548 THE GUAXCHES. 



of pure British descent developing or reproducing tlie features and 

 walk of the red Indian — the bigli clieelc bone, thin booked nose, arched 

 instep, slouching gait, and nasal intonation. But alas! if the 

 physical qualities of their Guaiiche ancestresses have been trans- 

 mitted, tlieir purity and sweet gentleuess have not been so successfully 

 handed down. 



When the Spanish invaded these islands they found a condition of 

 affairs that must have been quite ideal and i)ossibly unique in tlie 

 worhrs history. To the simplicity of the savage these people had added 

 all the highest virtues; indeed, viewed from the standpoint of nine- 

 teenth-century morality, it is a mere travesty to describe the customs 

 and habits of the Guanches as in any way pertaining to Avhat we are 

 pleased to consider as civilization. The men were brave, a lie was an 

 unheard of crime, and the treachery and fraud of the Spaniards a revela- 

 tion to them. The women were notoriously chaste. Men had but one 

 wife, and paid the profoundest respect to their fathers. Their food was 

 simple — the flesh of goats, with milk and i'ruit, and gotio (still the main 

 food of the islands), which consists of tlie grain of barley crushed and 

 roasted and mixed with milk or with water, according to their circum- 

 stances. Life in every form was as precious as it is to a Brahmin, and 

 they looked with horror on those whose vocation it was to destroy it. 

 As is the case in China to this day, a butcher was an outcast, generally 

 a criminal, who expiated the enormities of his crimes by having to 

 imbue his hands in the innocent blood of animals. 



The consequence of this extended humanity was that the very birds 

 of tlie air in these islands were tame, and the astonished Spaniards saw, 

 not unmixed with awe and superstition, nature's most timid creatures 

 playing amongst the feet of the children. These people liad no i)rofes- 

 sional priests, and in consequence had no idols and no fetich. They 

 believed in one Supreme Being, in future punishment and rewards, and 

 all their God asked of them was a pure life and a reverent attitude of 

 mind. 



Social problems among the Guanches seem to have been most admi- 

 rably thought out. So as to insure an equality of wealth, the land was 

 distributed at the death of the head of a family. There also existed a 

 peculiar order of self-directing Sisters of jMercy among them, devoted 

 to a simple life of nourishing the poor and needy, clad like all the rest 

 in their garb of goatskin, and only distinguishable from their lay 

 sisters by lives of abnegation. They remained vestal to the end ot 

 their days, and were rightly esteemed to have merited, and were 

 believed to have earned, the highest reward hereafter. And as there 

 was no pelf for the priests, there was naturally no building set apart 

 for mystic rites and ceremonies. They built dolmens, as we see 

 them in. Wales, Cornwall, or at Stonehenge, and here the people 

 assembled and knelt in circles with their hands lifted to heaven in 

 silent x)rayer. • ^ ' 



