119 



long time breathed the air of the sea suffer every 

 time they land ; not because this air contains 

 more oxygen than the air on shore, as has been 

 erroneously stated, but because it is less charged 

 with those gazeous combinations*, which the 

 animal and vegetable substances, and the mud 

 resulting from their decomposition, pour into 

 the atmosphere. Miasms that escape chemical 

 analysis have a powerful effect on our organs, 

 especially when these have not undergone for a 

 long while the same kind of irritation. 



Santa Cruz, the Annaza of the Guanches, is a 

 neat town, with a population of 8000 souls. I 

 was not struck with the excessive number of 

 monks and secular ecclesiastics, which travel- 

 lers have thought themselves under the necessity 

 of finding in every country under the Spanish 

 government ; nor shall I stop to enter into the 

 description of the churches ; the library of the 

 Dominicans, which contains scarcely a few hun- 

 dred volumes ; the mole, where the inhabitants 

 assemble to inhale the freshness of the evening 

 breeze ; or the famed monument of marble of 

 Carara, thirty feet high, dedicated to our Lady 

 of the Candelaria, in memory of her miraculous 

 appearance, in 1392, at Chimisay, near Guimar. 

 The port of Santa Cruz may be considered as a. 

 great caravansary, on the road to America and 

 the Indies. Every traveller, who writes the nar- 



* Nouv. Espag. t. ii, p. 787. 



