Pleasure Vessels
Nationality Steam Yachts Yachts American - - Argentine - - Austrian - - Belgian - - Brazilian - - British 2 4 Danish - - Dutch - - French - - German - - Italian - - Norwegian - - Portuguese - - Russian - - Spanish - - Swedish - -
Totals: 2 4
Merchant Vessels
Nationality Steamers Ships Barques Barquantines Brigs
American - - 3 - - Argentine 1 - - - - Austrian - 1 2 - - Belgian 26 - - - - Brazilian 3 - - - - British 439 1 9 20 9 Danish - - - - 1 Dutch 1 - - - - French - - 3 - - German 8 - 16 - 2 Italian - - - - - Norwegian - - 5 1 1 Portuguese 48 - 3 - - Russian - - 2 - - Spanish - - 2 - - Swedish - - 2 - -
Totals: 526 2 43 21 13
CHAPTER V.
TO TENERIFE, LA LAGUNA, AND OROTAVA.
When I left, in 1865, the western coast of the Dark Continent, its transit and traffic were monopolised by the A(frican) S(team) S(hip) Company, a monthly line established in 1852, mainly by the late Macgregor Laird. In 1869 Messieurs Elder, Dempster, and Co., of Glasgow, started the B(ritish) and A(frican) to divide the spoils. The junior numbers nineteen keel, including two being built. It could easily "eat up" the decrepit senior, which is now known as the A(frican) S(tarvation) S(teamers); but this process would produce serious compet.i.tion. Both lines sail from Liverpool on alternate Sat.u.r.days, and make Funchal, with their normal unpunctuality, between Fridays and Sundays. This is dreary slow compared with the four days" fast running of the "Union S. S. C." and the comfortable "Castle Line," alias the Cape steamers.
The B. and A. s.s. _Senegal_ is a fair specimen of the modern West African trader "improved:" unfortunately the improvements affect the shareholders" pockets rather than the pa.s.sengers" persons. The sleeping-berths are better, but the roomy, well-lighted, comfortable old saloon, sadly shorn of its fair proportions, has become the upper story of a store-room. The unfortunate stewards must catch fever by frequent diving into the close and sultry mine of solids and fluids under floor. There being no baggage-compartment, boxes and bags are stowed away in the after part, unduly curtailing light and air; the stern lockers, once such pleasant sleeping-sofas, and their fixed tables are of no use to anything besides baskets and barrels. Here the surgeon, who, if anyone, should have a cabin by way of dispensary, must lodge his medicine-chest. Amongst minor grievances the main cabin is washed every night, breeding a manner of malaria. The ice intended for pa.s.sengers is either sold or preserved for those who ship most cargo. Per contra, the cook is good, the table is plentiful, the wines not over bad, the stewards civil, and the officers companionable.
Both lines, however, are distinctly traders. They bind themselves to no time; they are often a week late, and they touch wherever demand calls them. The freight-charges are exorbitant, three pounds for fine goods and a minimum of thirty-six shillings, when fifteen per ton would pay. The White Star Line, therefore, threatens _concurrence_. Let us also hope that when the Gold Mines prosper we shall have our special steamers, where the pa.s.senger will be more prized than the puncheon of palm-oil. But future rivals must have a care; they will encounter a somewhat unscrupulous opposition; and they had better ship American crews, at any rate not Liverpudlians.
The night and the next day were spent at sea in a truly delicious climate, which seemed to wax softer and serener as we advanced. Here the moon, whose hue is golden, not silvern, has a regular dawn before rising, and an afterglow to her setting; and Venus casts a broad cestus of glimmering light upon the purple sea. Mount Atlas, alias the Pike of Teyde, gradually upreared his giant statue, two and a half miles high: travellers speak of seeing him from Madeira, a distance of some 260 (dir. geog.) miles; but this would be possible only were both termini 15,000 feet in alt.i.tude. The limit of sight for terrestrial objects under the most favourable conditions does not exceed 210 miles. Yet here it is not difficult to explain the impossible distances, 200 miles instead of 120, at which, they say, the cone has been sighted: mirage or refraction accounts for what the earth"s convexity disallows.
We first see a low and regular wall of cloud-bank whose coping bears here and there bulges of white, cottony cloud. Then a regular pyramid, at this season white as snow, shows its gnomon-like point, impaling the c.u.muli. Hour by hour the outlines grow clearer, till at last the terminal cone looks somewhat like a thimble upon a pillow--the _c.u.mbre_, or lofty foundation of pumice-plains. But the aspect everywhere varies according as you approach the island from north, south, east, or west.
The evening of January 9 showed us right abeam a splendid display of the Zodiacal Light, whose pyramid suggested the glow of a hemisphere on fire. The triangle, slightly spherical, measured at its base 22 degrees to 24 degrees and rose to within 6" of Jupiter. The reflection in the water was perfect and lit up with startling distinctness the whole eastern horizon.
At 7 A.M. next morning, after running past the Anaga knuckle-bone--and very bony it is--of the Tenerife _gigot_, we cast anchor in the Bay of Santa Cruz, took boat, and hurried ash.o.r.e. In the early times of the A.S.S. halts at the several stations often lasted three days. Business is now done in the same number of hours; and the captain informs you that "up goes the anchor" the moment his last bale or bag comes on board. This trading economy of time, again, is an improvement more satisfactory to the pa.s.senger than to the traveller and sightseer who may wish to see the world.
Brusque was the contrast between the vivid verdure of Sylvania, the Isle of Wood, and the grim nudity of north-eastern Tenerife; brusquer still the stationary condition of the former compared with the signs, of progress everywhere evident in the latter. Spain, under the influence of anticlerical laws and a spell of republicanism, has awoke from her sleep of ages, and we note the effects of her revival even in these colonies. A brand-new red fort has been added to La Ciudadela at the northern suburb, whence a mole is proposed to meet the southern branch and form a basin. Then comes the triangular city whose hypothenuse, fronting east, is on the sea; its chief fault is having been laid out on too small a scale. At the still-building pier, which projects some 500 yards from the central ma.s.s of fort and _cuadras_ (insulae or house-blocks), I noticed a considerable growth of buildings, especially the Marineria and other offices connected with the free port. The old pink "castle" San Cristobal (Christopher), still c.u.mbers the jetty-root; but the least sentimental can hardly expect the lieges to level so historic a building: it is the site of Alonso Fernandez de Lugo"s first tower, and where his disembarkation on May 3, 1493, gave its Christian name "Holy Cross" to the Guanche "Anasa." Meanwhile the Rambleta de Ravenal, dated 1861, a garden, formerly dusty, glary, and dreary as the old Florian of Malta, now bears lovers" seats, a goodly growth of planes and tamarinds, a statue, a fountain, and generally a gypsy-like family. By its side runs a tramway for transporting the huge blocks of concrete intended to prolong the pier. The inner town also shows a new palace, a new hospital, and a host of improvements.
Landing at Santa Cruz, a long dull line of glaring masonry, smokeless and shadeless, was to me intensely saddening. A score of years had carried off all my friends. Kindly Mrs. Nugent, called "the Admiral,"
and her amiable daughter are in the English burial-ground; the hospitable Mr. Consul Grattan had also faded from the land of the living. The French Consul, M. Berthelot, who published [Footnote: _Histoire naturelle des Iles Canaries_, par MM. P. Barker Webb et Sabin Berthelot, ouvrage publie sous les auspices de M. Guizot, Ministre de l"Instruction Publique, Paris, 1839. Seven folio vols., with maps, plans, and sketches, all regardless of expense.] by favour of the late Mr. Webb, went to the many in 1880. One of the brothers Richardson had died; the other had subsided into a clerk, and the Fonda Ingleza had become the British Consulate. The new hotel kept by Senor Camacho and his English wife appeared comfortable enough, but it had none of those a.s.sociations which make the old familiar inn a kind of home. _En revanche_, however, I met Mr. Consul Dundas, my successor at the port of Santos, whence so few have escaped with life; and his wife, the daughter of an Anglo-Brazilian friend.
Between 1860 and 1865 I spent many a week in Tenerife, and here I am tempted to transcribe a few extracts from my voluminous notes upon various subjects, especially the Guanche population and the ascent of the Pike. A brief history of the unhappy Berber-speaking goatherds who, after being butchered to make sport for certain unoccupied gentlemen, have been raised by their a.s.sailants to kings and heroes rivalling the demi-G.o.ds of Greece and Rome, and the melancholy destruction of the race, have been noticed in a previous volume. [Footnote: Yol. i. chap, ii., _Wanderings in West Africa_. The _modorra_, lethargy or melancholia, which killed so many of those Numidian islanders suggests the pining of a wild bird prisoned in a cage.] I here confine myself to the contents of my note-book upon the Guanche collections in the island.
One fine morning my wife and I set out in a venerable carriage for San Cristobal de la Laguna. The Camino de los Coches, a fine modern highway in corkscrew fashion from Santa Cruz to Orotava, was begun, by the grace of General Ortega, who died smoking in the face of the firing party, and ended between 1862 and 1868. This section, eight kilometres long, occupies at least one hour and a half, zigzagging some 2,000 feet up a steep slope which its predecessor uncompromisingly breasted. Here stood the villa of Peter Pindar (Dr. Walcott), who hymned the fleas of Tenerife: I would back those of Tiberias. The land is arid, being exposed to the full force of the torrid northeast trade. Its princ.i.p.al produce is the cactus (_coccinellifera_), a fantastic monster with fat oval leaves and apparently dest.i.tute of aught beyond thorns and p.r.i.c.kles. Here and there a string of small and rather mangy camels, each carrying some 500 lbs., paced _par monts et par vaux_, and gave a Bedawi touch to the scene: they were introduced from Africa by De Bethencourt, surnamed the Great. We remarked the barrenness of the bronze-coloured Banda del Sur, whose wealth is in cochineal and "dripstones," or filters of porous lava. Here few save the hardiest plants can live, the spiny, gummy, and succulent cactus and thistles, aloes and figs. The arborescent tabayba (_Euphorbia canariensis_), locally called "cardon," is compared by some with the "chandelier" of the Cape, bristling with wax tapers: the Guanches used it extensively for narcotising fish. This "milk plant," with its acrid, viscid, and virulent juice, and a small remedial shrub growing by its side, probably gave rise to the island fable of the twin fountains; one killed the traveller by a kind of _risus Sardonicus_, unless he used the other by way of cure. A scatter of crosses, which are impaled against every wall and which rise from every eminence; a ruined fort here and there; a long zigzag for wheels, not over-macadamised, with an older short cut for hoofs, and the Puente de Zurita over the Barranco Santo, an old bridge made new, led to the _cuesta_, or crest, which looks down upon the Vega de la Laguna, the native Aguere.
The "n.o.ble and ancient city" San Cristobal de la Laguna was founded on June 26, 1495, St. Christopher"s Day, by De Lugo, who lies buried in the San Miguel side-chapel of La Concepcion de la Victorias. The site is an ancient lava-current, the successor of a far older crater, originally submarine. The latest sub-aerial fire-stream, a broad band flowing from north to south--we have ascended it by the coach-road--and garnished with small parasitic craters, affords a bed and basis to the capital-port, Santa Cruz. After rains the lake reappears in mud and mire; and upon the lip where the town is built the north-east and the south-west winds contend for mastery, shedding abundant tears. Yet the old French chronicler says of the site, "Je ne croy pas qu"il y eu ait en tout le monde aucune autre de plus plaisante." The mean annual temperature is 62 51" (F.), and the sensation is of cold: the alt.i.tude being 1,740 feet. Hence, like Orotava, it escaped the yellow fever which in October 1862 had slain its 616 victims.
[Footnote: The list of epidemics at Santa Cruz is rather formidable, _e.g._ 1621 and 1628, _peste_ (plague); 1810 and 1862, yellow Jack; 1814, whooping cough, scarlatina, and measles; 1816-16, small-pox (2,000 victims); 1826, cough and scarlet ferer; 1847, fatal dysentery; and 1861-62, cholera (7,000 to 12,000 deaths).]
La Laguna offers an extensive study of medieval baronial houses, of colonial churches, of _ermitas_, or chapels, of altars, and of convents now deserted, but once swarming with Franciscans and Augustines and Dominicans and Jesuits. These establishments must have been very rich, for, here as elsewhere,
Dieu prodigue ses biens a ceux qui font voeu d"etre siens.
St. Augustine, with its short black belfry, shows a Christus Vinctus of the Seville school, and the inst.i.tute or college in the ex-monastery contains a library of valuable old books. The Concepcion boasts a picture of St. John which in 1648 sweated for forty days. [Footnote: Evidently a survival of the cla.s.sic _aera sudantia_. Mrs. Murray notices the "miracle" at full length (ii. 76).] The black and white cathedral, bristling with cannon-like gargoyles, a common architectural feature in these regions, still owns the fine pulpit of Carrara marble sent from Genoa in 1767. The _chef d"oeuvre_ then cost 200_l._; now it would be cheap at five times that price. In the sacristy are the usual rich vestments and other clerical curios. The Ermita de San Cristobal, built upon an historic site, is denoted as usual by a giant Charon bearing a small infant. There is a Carriera or Corso (High Street) mostly empty, also the great deserted Plaza del Adelantado, of the conqueror Lugo. The arms of the latter, with his lance and banner, are shown at the Ayuntamiento, or town-house; I do not admire his commercial motto--
Quien lanza sabe tener, Ella le da de comer.
[Footnote: Whose lance can wield Daily bread "twill yield.]
Conquering must not be named in the same breath as "bread-winning."
There, too, is the scutheon of Tenerife, given to it in 1510; Michael the Archangel, a favourite with the invader, stands unroasted upon the fire-vomiting Nivarian peak, and this grand vision of the guarded mount gave rise to satiric lines by Vieira:--
Miguel, Angel Miguel, sobre esta altura Te puso el Rey Fernando y Tenerife; Para ser del asufre y nieve fria Guardia, administrador y almoxarife.
[Footnote: Michael, archangel Michael, on this brow Throned thee King Ferdinand and Tenerife; To be of sulphur grough and frigid snow Administrator, guard, and reeve-in-chief.]
The deserted streets were long lines with an unclean central gutter. Some of the stone houses were tall, grand, solid, and stately; such are the pavilion of the Counts of Salazar, the huge, heavy abode of the Marquesses de Nava, and the mansions of the Villanuevas del Pardo. But yellow fever had driven away half of the population--10,000 souls, who could easily be 20,000--and had barricaded the houses to the curious stranger. Most of them, faced and porticoed with florid pillars, were mere d.i.c.kies opening upon nothing, and only the huge armorial bearings showed that they had ever been owned. Mixed with these "palaces." were "cat-faced cottages" and pauper, mildewed tenements, whose rusty iron-work, tattered planks, and broken windows gave them a truly dreary and dismal appearance. The sole noticeable movement was a tendency to gravitate in the roofs. The princ.i.p.al growth, favoured by the vapour-laden air, was of gra.s.s in the thoroughfares, of moss on the walls, and of the "fat weed" upon the tiles. The horse-leek (_sempervivum urbium_), brought from Madeira, was first described by the "gifted Swede" Professor Smith, who died on the Congo River. Finally, though the streets are wide and regular, and the large town is well aired by four squares, the whole aspect was strongly suggestive of the _cocineros_ (cooks), as the citizens of the capital are called by the sons of the capital-port. They retort by terming their rival brethren _chicharreros_, or fishers of the _chicharro_ (horse-mackerel, _Caranx Cuvieri_.)
From La Laguna we pa.s.sed forward to Tacoronte, the "Garden of the Guanches," and inspected the little museum of the late D. Sebastian Casilda, collected by his father, a merchant-captain de long _cours_. It was a chaos of curiosities ranging from China to Peru. Amongst them, however, were four entire mummies, including one from Grand Canary. Thus we can correct M. Berthelot, who follows others in a.s.serting that only the Guanches of Tenerife mummified their dead. The oldest description of this embalming is by a "judicious and ingenious man who had lived twenty years in the island as a physitian and merchant." It was inserted by Dr. Thomas Sprat in the "Transactions of the Royal Society," London, and was republished in John Ogilby"s enormous folio [Footnote: The "physitian" was Dr. Eden, an Englishman who visited Tenerife in 1662.--Bohn"s _Humboldtr_, i. 66] yclept "Africa." The merchant "set out from Guimar, a Town for the most part inhabited by such as derive themselves from the Antient _Guanchios_, in the company of some of them, to view their Caves and the corps buried in them (a favour they seldom or never permit to any, having the Corps of their Ancestors in great veneration, and likewise being extremely against any molestation of the Dead); but he had done many Eleemosynary Cures amongst them, for they are very poor (yet the poorest think themselves too good to Marry with the best _Spaniard_), which endeared him to them exceedingly. Otherwise it is death for any Stranger to visit these Caves and Bodies. The Corps are sew"d up in Goatskins with Thongs of the same, with very great curiosity, particularly in the incomparable exactness and evenness of the Seams; and the skins are made close and fit to the Corps, which for the most part are entire, the Eyes clos"d, Hair on their heads, Ears, Nose, Teeth, Lips, and Beards, all perfect, onely discolour"d and a little shrivell"d. He saw about three or four hundred in several Caves, some of them standing, others lying upon Beds of Wood, so hardened by an art they had (which the Spaniards call _curay_, to cure a piece of Wood) that no iron can pierce or hurt it.[Footnote: The same writer tells that they had earthen pots so hard that they could not be broken. I have heard of similar articles amongst the barbarous races east of Dalmatia.] These Bodies are very light, as if made of straw; and in some broken Bodies he observ"d the Nerves and Tendons, and also the String of the Veins and Arteries very distinctly. By the relation of one of the most antient of this island, they had a particular Tribe that had this art onely among themselves, and kept it as a thing sacred and not to be communicated to the Vulgar. These mixt not themselves with the rest of the Inhabitants, nor marry"d out of their own Tribe, and were also their Priests and Ministers of Religion. But when the _Spaniards_ conquer"d the place, most of them were destroy"d and the art perisht with them, onely they held some Traditions yet of a few Ingredients that were us"d in this business; they took b.u.t.ter (some say they mixed Bear"s-grease with it) which they kept for that purpose in the Skins; wherein they boyl"d certain Herbs, first a kind of wild Lavender, which grows there in great quant.i.ties upon the Rocks; secondly, an Herb call"d _Lara_, of a very gummy and glutinous consistence, which now grows there under the tops of the Mountains; thirdly, a kind of _cyclamen_, or sow-bread; fourthly, wild Sage, which grows plentifully upon this island. These with others, bruised and boyl"d up into b.u.t.ter, rendered it a perfect Balsom. This prepar"d, they first unbowel the Corps (and in the poorer sort, to save Charges, took out the Brain behind): after the Body was thus order"d, they had in readiness a _lixivium_ made of the Bark of Pine-Trees, wherewith they washt the Body, drying it in the Sun in Summer and in the Winter in a Stove, repeating this very often: Afterward they began their unction both without and within, drying it as before; this they continu"d till the Balsom had penetrated into the whole Habit, and the Muscle in all parts appear"d through the contracted Skin, and the Body became exceeding light: then they sew"d them up in Goat-skins. The Antients say, that they have above twenty Caves of their Kings and great Personages with their whole Families, yet unknown to any but themselves, and which they will never discover." Lastly, the "physitian" declares that "bodies are found in the caves of the _Grand Canaries_, in Sacks, quite consumed, and not as these in Teneriff."
This a.s.sertion is somewhat doubtful; apparently the practice was common to the archipelago. It at once suggests Egypt; and, possibly, at one time, extended clean across the Dark Continent. So Dr. Barth [Footnote: _Travels_, &c., vol. iv. pp. 426-7.] tells us that when the chief Sonni Ali died in Grurma, "his sons, who accompanied him on the expedition, took out his entrails and filled his inside with honey, in order that it might be preserved from putrefaction." Many tribes in South America and New Zealand, as well as in Africa, preserved the corpse or portions of it by baking, and similar rude devices. According to some authorities, the Gruanche _menceys_ (kinglets or chiefs) were boxed, Egyptian fashion, in coffins; but few are found, because the superst.i.tious Christian islanders destroy the contents of every catacomb.
In the Casilda collection I observed the hard features, broad brows, square faces, and _flavos crines_ described by old writers. Two showed traces of tongue and eyes (which often were blue), proving that the softer and more perishable parts were not removed. There were specimens of the dry and liquid balsam. Of the twenty-six skulls six were from Grand Canary. All were markedly of the type called Caucasian, and some belonged to exceptionally tall men. The shape was dolichocephalic, with sides rather flat than rounded; the perceptive region was well developed, and the reflective, as usual amongst savages and barbarians, was comparatively poor. The facial region appeared unusually large.
The industrial implements were coa.r.s.e needles and fish-hooks of sheep-bone. The domestic _supellex_ consisted of wooden ladles coa.r.s.ely cut, and of rude pottery, red and yellow, generally without handles, round-shaped and adorned with scratches. None of these _ganigos_, or crocks, were painted like those of Grand Canary. They used also small basaltic querns of two pieces to grind the _gofio_, [Footnote: The _gofio_ was composed of ripe barley, toasted, pounded, and kneaded to a kind of porridge in leathern bags like Turkish tobacco-pouches. The object was to save the teeth, of which the Guanches were particularly careful.] or parched grain. The articles of dress were gra.s.s-cloth, thick as matting, and _tamarcos_, or smock-frocks, of poorly tanned goatskins. They had also rough cords of palm-fibre, and they seem to have preferred plaiting to weaving; yet New Zealand flax and aloes grow abundantly. Their _mahones_ correspond with Indian moccasins, and they made sugar-loaf caps of skins. The bases of sh.e.l.ls, ground down to the thickness of a crown-piece, and showing spiral depressions, were probably the _viongwa_, necklaces still worn in the Lake Regions of Central Africa. The beads were of many kinds; some horn cylinders bulging in the centre, and measuring 1.25 inch long; others of flattened clay like the American wampum or the ornaments of the Fernando Po tribes; and others flattened discs, also baked, almost identical with those found upon African mummies--in Peru they were used to record dates and events. A few were of reddish agate, a material not found in the island; these resembled bits of thick pipe-stem, varying from half an inch to an inch in length. Perhaps they were copies of the mysterious Popo-bead found upon the Slave Coast and in inner Africa.
The Gruanches were doomed never to reach the age of metal. Their civilisation corresponded with that of the Chinese in the days of Fo-hi. [Footnote: Abel Remusat tells us that of the two hundred primitive Chinese "hieroglyphs" none showed a knowledge of metal.] The chief weapons were small triangles of close-grained basalt and _iztli_ (obsidian flakes) for _tabonas,_ or knives, both being without handles. They carried rude clubs and _banot,_ or barbed spears of pine-wood with fire-charred points. The _garrotes_ (pikes) had heads like two flattened semicircles, a shape preserved amongst negroes to the present day. Our old author tells us that the people would "leap from rock to rock, sometimes making ten Fathoms deep at one Leap, in this manner: First they _tertiate_ their Lances, which are about the bigness of a Half-Pike, and aim with the Point at any piece of a Rock upon which they intend to light, sometimes not half a Foot broad; in leaping off they clap their Feet close to the Lance, and so carry their bodies in the Air: the Point of the Lance comes first to the place, which breaks the force of their fall; then they slide gently down by the Staff and pitch with their Feet on the very place they first design"d; and so from Rock to Rock till they come to the bottom: but their Novices sometimes break their necks in the learning."
I observed more civilisation in articles from the other islands, especially from the eastern, nearer the African continent. In 1834 Fuerteventura yielded, from a depth of six feet, a dwarfish image of a woman with prominent bosom and dressed in the native way: it appeared almost Chinese. A pot of black clay from Palmas showed superior construction. Here, too, in 1762 a cavern produced a basalt plate, upon which are circular scrawls, which support the a.s.sertions of old writers as regards the islanders not being wholly ignorant of letters. I could trace no similarity to the peculiar Berber characters, and held them to be mere ornamentation. The so-called "Seals of the Kings" were dark stones, probably used for painting the skin; they bore parallelograms enclosed within one another, diaper-work and gridirons of raised lines. In fact, the Guanches of Tenerife were unalphabetic.
Hierro (Ferro), the Barranco de los Balos (Grand Canary), Fuerteventura, and other items of the Fortunates have produced some undoubted inscriptions. They are compared by M. Berthelot with the signs engraved upon the cave-entrance of La Piedra Escrita in the Sierra Morena of Andalusia; with those printed by General Faidherbe in his work on the Numidic or Lybian epigraphs; with the "Thugga inscription," Tunis; and with the rock-gravings of the Sahara, attributed to the ancient Tawarik or Tifinegs. Dr. Gran-Ba.s.sas (El Museo Canario), who finds a notable likeness between them and the "Egyptian characters (cursive or demotic), Phenician and Hebrew," notes that they are engraved in vertical series.
Dr. Verneau, of the Academy, Paris, suggests that some of these epigraphs are alphabetic, while others are hieroglyphic. [Footnote: _El Museo Canario_, No. 40, Oct. 22, 1881.] Colonel H. W. Keays-Young kindly copied for me, with great care, a painting in the Tacoronte museum. It represents a couple of Guanche inscriptions, apparently hieroglyphic, found (1762) in the cave of Belmaco, Isle of Palma, by the ancients called Benahoave. They are inscribed upon two basaltic stones.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NOMIDIO INSCRIPTIONS OF HIEBRO.]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
I also inspected the collection of a well-known lawyer, Dr. Francisco Maria de Leon. Of the three Guanche skulls one was of African solidity, with the sutures almost obliterated: it was the model of a soldier"s head, thick and heavy. The ma.s.s of mummy-balsam had been tested, without other result than finding a large proportion of dragon"s blood. In the fourteenth century Grand Canary sent to Europe at one venture two hundred doubloons" worth of this drug.
By the kindness of the Governor I was permitted to inspect four Guanche mummies, discovered (June 1862) in the jurisdiction of Candelaria.
Awaiting exportation to Spain, they had been temporarily coffined upon a damp ground-floor, where the c.o.c.kroaches respected nothing, not even a Guanehe. I was accompanied by Dr. Angel M. Yzquierdo, of Cadiz, physician to the hospital, and we jotted down as follows:--
No. 1, a male of moderate size, wanted the head and upper limbs, while the trunk was reduced to a skeleton. The characteristic signs were Caucasian and not negro; nor was there any appearance of the Jewish rite. The lower right leg, foot, and toe-nails were well preserved; the left was a mere bone, wanting tarsus and metatarsus. The stomach was full of dried fragments of herbs (_Ohenopodium_, &c.), and the epidermis was easily reduced to powder. In this case, as in the other three, the mortuary skins were coa.r.s.ely sewn with the hair inside: it is a mistake to say that the work was "like that of a glove."
No. 2 was large-statured and complete; the framework and the form of the pelvis were masculine. The skin adhered to the cranium except behind, where the bone protruded, probably the effect of long resting upon the ground. Near the right temporal was another break in the skin, which here appeared much decayed. All the teeth were present, but they were not particularly white nor good. The left forearm and hand were wanting, and the right was imperfect; the lower limbs were well preserved even to the toe-nails.
No. 3, also of large size, resembled No. 2; the upper limbs were complete, and the lower wanted only the toes of the left foot. The lower jaw was absent, and the upper had no teeth. An oval depression, about an inch in its greater diameter, lay above the right orbit. If this be a bullet-mark, the mummy may date from before the final conquest and submission in A.D. 1496. But it may also have resulted from some accident, like a fall, or from the blow of a stone, a weapon which the Guanches used most skilfully. Mr. Sprat, confirmed by Glas, affirms that they "throw Stones with a force almost as great as that of a Bullet, and now use Stones in all their fights as they did antiently."
No. 4, much smaller than the two former, was the best preserved. The shape of the skull and pelvis suggested a female; the arms also were crossed in front over the body, whereas in the male mummy they were laid straight. The legs were covered with skin; the hands were remarkably well preserved, and the nails were darker than other parts. The tongue, in all four, was absent, having probably decayed.