122 Scientific Intelligence. 



then appeared like a little short and broad cone high in the clouds, or 

 rather, as an opaque triangular spot on the firmament. It is difficult to 

 imagine this, the culminant point, to be that mighty mass, at whose base 

 the toil-worn traveller pauses; when, having surmounted four-fifths of 

 the mountain, his heart quails at beholding a "Pelion upon Ossa piled 1 ' 

 so sternly, so stony and so steep. 



Much and deeply did the officers of Captain Ross and Trotter's Ex- 

 peditions deplore the necessity of hurrying from this spot, so inter- 

 esting to the sailor, it being the point to which every circumnavigator 

 first steers, and from whence, with chronometers carefully corrected at 

 its well-determined position, he takes his departure. For years, too, 

 this was the prime meridian ; distance in longitude at sea being reck- 

 oned from Teneriffe as zero, by all the seafaring nations of Europe at 

 one period: and by some it is so still. From the days of the earliest 

 circumnavigators, to the present, "we sighted the Peak of Teneriffe" 

 marks that page in the narrative, at which all that is interesting in the 



vovace commences. 



In the history of geology, the Canary Islands hold a conspicuous posi- 

 tion : von Buch developed his theory of craters of elevation from what 

 he there observed : his name too recalls, and most appropriately, that 

 of his fellow-laborer in the same shores, Christian Smith, the amiable 

 and gifted Swede, who first after Humboldt, explored their botany. 

 Christian Smith returned to Europe to embark in the ill-fated Congo 

 Expedition : when he again saw the Peak of Teneriffe, he welcomed it 

 as a familiar object, and bade it adieu, rejoicing that a still more novel 

 field of inquiry was opened to him, beyond this scene of his early exer 



tions. A few short months terminated his life and hopes : like Vogel, he 

 fell a victim to the dreaded fever of the pestilential coast of Africa: 

 like him, too, he was a martyr in the cause of botanical science. 



Possessed of so many and such touching associations, no naturalist- 

 voyager can see the Fortunate Isles rising, one by one, on the horizon 

 of the mighty Atlantic, without some feeling of melancholy, while re- 

 flecting on the fate of these his two predecessors, both most accom- 

 plished naturalists of their age and day ; and whose prospects and 

 hopes were in every respect as bright, perhaps brighter, than his own. 



The excellent and beautiful work of Mr. Webb, on the Natural 



History of the Canaries, leaves little to be said, especially of their 

 botany ; and renders even an enumeration of the few species gathered 

 by Vogel and the Botanist of the Antarctic Expedition unnecessary ; f° r 

 they were ail collected within a few miles of Santa Cruz, during a 

 very hurried walk, and scarcely include a dozen kinds. This locality 

 is one of the most barren of the whole group, especially in the imme- 

 diate neighborhood of the sea. The broad frontage of cliff and moun- 

 tain, reaching upwards for several thousand feet above the town, and 

 fore-shortened to the view from seaward, presents a progressive increase 

 of verdure from the water's edge to the mountains. At this season, 

 when the vines are out of leaf, nothing green meets the eye ; the trees, 

 either isolated or in very small clumps, only dot the alternate ridges 

 and steep gullies with which the slopes are everywhere cut like the 

 edge of a saw, producing that spotty effect in the landscape so ad- 

 mirably transferred to the phytographical illustrations of the work all* 





