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SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Oct. 26, 1 J 



mountains of Mauritania. Numberless are the defini- 

 tions of Hierro, already mentioned ; but whether it 

 comes from Hera, or Hero, the son of Gomer, ac- 

 cording to P. Maestro Sarmiento, or Haoaros, another 

 tribe mentioned in conjunction with the Gumeros, by 

 Leo Africanus, or Hiero, who was a tyrant of Syracuse 

 during the first Punic war, or none of these, is a matter 

 not yet decided. But the signification of the names of 

 the islands, renamed by the Spaniards as they are now 

 known, is equally difficult of elucidation. There are no 

 more palms in Palma than elsewhere. Fuerteventura 

 is the least likely of all the islands to be considered as 

 worthy of its name, ' fuerte,' strong or fort, ' Ventura,' 

 chance, luck, or, as some say, ' Buena-ventura,' good 

 fortune. Viera states that Canada is undoubtedly a 

 Latin name, and draws certain deductions therefrom. 

 This, however, is scarcely an argument, as, whatever 

 names the islands or their inhabitants possessed, they 

 would be Latinised by the conquerors." 



While yet the islands are comparatively little known, 

 let me, without laying myself open to a charge of pedan- 

 try, ask the public to call the islands by their right names. 

 There is no reason for spelling Tenerife with two ff s. It 

 is a four syllable word — Ten-er-i-fe. The large, round 

 island is either Gran Canada, or Great Canary, and not 

 Grand Canary, as the daily papers have already bar- 

 barously started to call it in their " mails " list, since the 

 cable to that island was opened. Still worse, however, 

 is the mongrel appellation which is sometimes seen, 

 " Grand Canada." 



From personal observation in the islands, it is probable 

 that they were peopled originally by Berbers, but most 

 likely by more than one tribe of that people, and I have 

 little doubt that originally they were connected with the 

 ancient Egyptians. The leaves of the laurel were placed 

 on the head of a Guanche king at his coronation, and 

 were similar to the lotus on the head of Isis. The 

 " colocase," whose leaves are represented in Guanche de- 

 signs, also are associated with the gods of Egypt. But 

 there is a more forcible resemblance. There are only 

 three nations known to have embalmed — the Egyptians, 

 the Peruvians, and the people we are talking about. 

 Many savage and semi-savage nations dried their dead, 

 or smoked them, but the ancient people of the Canary 

 Islands embalmed. " A judicious and inquisitive man," 

 who lived twenty years in Tenerife, both as a physician 

 and merchant, about the early part of the seventeenth 

 century, says distinctly : — " The corps are sewed up in 

 goats' skins, with thongs of the same, in a very curious 

 manner, particularly as to the seams, which are incom- 

 parably even and exact." The mummies are embalmed 

 similarly to those of the lower class of Egyptians, the in- 

 cision for extracting the entrails being done with the 

 " tabona," which, as in Egypt, was a stone of hard basalt. 

 Galindo says their process was as follows : — " First they 

 carried the body to a cave and stretched it on a flat 

 stone, where they opened it and took out the bowels ; 

 then, twice a day, they washed the porous parts of the 

 body, viz., the arm-pits, behind the ears, the groin, be- 

 tween the fingers, and the neck, with cold water. After 

 washing it sufficiently, they anointed those parts with 

 sheep's butter, and sprinkled them with a powder made 

 of the dust of decayed pine-trees and a sort of brush- 

 wood, which the Spaniards called Bressos, together with 

 the powder of pumice-stone ; then they let the body re- 

 main till it was perfectly dry, when the relations of the 

 deceased came and swaddled it in sheep or goat skins 



dressed, girding all tight with long leather thongs .... 

 there were particular persons set apart for this office of 

 embalming, each sex performing it for those of their 

 own." 



From other sources we gather that dragon's blood was 

 an ingredient in the process. 



I know of no Guanche mummy in England. At the 

 British Museum, Mrs. Stone tells me she made inquiries 

 and was shown as Guanche a mummy which was 

 obviously Peruvian. In the museum of Tacoronte and 

 Santa Cruz in Tenerife, there are several. Fig. 8 shows 

 the head of one of the mummies in the latter museum. 

 One at Tacoronte is in a very perfect condition, still en- 

 cased in leather as it was found, with strips of hide, about 

 an inch wide, tied and knotted round it. At the top, over 

 the head, the mummy is tied up just as a sack's mouth 

 is fastened. 



Both the Egyptians and this nation used caves in 

 which to lay their dead. The ornamental designs which 

 I have seen — a good example of which are the marks on 

 the painted cave at Gaidar — are more Egyptian in cha- 

 racter than anything else. Now, singularly enough, the 

 Berbers lived in caves very similar to those used in the 

 Canary Islands both formerly and now. Sir J. D. 

 Hooker and Mr. Ball mention that when penetrating a 

 defile known as Ain Tarsil, in Morocco, 3,000 or 4,000 

 feet above the sea, they saw caves some fifty feet above 

 them, in the sides of the cliff, which they considered to 

 be natural cavities enlarged by man. " The most singu- 

 lar point about these dwellings is the fact that they are 

 all near the top of the cliff, where the rock is nearly 

 vertical in position, that cannot now be reached without 

 a ladder or other artificial assistance." This description 

 would apply exactly to many caves in the Canary 

 Islands, numbers of which are yet unvisited, owing to 

 their 'inaccessibility. Messrs. Hooker and Ball did not 

 enter any of these caves. I venture to suggest that some 

 of them will be found to contain mummies similar to 

 those of the Canaries. If so, the missing link between 

 the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands and the 

 Egyptians will have been found. Many points of resem- 

 blance are also noticeable between ancient Canarian 

 words which have come down to us and similar Berber 

 ones. 



But going still further back we have good evidence 

 that this people constituted part of the white dolicho- 

 cephhalic race * which once extended through the British 

 Isles, France, Spain, Northern Africa, Palestine, and 

 Syria. The people of this aboriginal race, according to 

 Professor Sayce, were distinguishable on account of their 

 height and size, " and down to the time of David the 

 gigantic descendants of the Anakim were still pointed out 

 in the cities of the Philistines," whose height was " like 

 the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks " 

 (Amos ii. 9). To this day in Tenerife the common ex- 

 pression for a tall, well-proportioned man is, " He is a 

 regular Guanche." This race was a white-skinned, fair- 

 haired people, which Professor Sayce says was character- 

 ised by the slightly retreating forehead and the peculiar 

 nose, features certainly characteristic of the ancient in- 

 habitants of the Canary Islands. Blue eyes and light 

 hair are still to be continually met with in the most out- 

 of-the-way spots. 



* Upon the platform during the reading of the paper the author 

 produced a Guanche skull. This Dr. Garson there and then mea- 

 sured and pronounced to be clearly dolicho-cephalic. He had not 

 before seen the skull, and it had never before been measured 



