84 SOME BIRDS OF THE CANARY ISLANDS 



In Tenerife the eye is catered for and not the ear, 

 and the song of birds represents much of the music in 

 the island, even the church bells, from which might be 

 expected some sweetness, emitting but a discordant 

 clanging. Some few of the peasants play the guitar, 

 and there is a little band at Port Orotava, composed of 

 a violin and three or four guitars, which discourses 

 excellent music ; the various members of this band are 

 persons who are engaged in trade in the Port, and each 

 is a thorough musician. This reminds me that when 

 we were staying up at Vilaflor we were much entertained 

 one night by hearing a man's voice, evidently in the 

 throes of a love-song, accompanied by a guitar. The 

 singer possessed a very deep bass voice, which he 

 confined within a compass of three or four notes, in a 

 minor key, for the best part of an hour. We thought 

 that he must be proposing, in song, to his inamorata, 

 but were told on the following morning that he had 

 been refused by a young lady in the village about a 

 month previously, since which time he always, at mid- 

 night, serenaded her dwelling ; it was certainly a far 

 more effective and sensible way of taking his revenge 

 than some methods adopted by other love-sick swains. 

 The brass band, which is located at Santa Cruz, is 

 let out on the occasion of any fiesta of unusual import- 

 ance in one of the smaller towns, on which it descends 

 rampant, and eager for the fray. 



Saints days are almost as plentiful as blackberries in 

 Tenerife, and none are allowed to pass without some 

 token of remembrance, whether it be the humble bonfire 

 that flickers after sunset from the dwelling of some 

 peasant on the mountain slopes, or the really splendid 



