THERE is a certain charm in this civilised nineteenth century in finding, within a moderate distance from England, a country so little known and so little written about as the archipelago of the Canary Islands. It is not because of their insignificance that ninety-nine out of every hundred among educated people know little or nothing of the islands, either geographically or historically.

Formerly the Canary Islands were well known. In the time of Homer and Hesiod and Pindar they were the "Fortunate Isles." Strabo calls them the "Isles of the Blest," and since mythological times Statius Sebosus and Pliny have called them the "Garden of the Hesperides." They deserve at the present day in every respect the pleasant names thus showered upon them in the past, and the Happy Isles of the Greeks and Latins are in very truth the Happy Isles of today. We may well wonder how they have sunk so completely into oblivion, and fear we can only find an answer in the fact that they are a Province of Spain.

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With that peculiar clearness of perception for which the Spanish Government has always been remarkable, it put English ships in quarantine during the cholera scare of 1883. The reason assigned for such a proceeding was that England did not quarantine vessels coming from Egypt! As we could not go to the Canary Islands by the usual route from Liverpool without enduring the horrors of the lazareto, we crossed to Havre, and thence went, without the slightest difficulty or opposition, by steamer to Tenerife.

There are many ways of reaching the Canarian Archipelago. Perhaps the best and most expeditious route is by the Union or Donald Currie steamers from Plymouth or Dartmouth respectively, which reach the Islands in four or five days. As there is now a cable to the Islands from Europe, the main lines of steamers bound for the Cape, Australia, the West Indies, and Brazil coal at Tenerife and Gran Canaria in preference to Madeira, for the archipelago lies one day's sail farther out in the ocean, and the roadsteads are much more sheltered. Coaling is sometimes quite impossible at Madeira, owing to the roughness of the sea.

The ports being free, visitors are subjected to none of the tiresome custom duties and extortionate demands which so unpleasantly and injuriously characterise Madeira.

A few days out we caught sight of some islands. Consulting the chart, we discovered that the two rocks on our starboard bow-barren, volcanic, and uninhabited-were the Salvages. Solitary islets in the ocean, they raise a feeling of curiosity as to their history, if they have any. The larger is to the north, the smaller to the south. The former in appearance reminds one of Serk, but it rises higher. The Salvages have distinct craters, like most of the islands in the Atlantic. Being destitute of water, however, they are useless to man. There is orchilla upon them, which is, or rather was, gathered. The islands are supposed to be dependent upon Madeira, and consequently to belong to Portugal, but the Madeirese rarely visit them. A barque from Tenerife went thither in the eighteenth century in search of wrecks, and not finding any,

* A complete list of the means of communication with the Islands forms one of the appendices.

loaded with half-a-ton of orchilla, which they brought home. The fact became known in Madeira, and complaint being made to the Governor-General in the Canaries, the unfortunate skipper was thrown into prison. This is a rather "dog-in-the-manger" story of the Portuguese. There is, however, a romantic tradition, said to be well founded, which asserts that a large treasure was hidden by pirates on one of these solitary islets. Certain it is that an expedition went in search of the treasure, the seekers taking with them water and provisions. They dug diligently, but at the end of a few weeks their water was exhausted, and there being none on the islets, the search had to be abandoned, and as far as is known has never again been prosecuted. A vessel in late years, however, calling at these islands from curiosity, found trenches dug across them, which would seem to confirm the tale of the search. The Salvages mark to us one distinct point-they are a hundred miles north of Tenerife..

The day is cloudy and breezy; no sun, only a glare, as with our binoculars we each and all strain to catch a glimpse of "The Peak." To all wanderers in the Atlantic Ocean, El Pico de Teide is par excellence The Peak. At noon the doctor said, "There it is!" A chorus of "Oh where?" in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Swedish, announced the latent excitement of all on board, mothertongue asserting its supremacy. I grieve to say-not that I impute aught against the doctor's veracity-that no one else could see that Peak for at least an hour longer. The faint gray outline that resolved itself into mountains and again into clouds really proved a little later to be Tenerife.

Santa Cruz, the capital and principal port of the Canary Islands, is situated on the north-eastern side of the island of Tenerife. As we steered directly for this port, we skirted past the Punta de Anaga and part of the northern shore, the cliffs of which run down almost perpendicularly to the sea, and are brown and bare. The outline of the precipitous pile of mountains is serrated and jagged. Here and there isolated clumps of grey-green Euphorbia Canariensis cling desperately to the loose, arid soil on the face of the mountains, giving it a curious patchy appearance unknown to temperate zones.

This general aspect of Tenerife's scenery is not inviting to the passing traveller, although grand in the extreme. The bold, broken, denticulated outlines of the mountains of Anaga, surmounted by pinnacles showing clearly against the sky, and running directly to the sea, where there is scarcely foothold, suggest an inhospitable shore. The lighthouse, built on what appears an inaccessible spot, gives indication that people can live upon this rugged peninsula. Grey and basaltic in appearance, with a frightfully convulsed and contorted surface, it only requires the appearance of a cone in the distance to confirm the feeling of awe with which one approaches this monument of a force that commands the respect and excites the terror of the most careless of mankind.

Suddenly, as we round a point, our feelings and the landscape are relieved by a tiny valley embedded between the precipices, and brilliant with the perfect green that is only observable where the contrast is severe. A few scattered houses nestling as near the sea as possible give life to the oasis. Notably absent are any signs of fresh water. No rills trickle through the little valley, no streaks of silver contrast with the grey mountain sides, no snowy waterfall splashes into the sea.

The Canary Islands, although a Province of Spain, yet belong geographically to Africa, from the west coast of which the nearest island is distant only sixty miles. They lie between north latitude 29° 25′ and 27° 40', and west longitude 13° 25′ and 18° 16'. It may be well to mention that the usual pronunciation of Tenerife (which is spelled with one f, not two, as it is frequently and erroneously written) makes it a three-syllabled word, whereas it has four syllables, Ten-er-i-fe.

Meanwhile we are nearing our journey's end and the beginning of our real travelling. When the only information with regard to these islands may roughly be said to be obtainable from an ancient French manuscript, the narrative of an English sea captain in 1764, and the word of mouth of a few English people who have lived for the most part in the principal towns, it will readily be understood with what interest and curiosity we surveyed the scene of our future