The morning of the 5th July saw us running out of Plymouth Sound with a light northerly wind, and hazy weather:  soon after we were outside we spoke H.M.S.  Princess Charlotte, bearing the flag of Admiral Sir R. Stopford, and as she was bound down channel we kept together for the next three days:  she had old shipmates on board, and was not the less an object of interest on that account.  Nothing worthy of particular notice occurred during the run to Santa Cruz in Tenerife, which we made on the 18th of July; having in obedience to our instructions passed over the presumed site of The Eight Stones, thus adding another though almost needless testimony to their non-existence, at least in the place assigned them in the old charts.

In passing the gut of Gibraltar we remarked the current setting us into it:  this I have before noticed in outward voyages:  in the homeward, one is generally too far to the westward to feel its effects.  A small schooner sailed for England on the 20th, and most of us took the opportunity of sending letters by her.  I learnt from the master of her that a timber ship had been recently picked up near the island, having been dismasted in a gale off the banks of Newfoundland; she was 105 days drifting here.

Peak of Tenerife.

We were not so fortunate on this occasion as to obtain a distant sea view of the far-famed peak of Tenerife.  There are few natural objects of greater interest when so beheld.  Rising at a distance of some 40 leagues in dim and awful solitude from the bosom of the seemingly boundless waves that guard its base, it rests at first upon the blue outline of the horizon like a conically shaped cloud:  hour after hour as you approach the island it seems to grow upon the sight, until at length its broad reflection darkens the surrounding waters.  I can imagine nothing better calculated than an appearance of this kind to satisfy a beholder of the spherical figure of the earth, and it would seem almost incredible that early navigators should have failed to find conviction in the unvarying testimonies of their own experience, which an approach to every shore afforded.

In approaching the anchorage of Santa Cruz, vessels should close with the shore, and get into soundings before—­as is the general custom—­arriving abreast of the town, where from the steepness of the bank, and its proximity to the shore, they are obliged to anchor suddenly, a practice never desirable, and to vessels short handed, always inconvenient:  besides calms sometimes prevail in the offing, which would prevent a vessel reaching the anchorage at all.

La Cueva de los Guanches.

Lieutenant Grey was most indefatigable in collecting information during the short period of our stay at the island, as an examination of his interesting work will at once satisfy the reader:  he explored a cave three miles to the north-east of Santa Cruz, known by tradition as La Cueva de los Guanches, and reputed to be a burying-place of the aboriginal inhabitants of the island:  it was full of bones, and from the specimens he brought away, and also from his description of all that he examined, they appear to have belonged to a small-limbed race of men.