XXXVI NOTES. 



Guanches. Guanches inhabited the whole group of the Canary Islands, but 

 not the island of Madeira, in which no inhabitants were found either by John 

 Gonxalves and Tristan Vaz in 1519, or at an earlier period by Robert Macham 

 and Anna Dorset (supposing their romantic story to be historically tme.) 

 Heeren applies the description of Diodorus to Madeira only, yet he thinks 

 that in the account of Festus Avienus (v. 164), so conversant with Punic 

 writings, he can recognise the frequent volcanic earthquakes of the Peak of 

 Teneriffe. (Vide his Ideen iiber Politik und Handel, Th. II. Abth. 1, 1826, 

 S. 106.) From the geographical connection, the description of Avienus ap- 

 pears to me to refer to a more northern locality, perhaps even to the Kronic 

 sea. (Examen Grit. t. iii. p. 138.) Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 15), also 

 notices the Punic sources which Juba used. Respecting the probability of 

 the Semitic origin of the name of the Canary Islands (the dog islands of 

 Pliny's Latin etymology !), see Credner's biblische Vorstellung vom Paradiese, 

 in Illgen's Zeitschr. fur die historische Theologie, Bd. vi. 1836, S. 166186. 

 All that has been written from the most ancient times to the middle ages, 

 respecting the Canary Islands, has been recently brought together in the 

 fullest manner by .Toaquim Jose da Costa de Macedo, in a work entitled, 

 Memoria em que se pretende provar que os Arabes n,o conhecerfto as Cana- 

 rias antes dos Portuguezes, 1844. Where history, so far as it is founded on 

 certain and distinctly expressed testimony is silent, there remain only diffe- 

 rent degrees of probability; but an absolute denial of every fact in the 

 world's history of which the evidence is not perfectly distinct, appears to me 

 no happy application of philologic and historic criticism. The many indica- 

 tions which have come down to us from antiquity, and careful considerations 

 of the geographical relations of proximity to ancient undoubted settlements on 

 the African coast, lead me to believe that the Canary group was known to the 

 Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans, and perhaps even to the 

 Etruscans. 



( 176 ) p. J31. Compare the calculations in my Rel. Hist. t. i. p. 140 and 

 287. The Peak of Teneriffe is distant 2 49' of arc from the nearest point of 

 the African coast. Assuming a mean refraction of 0*08, the summit of the 

 Peak may therefore be seen from a height of 202 toises, and thus from th 

 Montanas Negras, not far from Cape Bqjador. In this calculation the eleva 

 tion of the Peak above the level of the sea has been taken at 1904 toises. It 

 has been recently determined trigonometrically by Captain Vidal at 1940 

 toises, and barometrically by Messrs. Coupvent and Dumoulin (D'Urrille, 

 Voyage au Pole Sud, Hist. t. i. 1842, P. 31 and 32) at 1900 toises. But 



