LANCEROTA. 37 



ermen preparing for their labors. Humboldt and Bon- 

 pland had been occasionally employed during their 

 passage, in reading the old voyages of the Spaniards, 

 and these moving lights recalled to their fancy thosa 

 which Pedro Gutierrez, page of Queen Isabella, saw in 

 the isle of Guanahani, on the memorable night of the 

 discovery of the New World. 



On the 17th, in the morning, the horizon was foggy, 

 and the sky slightly covered with vapor. The outlines 

 of the mountains of Lancerota appeared stronger : the 

 humidity, increasing the transparency of the air, seemed 

 at the same time to have brought the objects nearer their 

 view. They passed through the channel which divided 

 the isle of Alegranza from Montana Clara, taking sound- 

 ings the whole way, and examined the archipelago 

 of small islands situated northward of Lancerota. In 

 the midst of this archipelago, which was seldom visited by 

 vessels bound for Teneriffe, they were singularly struck 

 with the configuration of the coasts. They thought them- 

 selves transported to the Euganean mountains in the 

 Vicentin, or the banks of the Rhine near Bonn. 



The whole western part of Lancerota bore the appear- 

 ance of a country recently convulsed by volcanic erup- 

 tions. Everything was black, parched, and stripped of 

 vegetable mould. They distinguished, with their glasses, 

 stratified basalt in thin and steeply-sloping strata. They 

 were forced by the winds to pass between the islands of 

 Alegranza and Montana Clara, and as none on board the 

 Pizarro had sailed through this passage, they were obliged 

 to be continually sounding. 



From some notions which the captain of the Pizarro 

 had collected in an old Portuguese itinerary, he thought 



