102 CANARY T S L A N D S . 



up the custom of dining at noon. During this meal, 

 the street door is always closed, but kept wide open the rest 

 of the day. The repast invariably begins with soup, and is 

 succeeded by cl imchero, which is equivalent to the olio in 

 Spain. It is composed of boiled beef, pork, mutton or 

 other meat, fowls, and a variety of vegetables dressed 

 together. After a greater or less number of made di:>hes 

 and roast meat, it closes with a desert of fruit and an 

 abundance of sweetmeats. After dinner la siesta occupies 

 an hour and a half or two hours. A little after dark comes 

 la mcricnrla, or collation, when chocolate is taken with 

 solid food, sweetmeats, and iced-water ; and at ten or eleven 

 o'clock at night, they conclude with a hot supper. 



The aliment of the poorer classes is limited to three 

 kinds of food, say Barbary salt-fish, potatoes, and gofio.^ 

 Bread or meat they seldom taste, and often in summer, 

 they make many a meal entirely of the fruit of the prickly 

 pear, and in time of famine, they are happy to make a 

 meal from its leaves. In Hierro, they cure the flesh of 

 such goats as are disabled by accident, and even it is said 

 of such as die of disease, and when cut into pieces and 

 dried by the sun, they call it tocinete. In Lanzarote and 

 Fuerteventura, they eat without scruple the flesh of camels 

 that die of age or of disease; and the foetus of the camel, 

 which they call dmajalulo, is esteemed a great delicacy, and 

 only is served upon occasions of particular festivity. In 

 Palm a and Gomera, they often reduce fern-roots (Pteris 

 aquilina. Brous.) to powder, and mix it with barley flour 

 in the preparation of the gofio. The garden lupine ( LupU 

 nus angustifoUa) is extensively used for food, both for 

 man and beasts. It is prepared by boiling in salt and 

 water, which deprives it of its bitterness, and in that state, 

 it is eaten without any other ingredients. 



All classes are equally abstemious both in eating and 

 in drinking ; and indeed, intoxication is scarcely ever wit- 

 nessed, except among the very lowest people, and then it is 

 far from being common. These traits, and hospitality to 

 the utmost extent of their powers, are a few of their many 

 virtues. 



* Vide Note, p. 5iJ, where this substance is described. 



