546 



THE GUANCHES. 



Fig. 6. 



PALiEOLlTHK" IMPLEMENTS. 



are still inhabited by the islanders of this day. They were held in one 

 hand and nsed as we use a pick; but from the shape of one of these 

 sketches it will easily be observed that a hamnuM'-shaped instrument 

 was also used. These ail belong- to the Paleolithic age. They are gen- 

 erally chipped roug'hly out 

 of bine lias, weighing- 4 or 5 

 pounds each. A larger kind 

 weighed as nuich as 8 

 pounds. (Fig-. (I.) 



The uext grou]) belong 

 to the jSTeolithic age, and it 

 would seem that in this age 

 greater precision of work- 

 manship Avas obtained in 

 cave making, as is only 

 natnral with improved in- 

 struments. What interval 

 of time elapsed between 

 these periods is naturally merely conjectuie. These neolithic instru- 

 ments are generally of lava or some hard trap. They were smaller, 

 and many were of the ordinary spear and arrow head form found all 

 over the world. (Fig. 7.) 



But now we come to a classic i)eriod in this Gnanche life. For though 

 they remained untouched by what was going on in the world, the world 

 itself already began to feel a deep interest in these " Fortunate Islands," 

 especially the Greeks and Pha>nicians, to whose influence it is not 

 to be Tdoubted the islanders owed some advance in their ceramic art, 

 and possibly imi^rovements in their mode of life. For these were the 

 islands of the Hesperides, and the peak of Tenerifife was the Atlas 

 that bore up the heavens; and to these very islands Homer made 

 Ju])iter send Menelaus as a reward for 

 all his wrongs and all that he had sul^ 

 fered. They were the Elysian Fields, 

 "those blessed isles where the bitterness 

 of winter is unknown, and where the 

 M'inds of the ocean forever freshen the 

 balmy air." This, too, is the home of 

 Plato's vanished Atlantis, his ideal re- 

 ])ublic. 



It thus becomes a strange speculation 

 as to how around the lives of these simple 

 islanders, people only half euuMged from 

 the actual condition of primordial man, the most exquisite myths and the 

 most deeply suggestive legends of old days have grouped themselves. 

 Here were a people who scarcely knew vice. Paid vice was unknown ; and 

 the Spaniards record with wonder that they never lied ! lint to return 



■Fiff.7. 



NEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. 



