men will be apt to conclude with the same remark that Dr.
Johnson made with regard to the Highlanders, « that the
“ inquirer, by . a kind of intellectual rétrogradation, knows
“ less as he hears more.” I t is better, however, to be amused
with the absurdities of simplicity than to be led astray by designing
ingenuity. Denon could never be deceived by the
old sheik, who, as he was taking a view of some massy ruins
of Upper Egypt, asked him whether the English or the
French had erected those gigantic monuments ? The simplicity
of a shepherd of Salisbury plain, with which I was
once greatly amused on a visit to Stonehenge, was pretty
much of the same cast with that of Denon s sheik. “ This is
“ a very old building, friend,” said I. “ Ayé, Master, it is
“ very old ; I have known it these twenty years, and it looks
“ just the same for all the world as it did when first I came
“ into this part of the country.”
The bodies of the Cuanches that are found in caverns are
said not to have undergone any preparation, but merely to
have been wrapped round with goat skins. Die dryness of the •
atmosphere on this island is such that, by a gradual and spontaneous
evaporation of the juices, animal substances are reduced
to a state of complete rigidity and desiccation. This seems to.
have been the common mode of interment. The number still
remaining of this race of men is very few, perhaps not more
than a dozen on the whole island. The imperfect and partial
accounts that have been handed down by their conquerors
all agree that they were a bold, generous, faithful, and good-
humoured people ; that they acknowledged one supreme
Power, to whom they offered on high mountains the most
T E N E R I F F E . 47
valuable gift they had to bestow, the'milk of their sheep and
of their goats. They registered events by the changes of the
moon. They were entirely ignorant of the use of iron, and
had no other hostile weapons to oppose to the arms of their
invaders than sticks and stones, which, however, they are
said to have hurled with great force and dexterity. They
lived in stone houses, neatly built without the assistance of lime,
clay, or any other substitute for mortar. They had a systematic
government and a gradation of rank in society; established
laws and a regular administration of justice. They led a
pastoral life, but were not wholly unacquainted with agriculture.
Their flocks were composed of sheep and goats and
they had also plenty of hogs. Their clothing consisted of
the skins of goats, sown together with the tendons of the same
animal divided into threads. The women Wore caps made of
these skins, ornamented with small univalve shells, and shoes
of the same material. Like the Kaffers and the Hottentots
they found great amusement in dancing in a ring on moonlight
nights, singing and beating time by clapping their
hands and stamping with their feet. Like these people, too,
they kindled fire by twirling the point of a small stick upon
another with great velocity. They had vessels of clay to contain
their milk, in which also they roasted their grain, probably
the maize or Guinea corn, though in most of the early
voyages it is called barley. The roots of the polypody, dried
in the sun and bruised between two stones, were made use of
to thicken their milk; and they had plenty of honey, sweet
potatoes and vetches. The stone pine on the brow of the
hills, and the chesnut in the deep glens, furnished them with
nuts; the wild olive, the buck-thorn, the whortleberry shrub,