6 SOME BIRDS OF THE CANARY ISLANDS 



it was no easy matter to keep warm driving, because 

 the carriages, in order to accommodate the quantities of 

 luggage with which they are often burdened, had been 

 denuded of their glass. However, I was too sleepy, 

 being unaccustomed to rising at such an early hour, to 

 notice this fact, but pulled up the empty window frames 

 in turn and still wondered at the cold. 



Many of the peasants rise early in Tenerife, and as 

 we climbed the long winding hill which leads past the 

 village of Santa Ursula, ghostly looking figures, walking 

 barefoot and muffled up in their blankets, went silently 

 by with hardly enough spirit to give the cheery greet- 

 ing which would certainly have been forthcoming later 

 in the day. All the poorer inhabitants of Tenerife wear 

 these cloaks, or blankets, which are of the natural colour 

 of the wool, and are simply fastened round the neck 

 with a string ; the peasants clon these cloaks after the 

 day's work is over, or in the early morning, when, as we 

 have seen, the air is often chill. A cart, drawn by two 

 oxen, would now and then lumber by, too often with 

 the driver asleep ; but the bells on the oxen always told 

 of its approach, though we were sometimes stopped 

 because the drowsy occupant of the cart had let his 

 charges take up too much of the road. 



The valley of Orotava and the Peak of Tenerife are 

 soon lost to view as we at length reach the summit of 

 this long incline, and it is noticeable that the snow on 

 the top of the mountain is now tinted a delicate pink 

 colour, it being the custom of the Peak thus to announce 

 to lower altitudes, and indeed to passing vessels for 

 many miles around, the approach of clay. To us, who 

 are perhaps twelve thousand feet lower down, the stars 



