30 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
mountain, on the precipitous sides of which are here 
and there a few white houses, stuck up in little niches 
without any visible means of access, surrounded with 
small slopes of garden and cultivation. All around the 
town too are broad fields of corn, plantations, orchards, 
vineyards, and gardens of fruits and flowers, with 
abundant streams of water, most refreshing to the 
scorched eye ; here then let it rest ; for all beyond is 
naked rock and barren broken ground, of which it is 
just possible the reader may be almost weary. 
Such is the favoured Oratava, the most highly culti- 
vated spot on the island, and during many years it had 
worn the same inviting aspect when compared with 
the other towns of TenerifFe. But fortune has not 
always smiled upon it, for in the acme of its greatest 
prosperity it was suddenly reduced to desolation, and 
in a single night became a howling wilderness. In 
1 826 it was visited by an earthquake, accompanied by 
a hurricane of such terrific violence, that not a build- 
ing was left standing, not a blade of vegetation 
undestroyed; the little villages around were shaken 
from their high perches, and washed into the sea by 
the irresistible torrents which rushed down the moun- 
tain sides, carrying before them, not only flocks and 
herds, but the ill-fated inhabitants themselves. 
Earthquakes are not unfrequent in Teneriffe, and in 
the year 1704 it was visited by one which, in co-ope- 
ration with a terrible eruption of the volcano, destroyed 
nearly all its towns and villages ; but although the 
