246 THE GEOGRAPHY 



the many adventurous travellers who have gone forth to 

 seek the source of the Niger, frighten him back. On the 

 west coast of Africa, in the Canary Isles, is, indeed, no 

 longer found the gigantic dog, from which, as Pliny told, 

 the islands derived their name, but Flora gives for booty 

 richest treasures which she, by aid of the tropical sun, has 

 succeeded in extracting from the soil, moistened by the 

 vapours of the ocean. Round Sycamores twine mighty 

 Cissus stems ; Capers and Bauhinias interlace in the 

 thickets of balsamic shrubs. The slender Date-palm soars 

 aloft, and the Baobab grows up into gigantic masses of 

 wood. The wondrous Cactus-like forms of the leafless 

 Spurges, distinguished by their poisonous or pleasant- 

 flavoured, sweet milk, as the case may be, betray a peculiar 

 formative power in Nature ; and the Dragon-tree in the 

 garden of Orotava, in Teneriffe, a gigantic arborescent 

 Lily-plant, recounts to the musing listener the traditions of 

 thousands of years. 



Six zones of vegetation have we thus passed through, in 

 which the continually increasing temperature of the climate 

 called forth ever a different, ever a more luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion, and we conclude our wanderings, after a short rest 

 under the five-thousand-yeared Dracaenas, by climbing the 

 Pic of Teyde, Man has taken possession of the soil of the 

 plain at its foot, and dislodged the original vegetation. 

 Through vineyards and Maize-fields we ascend, till the 

 shades of the evergreen Bay-laurel surround us. Trees of 

 the Lace-bark tribe and similar plants succeed ; we wander 

 for a time through a zone of evergreen forest trees. 

 At a height of 4,000 feet we lose the plants which had so 

 far accompanied us. A very small number of peculiar 

 plants mark a quickly traversed zone of deciduous trees, 

 and we come among the resinous trunks of the Canary 



