TOWS OF LAG USA. 
The heat which overpowers the traveller on his entrance 
into Santa Cruz, or La Guayra, must consequently be at- 
tributed to the reverberation from the rocks, against which 
these towns are built. 
The perpetual coolness which prevails at Laguna causes 
it to be considered in the Canaries a delightful abode. Si- 
tuated in a small plain, surrounded by gardens, protected 
by a hill which is crowned by a wood of laurels, myrtle, and 
arbutus, the capital of Tcneriffe is very beautifully placed. 
\Ve should be mistaken if, relying on the account ol some 
travellers, we believed it seated on the border of a lake. 
The rain sometimes forms a sheet of water of considerable 
extent ; and the geologist, who beholds in everything the 
past rather than the present state of nature, can have no 
doubt hut that the whole plain is a great basin dried up. 
Laguna has fallen from its opulence, since the lateral erup- 
tions of the volcano have destroyed the port of Garachico, 
and since Santa Cruz has become the central point of the 
commerce of the island. It contains only 9000 inhabitants, 
of whom nearly 400 arc monks, distributed in six convents. 
The town is surrounded with a great number of windmills, 
which indicate the cultivation of wheat in these high coun- 
tries. ]. shall observe on this occasion, that different kinds 
of grain were known to the Guanchcs. They called wheat 
at Teneriftb tano, at Lancerota trifu ; barley, in the grand 
Canary, boro the name of aramotaiioque, and at Lancerota 
it was called iumosen. The flour of roasted barley (jjojh,) 
and goat’s-milk constituted the principal food of the people, 
on the origin of which so many systematic fables have been 
current. These aliments suffieicntly-pvove that the race of 
the Guanches belonged to the nations of the old continent, 
perhaps to those of Caucasus, and not like the rest of the 
Atjantidcs,* to the inhabitants of the Mew World; these, 
before the arrival of the Europeans, were unacquainted with 
corn, milk, and cheese. 
A great number of chapels, which the Spaniards call enin- 
* Without entering here into any discussion respecting the existence of 
the Atlantis, 1 may cite the opinion of Diodorus Siculus, according to 
whom the Atlantides were iguorant of the use of corn, because they were 
separated from the rest of mankind before these gramina were cultivated 
