58 
BOTANICAL GAltDEW. 
of a fertil 3 and well cultivated country. The history of the 
globe informs us, that volcanoes destroy what they have 
been a long scries of ages in creating. Islands, which the 
action of submarine fires has raised above the waters, are 
by degrees clothed in rich and smiling verdure ; but these new 
lands are often laid waste by tlie renewed action of the 
same power which caused them to emerge from the bottom 
of the ocean. Islets, which are now but heaps of scori:e 
and volcanic ashes, were once perhaps as fertile as the hills 
of Tacoronte and Sanzal. Happy the country, where man 
has no distrust of the soil on which I 10 lives ! 
Pursuing our course to the port of Orotava, we passed tho 
smiling hamlets of Matauza and Victoria. These names are 
mingled together in all the Spanish colonies, and they form 
an unpleasing contrast with the peaceful and tranquil feelings 
which those countries inspire. Matauza signifies slaughter, 
or carnage ; and the word alone recalls the price at which 
victory has been purchased. In the New World it generally 
indicates the defeat of the natives: at Teneriffe, the village 
of Matauza was built in a place* where the Spaniards were 
conquered by those same Guancheswho soon after wore sold 
as slaves in the markets of Europe. 
Before we reached Orotava, we visited a botanic garden at 
a little distance from tho port. We there found M. Le Gros, 
the French vice-consul, who had often scaled the summit of 
tho Peak, and who served us as an excellent guide. He was 
accompanying captain Baudin in a voyage to the Westlndies, 
when a dreadful tempest, of which' M. Le Dm has given 
an account in the narrative of his voyage to Porto Jtico, 
forced the vessel to put into Teneriffe. There M. Le Gro.s 
was led bv tho beauty of the spot to settle. It was he who 
augmented scientific knowledge by the first accurate ideas 
of the great lateral eruption of the Peak, which has been 
very improperly called the explosion of the volcano of Cha- 
horra. This eruption took place on the 8th of June, 1708. 
The establishment of a botanical garden at Teneriffe is a 
very happy idea, on account of the influence it is likely to 
have on the progress of botany, and on the introduction 
of useful plants into Europe. For the first conception of 
* The ancient Aeantcjo. 
