It increases digestion and makes happy mothers, like
the fountain of Villaflor on the Tenerifan ’Pike
’-slope. I found it resembling an eau
gazeuse left in the open all night. We then
pushed on to Teror, famous for turkeys, traversed
the high and forested northern plateau, visited Galdar
and Guia of the cheeses, and rode back by Banaderos
Bay and the Cuesta da Silva, renowned in olden island
story.
These three days gave me a fair general view of Grand
Canary. The Cumbre, or central plateau, whose
apex is Los Pexos (6,400 feet), well wooded with pines
and Alpines, collects moisture in abundance. From
this plateau barrancos, or ravine-valleys,
said to number 103, radiate quaquaversally. Their
bottoms, becoming more and more level as they near
the sea, are enriched by gushing founts, and are unrivalled
for fertility, while the high and stony intervening
ridges are barren as Arabia Deserta. Even sun
and rain cannot fertilise the dividing walls of the
rich and riant vegas. Here, as at Madeira,
and showing even a better likeness, the tierra
caliente is Egypt, the mediania (middle-heights)
are Italy, and the upper mesetas, the cloud-compelling
table-lands, are the bleak north of Europe plus a quasi-tropical
sun.
THE COCHINEAL—THE ’GALLO’—CANARY
’SACK’—ADIEU TO THE CANARIES.
I must not leave the Jezirat el-Bard (of Gold), or
Jezirat el-Khalidat (Happy Islands), without some
notice of their peculiar institutions, the cochineal,
the gallo, and Canary ‘sack.’
The nopal or tunal plant (Opuntia Tuna or Cactus
cochinellifera) is indigenous on these islands
as well as on the mainland of Africa. But the
native growth is woody and lean-leaved; and its cooling
fruit, which we clumsily term a ‘prickly pear’
or ‘fig,’ is everywhere a favourite in
hot climates. There are now sundry claimants
to the honour of having here fathered the modern industry.
Some say that in 1823 a retired intendant introduced
from Mexico the true terciopelo, or velvet-leaf,
together with the Mexican cochineal, the coccus
cacti hemipter, [Footnote: The male insect
is winged for flight. The female never stirs
from the spot where she begins to feed: she lays
her eggs, which are innumerable and microscopic, and
she leaves them in the membrane or hardened envelope
which she has secreted.] so called from the old Greek
KOKKOS, a berry, or the neo-Greek KOKKIVOS,
red, scarlet. It is certain that Don Santiago
de la Cruz brought both plant and ‘bug’
from Guatemala or Honduras in 1835; and that an Englishman,
who has advanced a right even in writing, labours
under a not uncommon hallucination.
