136 BOTANY OF THE 
of Humboldt, who there first appreciated in their full extent 
the laws governing the geographical distribution of plants. 
His life-like pictures of the natural phenomena, observed 
during an ascent of the famous peak, have given to many 
sueceeding scientific travellers that impulse which has turned 
their thoughts and steps from closet studies and the pursuit 
of Natural History at home, and induced them to seek far 
distant scenes, in the West, the East and the South. 
The Peak itself is seldom descried: one hurried glimpse of- 
its very apex, from upwards of sixty miles’ distance, was all 
we obtained : it then appeared like a little short and broad 
cone high in the clouds, or rather as an opaque triangular 
spot on “the firmament. It is difficult to imagine this, the 
culminant point, to be that mighty mass, at whose base 
the toil-worn traveller pauses ; when, having surmounted four- 
fifths of the mountain, his heart quails at beholding a “ Pelion 
upon Ossa piled” so stern, so stony and so steep. 
Much and deeply did the officers of Captain Ross’ ad 
Trotter’s Expeditions deplore the necessity of hurrying | 
from this spot, most interesting to the sailor; being the — - 
point to which every cireumnavigator first steers, and from 
whence, with chronometers. carefully corrected at its well- — . 
determined position, he takes his departure. For years —— 
too, this was the prime Meridian: distance in longitude | 
. at sea being reckoned from Teneriffe as zero, by all the sea- — - 
_ faring nations of Europe at one period; and by some it wie — 
stil. From the days of the earliest. cireumnavigators, tO — $5 
the present, | “we sighted the Peak of Teneriffe” marks that — 
e n t which Ls denis is dco mpi in the : 
s craters of elevation from what he thee a Pres 
cx (too. — and most. id iately, that of TE 
