46 TENERIFFE. 
men will be apt to conclude w'ith the same remark that Dr. 
Johnson made with regard to the Highlanders, ^' that the 
" inquirer, by a kind of intellectual retrogradation, knows 
" less as he hears more." It is better, however, to be amused 
with the absurdities of simplicity than to be led astray by de- 
signing ingenuity. Denon could never be deceived by the 
old sheik, who, as he was taking a view of some massy ruins 
of Upper Egypt, asked him whether the English or the 
French had erected those gigantic monuments ? The sim- 
plicity of a shepherd of Salisbury plain, with which I was 
once greatly amused on a visit to Stonehenge, was pretty 
much of the same cast with that of Denon's slieik. " This is 
" a very old building, friend," said I. " Aye, Master, it is 
" very old ; I have known it these twenty years, and it looks 
" just the same for all the world as it did when first I came 
into this part of the country." 
The bodies of the Guanches that are found in caverns are 
said not to have undergone any preparation, but merely to 
have been wrapped round with goat skins. The dryness of the 
atmosphere on this island is such that, by a gradual and spon- 
taneous evaporation of the juices, animal substances are reduced 
to a state of complete rigidity and desiccation. This seems to 
have been the common mode of interment. The number still 
remaining of this race of men is very few, perhaps not more 
than a dozen on the whole island. The imperfect and partial 
accounts that have been handed down by their conquerors 
all agree that they were a bold, generous, faithful, and good- 
humoured people ; that they acknowledged one supreme 
Power, to whom they offered on liigh mountains the most 
