CHAPTER X.

I GO ASHORE.

The wind lulled away into a gentle breeze; reef after reef was shaken out until a full spread of canvas once more covered the spars of the _Eugenie_; and to repair some trifling damages of the night we crept in shore.

As day brightened through clouds half rain, half mist, and wholly gray or obscure, we saw the land looming high and dark. Beyond it in the distance there was a space of vivid light; in the foreground, surf white as snow was breaking on the beach, and high over all, in mid-air, towered the wondrous Peak of Adam, on the eastern side of which the sun (as yet _unrisen_ to us) was shining brightly when we came to anchor in the harbor of Santa Cruz.

We moored in thirty-three fathoms water, about half a mile from the shore, which in most places is steep, with green and lovely slopes rising high above it. As Captain Weston proposed to weigh next morning, he allowed me to go ashore, but sent with me, to be a guide and companion, Tom Lambourne, the tattooed sailor, who had been frequently before at the Grand Canary, and in whom he reposed great trust.

He gave me a courier-bag containing some provisions, a flask of spirits, and a telescope; and thus provided, old Tom and I, with such emotions of pleasure as two newly-escaped schoolboys might feel, landed on the shore, which seemed to heave, sink, and rise under my feet--for after the late storm I still felt that which is termed "the roll of the ship."

It was in this harbor of Santa Cruz that the famous old English Admiral Blake encountered, and within six hours burned and sunk, seven great Spanish galleons, though they were anchored under the protecting cannon of seven forts and a strong castle, in the walls of which some of his shot were shown imbedded for many years after.

I cast longing eyes to the summit of the mighty Peak of Adam. It seemed to rise sheer from the sea, over which, literally _piercing_ the clouds, it towers to the height of more than twelve thousand feet; but the idea of attempting to climb it within so short a space of time as we had to spend on shore never occurred to me; but what a feat it would have been to relate when I returned to Erlesmere!

The morning was early yet; the sun was barely above the now cloudless horizon; so the shadow of this stupendous cone was cast not only over the whole island, which seems to form merely its base, but to the far horizon, perhaps beyond it; for there are writers who assert that in clear weather Cape Bojadore, that dreary and barren promontory of Africa, ninety miles distant, is visible from its summit.

Did the waves of the sea ever overflow that mighty Peak? At such a question the mind becomes lost in conjecture.

As I am not writing a descriptive book of travels, but merely a plain narrative of my own very recent adventures, I need not detail at great length either the magnitude or the aspect of this great island-mountain of the Atlantic.

From cliffs of dark-brown basalt, against which the ocean pours in vain its foam and fury, we ascended the steep slope of the volcano for a few miles. Then at our feet, as it were, we could see that fertile island, where a perpetual spring seems to smile, and where the fragrant myrtle, the golden orange-trees, and the dark funereal cypress form the mere hedgerows of those plantations where the sugar-cane, the broad-leaved plantain, the luscious Indian fig, the trailing vine, the fragrant cinnamon, and the pretty coffee-bush, were all flourishing in a luxuriance that filled us with wonder and pleasure.

Further off was the boundless sea, of that deep blue which it borrowed from the sky above and mirrored in its depth were the shipping in the roadstead, with their white canvas hanging loose to dry in the sun; the green woods and dark rocks reflected downward, and the old turreted castle of Santa Cruz, with the scarlet and yellow banner of Castile and Leon on its time-worn ramparts.

The summit of the great cone, on the clothed sides of which we never tired of gazing, soon became lost in vapor; far above the dark-green belt of many miles, named the Region of Laurels, and that other belt or forest of timber, where pines, chestnuts, and oaks of vast size mingle their varied foliage together, the mountain seemed all of a violet tint, which paled away into faint blue as its apex mingled and became lost amid the gossamer clouds.

The vines, in luxuriance, bordered the pathway as we ascended, and it is said that for years after the wine has been taken from these isles to England or elsewhere, it always ferments and becomes agitated when the vineries from whence it came are in bloom; but this tale may perhaps be as true as the accounts of those mighty ruins which Pliny avers once covered all the Fortunate Islands, but of which no trace remains now.

Tom Lambourne and I, after a ramble of some hours, found ourselves in a wild and solitary place, where blocks of lava and heaps of yellow-pumice dust were lying among shattered masses of basalt, which were studded with spars and chrystals that glittered as the sunshine streamed through a ravine upon them.

The sides of this ravine were clothed with rich copsewood and little thickets of the _retamablanca_, which there grows about ten feet high, and is covered with tufts of odoriferous flowers. The distant sea, the waves of which seemed to bask or sleep in the sunshine, closed the perspective of this ravine; and there we could see the _Eugenie_ at anchor, with her snow-white courses loose and her other canvas neatly handed. Being warmed by our walk, we sat down within the mouth of a species of natural grotto, formed by masses of lava and basalt, which in some past age the throes of the volcano had thrown and heaped together. There a clear spring gurgled joyously from a fissure in the rocks; and now, opening the courier-bag, we proceeded to make our breakfast on the viands I had brought from the ship--to wit, Bologna sausage and biscuits, with brandy-and-water.

The air was deliciously clear, and over the brow of the rocky chasm in which we sat, there fell a natural screen of the wild Indian fig and vine creepers, and these shaded us from the increasing heat of the morning sun. All was still there.

We heard only the coo of the great wood-pigeons among the gorgeous foliage, or the sweet notes of the little golden-colored canary birds, as they twittered about us when we scared them from their nests, which they usually build in the barrancas or watercourses, such being the coolest places in that volcanic isle.