly and darkly from a torrent of haze, whose waving convex lines, moving with a majestic calm, wore the aspect of a deluge whelming the visible world. Martin the Great might have borrowed an idea from this waste of waters, as it seemed to be, heaving and breaking, surging and sweeping over the highest mountain-tops. We saw nothing of the immense triangular gnomon projected by the Pilon as far as Gomera Island, [Footnote: At sunset of July 10, 1863, I could trace it extending to Grand Canary, darkening the southern half and leaving the northern in bright sunshine: the right limb was better defined than the left.] and gradually contracting as the lamp of day rises. Item, we saw nothing of the archipelago like a map in relief; the latter, however, is rarely visible in its entirety. Disappointment!

During the descent we had a fair prospect of the Canarian Triquetra. Somewhat like Madeira, it has a longitudinal spine of mountains, generically called Las Canadas; but, whilst the volcanic ridge of the Isle of Wood runs in a lat.i.tudinal line, the Junonian Cordillera has a whorl, the ancient as well as the modern seat of eruption. Around the island appeared to be a rim, as if the sea-horizon formed a raised saucer--a common optical delusion at these alt.i.tudes.

As we advanced the Mal Pais became more broken: the 'bad step' was ugly climbing, and we often envied our men, who wore heelless shoes of soft untanned leather with soles almost as broad as they were long. The roughness of the trachytic blocks, however, rendered a slip impossible. At 6.45 we reached the second floor of this three-storied volcano, here 11,721 feet high. The guides call it the _Pico del Pilon_, because it is the ancient Peak-Crater, and strangers the Rambleta (not Rembleta) Volcano, which strewed Las Canadas with fiery pumice, and which shot up the terminal head 'conical as a cylinder.' It has now become an irregular and slightly convex plain a mile in diameter, whose centre is the terminal chimney. Its main peculiarity is in the fumaroles, or escapes of steam, and _mofetti_, mephitic emanations of limpid water and sulphur-vapour. Of these we counted five narices within as many hundred yards. Their temperature greatly varies, 109 and 158 Fahr. being, perhaps, the extremes; my thermometer showed 130. These _soupiraux_ or _respiradouros_ are easily explained.

The percolations from above are heated to steam by stones rich in 'grough brimstone.' Here it was that Humboldt saw apparent lateral shiftings and perpendicular oscillations of fixed stars; and our Admiralty, not wishing to be behind him, directed Professor P. Smyth's attention to 'scintillations in general.' Only the youngest of travellers would use such a place as an observatory; and only the youngest of observers would have considered this _libration of the stars_ an extraordinary phenomenon.

Directed by a regular line of steam-puffs, we attacked _El Pilon_, the third story, the most modern cone of eruption, the dwarf chimney which looks like a thimble from the sea. The lower third was of loose crumbling pumice, more finely comminuted than we had yet seen; this is what Humboldt calls 'ash-cones.' There was also a strew of porphyritic lava-chips covered with a red (ochreous?) crust. Presently we reached a radiating rib of lately ejected lava, possibly the ridge of a d.y.k.e, brown below and gradually whitening with sulphuric acid as it rose towards the crater-walls. The resting took longer than the walking up the steep talus; and at 7.45: after a total of nine hours and a morning's work of two hours and a half, which occupied two in descending, we stood upon the corona or lip of 'Teyde.'

The height of the Tenerife Pike, once held the loftiest in the world, is 12,198 feet, in round numbers 12,200. Thus it stands nearly at the alt.i.tude of Mont Blanc (15,784 feet) above the Chamounix valley, a figure of 12,284 feet. The slope from the base is 1 in 4.6. The direct distance from Orotava on the map measures 10.5 miles; along the road 18, according to the guides. The terminal chimney and outlet for vapours which would erupt elsewhere, rises 520 feet from its pedestal, the central Rambleta, and its ascent generally occupies an hour. One visitor has reduced this _montagne pelee_ to 60-70 feet, and compares it with the dome of a gla.s.s-house. From below it resembles nothing so much as a cone of dirty brown _ca.s.sonade_, and travellers are justified in calling it a sugarloaf. I can hardly rest satisfied with Von Buch's description. 'Teyde is a pointed tower surrounded by a ditch and a circular chain of bastions.'

The word Teyde is supposed to be a corruption of Echeyde, meaning Hades: hence the t.i.tle Isla Infierno, found in a map of A.D. 1367. The Guanches also called it Ayadyrma, and here placed their pandemonium, under Guayota, the head-fiend. The country-folk still term the crater-ring 'la caldera de los diablos en que se cuecen todas las provisiones del Infierno' (the Devil's caldron, wherein are cooked all the rations of the infernals). Seen by moonlight, or on a star-lit night, the scenery would be weird and ghostly enough to suggest such fancies, which remind us of Etna and Lipari.

I had been prepared by descriptions for a huge chasm-like crater or craters like those on Theon Ochema, Camerones Peak. I found a spoon-shaped hollow, with a gradual slope to the centre, 100 150 feet deep, the greater length of the oval running north-east, where the side is higher, to south-west, where there is also a tilt of the cup. The floor was a surface of burning marl and whitish earthy dough-like paste, the effect of sulphurous acid vapours upon the argile of the lava. This stratum was in places more than 80 feet thick; and fumes rose fetid with sulphuric acid, and sulphates of soda, alumina, and ammonia from the dead white, purple red, vivid green, and brilliant yellow surface of the solfatara. Hence the puffs of vapour seen from below against the sparkling blue sky, and disappearing like huge birds upon the wings of the wind: hence, too, the tradition of the mast and the lateen sail. A dig with the Guanche _magada_ or _lanza_, the island alpen-stock, either outside or inside the crater, will turn up, under the moist white clay, lovely trimetric crystals of sulphur, with the palest straw tint, deepening to orange, and beautifully disposed in acicular shapes. The acid eats paper, and the colours fade before they leave the cone.

[Footnote: Dr. Wilde (1837) a.n.a.lysed the sulphur as follows: Silica, 8113; water, 887; and a trace of lime. Others have obtained from the mineral, when condensed upon a cold surface, minute crystals of alum. Mr. Addison found in the 'splendid crystals of octahedral sulphur'

a glistening white substance of crystalline structure, yet somewhat like opal. When a.n.a.lysed it proved to contain 91 per cent. silex and the rest water.]

When sitting down it is advisable to choose a block upon which dew-drops pearl. A few minutes of rest upon a certain block of marl, whose genial warmth is most grateful, squatting in the sharp cold air, neatly removes all cloth in contact with the surface. More than one excursionist has shown himself in that Humphrey Clinker condition which excited the wrath of Count Tabitha. It is evident that Teyde is by no means exhausted, and possibly it may return to the state of persistent eruption described by the eye-witness Ca da Mosto, who landed on the Canaries in A.D. 1505.

Not at all impressed with the grandeur of the Inferno, we walked round the narrow rim of the crater-cirque, and were shown a small breach in the wall of porphyritic lava facing west. Mrs. Murray's authorities describe the _Caldera_ as being 'without any opening:' if this be the case the gap has lately formed. The cold had driven away the lively little colony of bees, birds, and b.u.t.terflies which have been seen disporting themselves about the bright white cauldron. There was not a breath of the threatened wind. Manoel pointed out Mount Bermeja as the source of the lateral lava-stream whose 'infernal avalanche,' on May 5, 1706, [Footnote: Preceding Ca da Mosto's day another eruption (1492) was noted by Columbus, shortly before his discovery of the Antilles.

Garachico was the only port in Tenerife, with a breakwater of rocky isle and water so deep that the yardarms of men-of-war could almost touch the vineyards. Its quays were bordered by large provision-stores, it had five convents, and its slopes were dotted with villas. After an earthquake during the night a lava-stream from several cones destroyed the village Del Tanque at 3:30 A.M., and at 9 P.M. another flood entered Garachico at seven points, drove off the sea, ruined the mole, and filled the port. It was followed by a cascade of fire at 8 A.M. on the 13th of the same month, and the lava remained incandescent for forty days.] overwhelmed 'Grarachico, pueblo rico,'

[Footnote: Alluding to the curse of the Franciscan Friar, who devoted the town to destruction in these words:--

'Garachico, pueblo rico, Gastadero de dinero, Mal risco te caiga encima!']

and spared Guimar, which it enclosed between two fiery streams. Despite the white and woolly mists, the panorama of elevations, craters and castellated eminences, separated by deep gashes and by _currals_ like those of Madeira, but verdure-bare, was stupendous. I have preserved, however, little beyond names and heights. We did not suffer from _puna_, or mountain sickness, which Bishop Sprat, of Rochester, mentions in 1650, and which Mr. Darwin--alas that we must write the late!--cured by botanising. I believe that it mostly results from disordered liver, and, not unfrequently, in young Alpinists, from indigestion.

The descent of the Teyde _Piton_, in Vesuvian fashion, occupied ten minutes. Our guides now whistled to their comrades below, who had remained in charge of the animals. Old authors tell us that the Guanche whistle could be heard for two leagues, and an English traveller declares that after an experiment close to his ear he did not quite recover its use for a fortnight. The return home was wholly without interest, except the prospects of cloud-land, grander than those of Folkestone, which seemed to open another world beneath our feet. Near the Santa Clara village all turned out to prospect two faces which must have suggested only raw beef-steaks. It was Sunday, and

(Garachico, wealthy town; wasteful of thy wealth, may an ill rock fall upon thy head!)

both s.e.xes were in their 'braws.' The men wore clean blanket-mantles, the women coloured corsets laced in front, gowns of black serge or cotton, dark blue shawls hardly reaching to their waist, and the usual white kerchief, the Arab _kufiyah_, under the broad-brimmed straw or felt hat, whose crown was decorated with the broadest and gayest ribbons. But even this unpicturesque coiffure, almost worthy of Sierra Leone, failed to conceal the n.o.bility of face and figure, the well-turned limbs, the fine hands and feet, and the _meneo_, or swimming walk, of this Guanchinesque race, which everywhere forced itself upon the sight. The proverb says--

De Tenerife los hombres; Las mugeres de Canaria.

It is curious to compare the realistic accounts of the nineteenth century with those of the _vulcanio_ two centuries ago. Ogilby (1670) tells us that the Moors called it El-Bard (Cold), and we the 'Pike of Teneriff, thought not to have its equal in the world for height, because it spires with its top so high into the clouds that in clear weather it may be seen sixty _Dutch_ miles off at sea.' His ill.u.s.tration of the 'Piek-Bergh op het Eilant Teneriffe' shows an almost perpendicular tower of natural masonry rising from a low sow-back whose end is the 'Punt Tenago' (Anaga Point). The 'considerable merchants and persons of credit,' whose ascent furnished material for the Royal Society, set out from Orotava. 'In the ascent of one mile some of our Company grew very faint and sick, disorder'd by Fluxes, Vomitings, and Aguish Distempers; our Horses' Hair standing upright like Bristles.'

Higher up 'their Strong waters had lost their Virtue, and were almost insipid, while their Wine was more spirituous and brisk than before.' In those days also iron and copper, silver and gold, were found in the calcined rocks of the Katakaumenon. It is strange to note how much more was seen by ancient travellers than by us moderns.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SPANISH ACCOUNT OF THE REPULSE OF NELSON FROM SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE.

[Footnote: From the _Relacion circ.u.mstanciada de la Defensa que hizo la Plaza de Santa Cruz_, by M. Monteverde. Published in Madrid, 1798.]

The following pages afford a circ.u.mstantial and, I believe, a fairly true account of an incident much glossed over by our naval historians. The subject is peculiarly interesting. At Santa Cruz, as at Fontenoy, the Irish, whom harsh measures at home drove for protection to more friendly lands, took ample share in the fighting which defeated England's greatest sailor. Again, the short-sighted policy which sent to the Crimea 20,000 British soldiers to play second instrument in concert with 40,000 Frenchmen, thus lowering us in the eyes of Europe, made Nelson oppose his 960 hands to more than eight times their number. The day may come when the attack shall be repeated. Now that steam has rendered fleets independent of south-west winds, it is to be hoped the a.s.sailant will prefer day to night, so that his divisions can communicate; that he will not land in the 'raging surf' of the ebb-tide, and that he will attack the almost defenceless south instead of the well-fortified north of the city.

Already the heroic Island had inflicted partial or total defeat upon three English admirals. [Footnote: Grand Canary also did her duty by beating off, in October 1795, Drake's strong squadron.] In April 1657 the Roundhead 'general at sea,' Admiral Sir Robert Blake, of Bridgewater, attempted to cut out the Spanish galleons freighted with Mexican gold and with the silver of Peru. Of these the princ.i.p.al were the _Santo-Cristo_, the _Jesus-Maria_, the _Santo Sacramento_, _La Concepcion_, the _San Juan_, the _Virgen de la Solitud_, and the _Nuestra Senora del Buen Socorro_. This 'silver fleet'

was moored under the guns of the 'chief castle,' San Cristobal, the mean work at the root of the mole. The English were preparing to board, when the Captain-General, D. Diego de Egues, whom our histories call 'Diagues,' ordered the fleet to be fired, after all the treasure had been housed in the fort. A steady fight lasted three hours, during which the wife of the brave Governor, D. Estevan de la Guerra, distinguished herself. 'I shall not be useless here,' she exclaimed when invited to leave the batteries; and this 'maid of Tenerife' continued to animate the garrison till the end. As was the case with his great successor, Roundhead Blake's failure proved to him far better than a success. For his _francesada_, or _coup de tete_, Nelson expected to lose his commission, instead of which some popular freak flung to him honour and honours. So Protector Cromwell sent a valuable diamond ring to his 'general at sea,' in token of esteem on his part and that of his Parliament. Our histories, relying on the fact that a few weak batteries were silenced, claim for the Admiral a positive victory, despite his losses--fifty killed and 500 wounded.

[Footnote: The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon (_Life of Blake_, p. 346) describes the open roadstead of Santa Cruz as a 'harbour shaped like a horse-shoe, and defended at the north side of the entrance by a regular castle.' In p. 350 we also read of the bay and its entrance. Any hydrographic chart would have set him right.]

In 1706, during the Spanish war of succession, Admiral Jennings sailed into Santa Cruz bay--the old Bay of Anaga or Anago--and lay off San Cristobal

[Footnote: This work still remains. It is a parallelogram with four bastions in star-shape, fronting the sea, and an embrasured wall facing the town. It began as a chapel, set up by De Lugo to N. S. de la Consolacion, and a tower was added in 1493. It was destroyed by the Guanches and rebuilt by Charles Quint: the present building a.s.sumed its shape in 1579. The main square, inland of San Cristobal, shows by a marble cross where the conqueror planted with one hand a large affair of wood--hence Santa Cruz. The original is, or was till lately, in the Civil Hospital.]

with twelve ships of the line. The Plaza was commanded, in the absence of the Captain-General, by the Corregidor, D. Antonio de Ayala, who a.s.sembled all the n.o.bles in the castle's lower rooms and swore them to loyalty. The English attempted to disembark, and were beaten back; whereupon, as under Nelson, they sent a parliamentary and summoned the island to surrender to the Archduke Charles of Austria. The envoy informed the Governor, who is described by Dampier as sitting in a low, dark, uncarpeted room, adorned only with muskets and pikes, that Philip V. had lost Gibraltar, that Cadiz and Minorca had nearly fallen, and that the American galleons in the port of Vigo had been burnt or captured by the English, whose army, entering Castile, had overrun Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The braves reply was, 'If Philip, our king, had lost his all in the Peninsula, these islands would still remain faithful to him.' And the castle guns did such damage that the Jennings squadron sailed away on the same evening.

The third expedition, detached by Admmiral Sir John Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent, to 'cut out a richly freighted Manilla ship,' also resulted in a tremendous failure. Captain Brenton, to gratify national complacency, grossly exaggerates in his 'Naval History' the difficulty of the enterprise. 'Of all places which ever came under our inspection none, we conceive, is more invulnerable to attack or more easily defended than Teneriffe.' He forgets to mention its princ.i.p.al guard, the valour of the inhabitants. And now to my translation.

'At dawn on July 2, [Footnote: James (_Naval History_, vol. ii. p. 56) more correctly says July 20. So the _Despatches, &c., of Lord Nelson_, Sir H. Nicholas, vol. ii. p. 429. The thanksgiving for the victory took place on July 27, the fete of SS. Iago and Cristobal.] 1797, the squadron [Footnote: The squadron was composed as follows:--1. _Theseus_ (74), Captain Ralph Willett Miller, carried the Rear-Admiral's flag; 2. _Culloden_ (74), Commodore and Captain Thos. Troubridge; 3. _Zealous_ (74), Captain Sam. Hood; 4. _Leander_ (50), Captain Thos. Boulden Thomson, which joined on the day before the attack. There were three frigates:--1. _Seahorse_ (38), Captain Thos. Francis Fremantle; 2. _Emerald_ (36), Captain John Waller; and 3. _Terpsich.o.r.e_ (32), Captain Richard Bowen; also the _Fox_ (cutter), Lieut. Commander John Gibson, and a mortar-boat or a bomb-ketch, probably a ship's launch with a sh.e.l.l-gun.] of Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson, K.B., composed of nine ships, and carrying a total of 393 guns, appeared off Santa Cruz, the port of Tenerife, Canarian archipelago. The enemy at once manned and put off his boats. One division of sixteen occupied our front; the other twenty-three took the direction of the Bufadero valley, a wild gap two or three miles to the north of the harbour.

'An alarm signal was immediately made in the town, when the enemy returned to his ships, and made his troops prepare to disembark. At ten A.M. the three frigates, towed by their boats, cast anchor out of cannon-shot, near the Bufadero; whilst the other vessels plied to windward, [Footnote: At the time the weather was calm in the town, but a violent levante, or east wind, prevented vessels from approaching the bay, where the lee sh.o.r.e is very dangerous.] and disembarked about 1,200 men on the beach of Valle Seco, between the town and the valley. This party occupied the nearest hill before it could be attacked; its movements showed an intention to seize the steep rocky scarp commanding the Paso Alto--the furthest to the north of the town. [Footnote: Nelson's rough sketch, vol. ii. p. 434, shows that it had 26 guns. San Cristobal de Paso Alto commands the large ravine called by the Guanches 'Tahoide' or 'Tejode,' which is now defended by San Miguel. This is a small rockwork carrying six guns in two tiers, the upper _en barbette_ and the lower casemated.] Thus the enemy would have been enabled to land fresh troops during the night; and, after gaining the heights and roads leading to the town, to attack us in flank as well as in front.

'Light troops were detached to annoy the invader, and they soon occupied the pa.s.ses with praiseworthy celerity and boldness. One party was led by the Capitaine de Fregate Citizen Ponne [Footnote: James calls him Zavier Pommier. He commanded the French brig _Mutine_ (14), of 349 tons, with a crew of 135. As he landed at Santa Cruz with 22 of his men on May 28, 1797, the frigates _Lively_, Captain Benjamin Hallowell, and the _Minerva_, Captain George c.o.c.kburn, descried the hostile craft. Lieutenant Hardy, of the _Minerva_, supported by six officers and their respective boats' crews, boarded her as she lay at anchor. Despite the fire of the garrison and of a large ship in the roads, he carried her, after an hour's work, safe out of gunshot. Only 15 men were wounded, including Lieutenant Hardy. This officer was at once put in command of the _Mutine_, which he had so gallantly won.] and by the Lieutenant de Vaisseau Citizen Faust. Both officers, who had been exchanged and restored at the same port, showed much presence of mind on this occasion, and on July 25 they applied to be posted at a dangerous point of attack--the beach to the south of the town, near Puerto Caballas, beyond where the Lazaretto now lies. When the enemy purposed a.s.saulting a more central post, they came up at the moment of the affair, ending in our victory.

'A second party was composed of the Infantry Battalion of the Canaries, [Footnote: This battalion afterwards distinguished itself highly in the Peninsular war.] under Sub-Lieutenant Don Juan Sanchez. A third, composed of 70 recruits from the Banderas [Footnote: _Bandera_ is a flag, a depot, also a levy made by officers of Government.] of Havana and Cuba, was led by Second Lieutenant Don Pedro Castillo; a fourth numbered seventeen artillerymen and two officers, Lieutenant Don Josef Feo and Sub-Lieutenant Don Francisco Dugi. A fifth, and the last, was of twenty-five free cha.s.seurs belonging to the town, and commanded by Captains Don Felipe Vina and Don Luis Roman.

'Our Commandant-General, H. E. Senor Don Juan Antonio Gutierrez, [Footnote: Not Gutteri, as James has it, nor 'Gutienez,' as Mrs. Murray prefers.] was residing in the princ.i.p.al castle of San Cristobal. His staff consisted of the commandants of the Royal Corps of Artillery and Engineers, Don Marcelo Estranio and Don Luis Margueli; of the Auditor of War (an old office, the legal military adviser and judge), Don Vicente Patino; of Lieutenant-Colonel Don Juan Creagh (locally p.r.o.nounced Cre-ah); of the Secretary of Inspection Captain Don Juan Creagh; of the Secretary to Government and Captain of Militia Don Guillermo de los Reyes; of the Captain of Infantry Don Josef Victor Dominguez; of Lieutenants Don Vicente Siera and Don Josef Calzadilla, Town-Adjutant--the latter three acting as aides-de-camp to his Excellency--and of the first officers of the Tobacco and Postal Bureaux, Don Juan Fernandez Uriarte and Don Gaspar de Fuentes.