PARADISES IN JANUARY. 381 The hours were whiled away at Telde by visiting fincas and sauntering through gardens. Though it was January, and the worst time of the year to see gardens, yet roses and other flowers were blooming and delighting the eye. One of these paradises contains a pond full of fish and a big dragon tree, while the borders to the beds are of myrtle. "And what a wilderness of flowers! It seemed as though from all the bowers The mingled spoil were scattered here." Outside the gate crowded a number of beggars waiting for alms. The barranco on which Telde is situated is a small gorge, and romantically wild. It is in Telde that the best oranges in the archipelago are said to grow; and, as many were sent to me after my return to England, I can bear witness to their being most delicious, even after the voyage. On the ensuing Sunday we went once more to Confital Bay, to say farewell to it. We have a positive affection for the place, so quiet is it and so totally destitute of one's fellowcreatures. Solitude, especially that of the sea, is very soothing occasionally. The solitude, however, though not the silence, was broken by a few men, who stood barelegged upon the rocks in the sea, fishing. The only regular haunter of the isthmus was a goatherd, a tall, lean individual, who wandered silently among the sand hillocks, like the spirit of a departed Guanche. His usual, and indeed constant, dress was a pair of white trousers and a blanket cloak. We were told that he continually hovered within a little distance of the cable-hut, but never approached. Perhaps, as a spirit, he resented the desecration of his happy hunting-grounds by the hand of man, and is not the electric wire an extreme result of civilisation? Or, as a mortal, did he fear to come too near to the enchanted hut, where were forces to him unknown and not understood, and which to his simple island mind consequently partook of the marvellous ? CHAPTER XXXVIII. LANZAROTE-ARRECIFE-HARIA-EL RISCO. Oh, happy fortune on and on Round beetling capes, to unknown seas, LEWIS MORRIS. AT last the French steamer arrived and bore us away to Lanzarote. The days had slipped away quietly, and it was Tuesday, January 22nd, when we weighed anchor off Las Palmas at eight o'clock in the evening. It was on the stroke of eight next morning when we dropped anchor again in the harbour of Arrecife. This is the longest voyage between the islands, unless indeed that from Gomera to Hierro be longer. Of that, however, we can scarcely judge, as we went thither in a sailing vessel, at the mercy of wind and tide. As soon as daylight appeared we found we were leaving Fuerteventura behind and running up along the east of Lanzarote, having passed through the Strait of Bocayna in the early morning. Both islands appeared as a series of dwarf volcanic peaks, the valleys green with young corn. From our deck cabin, as we lay in our berths, we could see the sun rise like a globe of fire out of the sea, a sight always beautiful. Leaving Fuerteventura and the high rock of Lobos Island behind us, we came in sight of Arrecife, its little castle, on a rocky islet, standing prominently in front. The capital of Lanzarote is built close to the sea, in the middle of a plain completely surrounded in the background by a semicircle of low volcanoes. The harbour of Arrecife is the only natural one in the islands. Although the outlying rocks are low, bare, and A WET WELCOME. 383 rugged, yet, both from the sea and land, they have a certain picturesqueness, enhanced by a scanty clothing of herbage. As we entered the boat for the shore, a sharp shower of rain fell, a curious and unusual welcome to Lanzarote. More rain had fallen during that season, we found afterwards, than for a century past. All the cisterns were already full of water, and if they got no more, there was enough to last for three years. Every house of any size has a large tank beneath the patio, into which the water off the house-tops runs. The year 1877-8 was a very disastrous one from lack of water. Ships came laden entirely with the precious fluid, and 8,000 people emigrated from sheer hunger and thirst. A Syrian prince, in flowing, bright-coloured Oriental robes and turban, was on board the Vérité, the steamer in which we had come, and landed here, but did not take up his quarters at the fonda. He engaged an empty house, where he was waited upon by his servants, of whom he had several. What his object could be in settling down for some days in such an out-of-the-way place was a matter of astonishment, for he did not travel through the island, and indeed spent most of his time sitting at the window smoking. Though apparently a devout follower of Mohammed, he was a singularly welleducated man, knowing French thoroughly, and liberal in his views and ideas. |