On the 6th of January we reached
Teneriffe, but were prevented landing, by fears of our bringing the
cholera: the next morning we saw the sun rise behind the rugged
outline of the Grand Canary Island, and suddenly illumine the Peak
of Teneriffe, whilst the lower parts were veiled in fleecy clouds.
This was the first of many delightful days never to be forgotten.
On the 16th of January 1832 we anchored at Porto Praya, in St.
Jago, the chief island of the Cape de Verd archipelago.
The neighbourhood of Porto Praya, viewed from the sea, wears a
desolate aspect. The volcanic fires of a past age, and the
scorching heat of a tropical sun, have in most places rendered the
soil unfit for vegetation. The country rises in successive steps of
table-land, interspersed with some truncate conical hills, and the
horizon is bounded by an irregular chain of more lofty mountains.
The scene, as beheld through the hazy atmosphere of this climate,
is one of great interest; if, indeed, a person, fresh from sea, and
who has just walked, for the first time, in a grove of cocoa-nut
trees, can be a judge of anything but his own happiness. The island
would generally be considered as very uninteresting, but to any one
accustomed only to an English landscape, the novel aspect of an
utterly sterile land possesses a grandeur which more vegetation
might spoil.
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