SALUDKITY OF TEXLRIITE. 
53 
las, encircle the town of Laguna. Shaded by trees of per- 
petual verdure, and erected on small eminences, these chapels 
add to the picturesque effect of the landscape. The interior 
of the town is not equal to its external appearance. The 
houses are solidly built, hut very antiquo, and the streets 
seem deserted. A botanist ought not to complain of the 
antiquity of the edifices. The rc ofs and walls are covered 
with Canary house-leek and those elegant trichomanes, men- 
tioned by every traveller. These plants are nourished by 
the abundant mists. 
Mr. Anderson, the naturalist in the third voyage of cap- 
tain Cook, advises physicians to send their patients to Tene- 
riffe, on account of the mildness of the temperature and the 
equal climate of the Canaries. The ground on these islands 
rises in an amphitheatre, and presents simultaneously, as in 
Peru and Mexico, the temperature of every climate, from the 
heat of Africa to the cold of the higher Alps. Santa Cruz, 
the port of Orotava, the town of the same name, and that of 
Laguna, are four places, the mean temperatures of which 
form a descending series. In the soutli of Europe the 
change of the seasons is too sensibly felt to present the same 
advantages. Teneriffe, on the contrary, situated as it were 
on the threshold of the tropics, though but a few days’ sail 
from Spain, shares in the charms which nature has lavishea 
on the equinoctial regions. Vegetation hero displays some 
ot her fairest and most majestic forms in the banana' and tho 
palm-tree. lie who is alive to the charms of nature finds in 
this delicious island remedies still more potent than the 
climate. ISTo abode appeared to me more fitted to dissipate 
melancholy, and restore peace to the perturbed mind, than 
that ot Tenenffe or Madeira. These advantages arc the 
effect not of toe beauty of the site and the purity of the air 
alone: the moral feeling is no longer harrowed up by the 
sight of slavery, the presence of which is so revolting m the 
West Indies, and in every other place to whicli European 
colonists have conveyed what they call their civilization and 
their industry. 
• x h \ climate ol Laguna is extremely foggv, and tho 
inhabitants otten complain of the cold. A fall of snow, how- 
ever, has never been seen ; a fact which may seem to indicate 
