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To the Gold Coast for Gold

R >> Richard F. Burton >> To the Gold Coast for Gold




Early in the afternoon we steamed past Galdar and La Guia, rival
villages famed for cheeses on the north-western coast of lumpy Grand
Canary, sheets of habitation gleaming white at the feet of their
respective brown _montañetas_. The former was celebrated in local
story; its Guanche _guanarteme_, or great chief, as opposed to the
subordinate _mencey_, being one of the two potentates in 'Tameran,'
the self-styled 'Island of Braves.' This, too, was the site of the
Tahoro, or Tagoror, temple and senate-house of the ancients. The
principal interest of these wild people is the mysterious foreknowledge
of their fate that seems to have come to them by a manner of intuition,
of uninspired prophecy. [Footnote: So in Candelaria of Tenerife the
Virgin appeared in effigy to the shepherds of Chimisay in 1392, a
century before the Norman Conquest, and dwelt fifty-four years amongst
the Gentiles of Chinguaro. At least so say DD. Juan Nuñez de la Peña
(_Conquista i Antiguidades de la Gran Canaria_, &c., Madrid, 1676);
Antonio Viana (_Antiguidades de las Islas Afortunadas_, &c.,
Seville, 1604) in his heroic poem, and Fray Alonzo de Espinosa
(_Historia de la Aparicion y Milagres de la Imagem de N.S. de
Candelaria_). The learned and unprejudiced Canon Viera y Clavijo
(_Noticias de la Historia geral de las Islas de Canaria_, 3 vols.)
bravely doubts whether reason and sane criticism had flourished together
in those times.]

In the clear winter-air we could distinctly trace the bold contour of
the upper heights tipped by the central haystack, El Nublo, a giant
trachytic monolith. We passed Confital Bay, whose 'comfits' are galettes
of stone, and gave a wide berth to the Isleta and its Sphinx's
head. This rocky peninsula, projecting sharply from the north-eastern
chord of the circle, is outlined by a dangerous reef, and drops suddenly
into 130 fathoms. Supported on the north by great columns of basalt, it
is the terminus of a secondary chain, trending north-east--south-west,
and meeting the _Cumbre_, or highest ground, whose strike is
north-west--south-east. Like the knuckle-bone of the Tenerife ham it is
a contorted mass of red and black lavas and scoriae, with sharp slides
and stone-floods still distinctly traceable. Of its five eruptive cones
the highest, which supports the Atalaya Vieja, or old look-out, now the
signal-station, rises to 1,200 feet. A fine lighthouse, with detached
quarters for the men, crowns another crater-top to the north. The grim
block wants water at this season, when the thinnest coat of green
clothes its black-red forms. La Isleta appears to have been a
burial-ground of the indigenes, who, instead of stowing away their
mummies in caves, built detached sepulchres and raised tumuli of scoriae
over their embalmed dead. As at Peruvian Arica, many remains have been
exposed by modern earthquakes and landslips.

Rounding the Islet, and accompanied by curious canoes like paper-boats,
and by fishing-craft which bounded over the waves like dolphins, we spun
by the Puerto de la Luz, a line of flat-topped whitewashed houses, the
only remarkable feature being the large and unused Lazaretto. A few
barques still lie off the landing-place, where I have been compelled
more than once to take refuge. In my day it was proposed to cut a
ship-canal through the low neck of barren sand, which bears nothing but
a 'chapparal' of tamarisk. During the last twenty years, however, the
isthmus has been connected with the mainland by a fine causeway, paved
with concrete, and by an excellent highroad. The sand of the neck,
thrown by the winds high up the cliffs which back the city, evidently
dates from the days when La Isleta was an island. It contrasts sharply
with the grey basaltic shingle that faces the capital and forms the
ship-building yard.

We coasted along the yellow lowland, with its tormented background of
tall cones, bluffs, and _falaises_; and we anchored, at 4 P.M., in
the roadstead of Las Palmas, north of the spot where our
s.s. _Senegal_ whilom broke her back. The capital, fronting east,
like Santa Cruz, lies at the foot of a high sea-wall, whose straight and
sloping lines betray their submarine origin: in places it is caverned
for quarries and for the homes of the troglodyte artisans; and up its
flanks straggle whitewashed boxes towards the local necropolis. The
dryness of the atmosphere destroys aerial perspective; and the view
looks flat as a scene-painting. The terraced roofs suggest to Britishers
that the top-floor has been blown off. Las Palmas is divided into two
halves, northern and southern, by a grim black wady, like the Madeiran
_ribeiras_, [Footnote: According to the usual law of the neo-Latin
languages, 'ribeiro' (masc.) is a small cleft, 'ribeira' (fem.) is a
large ravine.] the 'Giniguada,' or Barranco de la Ciudad, the normal
grisly gashes in the background curtain. The eye-striking buildings are
the whitewashed Castillo del Rey, a flat fort of antique structure
crowning the western heights and connected by a broken wall with the
Casa Mata, or platform half-way down: it is backed by a larger and
stronger work, the Castillo de Sant' Ana. The next notability is the new
theatre, large enough for any European capital. Lastly, an immense and
gloomy pile, the Cathedral rises conspicuously from the white sheet of
city, all cubes and windows. Clad in a suit of sombrest brown patched
with plaster, with its domelet and its two towers of basalt very far
apart. This fane is unhappily fronted westward, the high altar facing
Jerusalem. And thus it turns its back upon the world of voyagers.

In former days, when winds and waves were high, we landed on the sands
near the dark grey Castillo de la Luz, in the Port of Light. Thence we
had to walk, ride, or drive--when a carriage was to be hired--over the
four kilomètres which separated us from the city. We passed the Castles
of San Fernando and La Catalina to the villas and the gardens planted
with thin trees that outlie the north; and we entered the capital by a
neat bridge thrown over the Barranco de la Mata, where a wall from the
upper castle once kept out the doughty aborigines. Thence we fell into
the northern quarter, La Triana, and found shabby rooms and shocking
fare either at the British Hotel (Mrs. Bishop) or the Hôtel Monson--both
no more. Now we land conveniently, thanks to Dons Santiago Verdugo and
Juan Leon y Castilhos, at a spur of the new pier with the red light, to
the north of the city, and find ourselves at once in the streets. For
many years this comfortable mole excited the strongest opposition: it
was wasting money, and the stones, carelessly thrown in, would at once
be carried off by the sea and increase the drenching breakers which
outlie the beach. Time has, as usual, settled the dispute. It is now
being prolonged eastwards; but again they say that the work is swept
away as soon as done; that the water is too deep, and even that sinking
a ship loaded with stones would not resist the strong arm of Eurus, who
buries everything in surf. The mole is provided with the normal
_Sanidad_, or health office, with solid magazines, and with a
civilised tramway used to transport the huge cubes of concrete. At the
tongue-root is a neat little garden, wanting only shade: two
dragon-trees here attract the eye. Thence we pass at once into the main
line, La Triana, which bisects the commercial town. This reminiscence of
the Seville suburb begins rather like a road than a street, but it ends
with the inevitable cobble-stones. The _trottoirs_, we remark, are
of flags disposed lengthways; in the rival Island they lie
crosswise. The thoroughfares are scrupulously named, after Spanish
fashion; in Fernando Po they labelled even the bush-roads. The
substantial houses with green balconies are white, bound in brown
edgings of trachyte, basalt, and lava: here and there a single story of
rude construction stands like a dwarf by the side of its giant
neighbour.

The huge and still unfinished cathedral is well worth a visit. It is
called after Santa Ana, a personage in this island. When Grand Canary
had been attacked successively and to scant purpose by De Béthencourt
(1402), by Diego de Herrera (1464), and by Diego de Silva, the Catholic
Queen and King sent, on January 24, 1474, Don Juan Rejon to finish the
work. This _Conquistador_, a morose and violent man, was marching
upon the west of the island, where his reception would have been of the
warmest, when he was met at the site of the present Ermita de San
Antonio by an old fisherman, who advised him of his danger. He took
warning, fortified his camp, which occupied the site of the present
city, beat off the enemy, and defeated, at the battle of Giniguada, a
league of chiefs headed by the valiant and obstinate Doramas. The
fisherman having suddenly disappeared, incontinently became a miraculous
apparition of the Virgin's mother. Rejon founded the cathedral in her
honour; but he was not destined to rest in it. He was recalled to
Spain. He attacked Grand Canary three times, and as often failed; at
last he left it, and after all his campaigns he was killed and buried at
Gomera. Nor, despite Saint Anne, did the stout islanders yield to Pedro
de Vera (1480-83) till they had fought an eighty years' fight for
independence.

The cathedral, which Mr. P. Barker Webb compares with the Church of
St. Sulpice, is built of poor schiste and bad sandstone-rubble, revetted
with good lava and basalt. The latter material here takes in age a fine
mellow creamy coat, as in the 'giant cities' of the Hauran, the absurd
title of Mr. Porter. The order is Ionic below, Corinthian above, and the
pile sadly wants a dome instead of a pepper-caster domelet. One of the
towers was finished only forty-five years ago, and a Scotch merchant
added, much to his disgust, a weather-cock. In the interior green, blue,
and yellow glass tempers the austerity of the whitewashed walls and the
gloom of the grey basaltic columns, bindings, and ceiling-ribbings.
Concerning the ceiling, which prettily imitates an archwork
of trees, they tell the following tale. The Bishop and Chapter,
having resolved in 1500 to repair the work of Don Diego Montaude,
entrusted the work to Don Diego Nicholas Eduardo, of Laguna, an
Hispano-Hibernian--according to the English. This young architect built
with so light a hand that the masons struck work till he encouraged them
by sitting beneath his own creation. The same, they say, was done at
Belem, Lisbon. The interior is Gothic, unlike all others in the islands;
and the piers, lofty and elegant, imitate palm-fronds, a delicate
flattery to 'Las Palmas' and a good specimen of local invention. There
are a nave and two aisles: four noble transversal columns sustaining the
choir-vault adorn the walls. The pulpit and high altar are admirable as
the choir; the only eyesores are the diminutive organ and the eleven
side-chapels with their caricatures of high art. The large and
heavily-railed choir in mid-nave, so common in the mother country,
breaks the unity of the place and dwarfs its grand proportions. After
the manner of Spanish churches, which love to concentrate dazzling
colour at the upper end, the high altar is hung with crimson velvet
curtains; and its massive silver lamps (one Italian, presented by
Cardinal Ximenes), salvers, altar-facings, and other fixings are said to
have cost over 24,000 francs. The lectern is supposed to have been
preserved from the older cathedral.

There are other curiosities in this building. The sacristy, supported by
side-walls on the arch principle, and ceilinged with stone instead of
wood, is shown as a minor miracle. The vestry contains gigantic
wardrobes, full of ladies' delights--marvellous vestments, weighted with
massive braidings of gold and silver, most delicate handwork in every
imaginable colour and form. There are magnificent donations of
crucifixes and candlesticks, cups, goblets, and other vessels required
by the church services--all the result of private piety. In the Chapel
of St. Catherine, built at his own expense, lies buried Cairasco, the
bard whom Cervantes recognised as his master in style. His epitaph,
dating A.D. 1610, reads--

Lyricen et vates, toto celebratus in orbe,
Hic jacet inclusus, nomine ad astra volans.

A statue to him was erected opposite the old 'Cairasco Theatre' in
1876. Under the grand altar, with other dignitaries of the cathedral,
are the remains of the learned and amiable historian of the isles, Canon
José de Viera y Clavigo, born at Lanzarote, poet, 'elegant translator'
of Buffon, lexicographer, and honest man.

Directly facing the cathedral-façade is the square, headed by the
_Ayuntamiento_, an Ionic building which would make a first-rate
hotel. Satirical Britishers declare that it was copied from one of Day
and Martin's labels. The old townhall was burnt in 1842, and of its
valuable documents nothing was saved. On the right of the plaza is an
humble building, the episcopal palace, founded in 1578 by Bishop
Cristobal de la Vega. It was rebuilt by his successor, Cristobal de la
Camara, who forbade the pretty housekeeper, prohibited his priests from
entering nunneries, and prescribed public confessionals--a measure still
much to be desired. But he must have been a man of extreme views, for he
actually proscribed gossip. This was some thirty years after Admiral van
der Does and his Dutchmen fired upon the city and were beaten off with a
loss of 2,000 men.

South of the cathedral, and in Colegio Street (so called from the
Augustine college, [Footnote: There is still a college of that name
where meteorological observations are regularly made.] now converted
into a tribunal), we find a small old house with heavily barred
windows--the ex-Inquisition. This also has been desecrated into
utility. The Holy Office began in 1504, and became a free tribunal in
1567. Its palace was here founded in 1659 by Don José Balderan, and
restored in 1787 by Don Diego Nicholas Eduardo, whose fine fronting
staircase has been much admired. The Holy Tribunal broke up in 1820,
when, the Constitution proving too strong for St. Dominic, the
college-students mounted the belfry; and, amid the stupefaction of the
shuddering multitude, joyously tolled its death-knell. All the material
was sold, even the large leather chairs with gilt nails used for
ecclesiastical sitting. 'God defend us from its resurrection,' mutters
the civil old huissier, as he leads us to the dungeons below through the
mean court with its poor verandah propped on wooden posts. Part of it
facing the magistrates' chapel was turned into a prison for petty
malefactors; and the two upper _salas_ were converted into a
provisional _Audiencia_, or supreme court, large halls hung with
the portraits of the old governors. The new _Audiencia_ at the
bottom of Colegio Street, built by M. Botta at an expense of 20,000
dollars, has a fine court with covered cloisters above and an open
gallery below, supported by thin pillars of basalt.

Resuming our walk down La Triana southwards, we note the grand new
theatre, not unlike that of Dresden: it wants only opening and a
company. Then we cross the Giniguada wady by a bridge with a wooden
floor, iron railings, and stone piers, and enter the _Viñeta_, or
official, as opposed to the commercial, town. On the south side is the
fish-market, new, pretty, and gingerbread. It adjoins the general
market, a fine, solid old building like that of Santa Cruz, containing
bakers' and butchers' stalls, and all things wanted by the
housekeeper. A little beyond it the Triana ends in an archway leading to
a square court, under whose shaded sides mules and asses are
tethered. We turn to the right and gain Balcones Street, where stands
the comfortable hotel of Don Ramon Lopez. Most soothing to the eye is
the cool green-grown _patio_ after the prospect of the hot and
barren highlands which back the Palm-City.

Walking up the right flank of the Giniguada Ribeira, we cross the old
stone bridge with three arches and marble statues of the four
seasons. It places us in the Plazuela, the irregular space which leads
to the Mayor de Triana, the square of the old theatre. The western side
is occupied by a huge yellow building, the old Church and Convent of San
Francisco, now turned into barracks. In parts it is battlemented; and
its belfry, a wall of basalt pierced with a lancet-arch to hang bells,
hints at earthquakes. An inscription upon the old theatre, the usual
neat building of white and grey-brown basalt, informs us that it was
built in 1852, _ad honorem_ of two deputies. But Santa Cruz, the
modern capital, has provided herself with a larger and a better house;
_ergo_ Las Palmas, the old capital, must fain do the same. The
metropolis of Grand Canary, moreover, claims to count more noses than
that of Tenerife. To the west of the older theatre, in the same block,
is the casino, club, and ball-room, with two French billiard-tables and
smoking-rooms. The old hotel attached to the theatre has now ceased to
exist.

On the opposite side of the square lies the little Alameda promenade,
the grounds once belonging to St. Francis. The raised walk, shaded by a
pretty arch-way of palm-trees, is planted with myrtles, dahlias, and
bignonias. It has all the requisites of its kind--band-stand,
green-posted oil-lamps, and scrolled seats of brown basalt. Round this
square rise the best houses, mostly new; as in the Peninsula, however,
as well as in both archipelagos, all have shops below. We are beginning
to imitate this excellent practice of utilising the unwholesome
ground-floor in the big new hotels of London. Two large houses are, or
were, painted to mimic brick, things as hideous as anything further
north.

In this part of the Triana lived the colony of English merchants, once
so numerous that they had their own club and gymnasium. All had taken
the local colouring, and were more Spanish than the Spaniards. A
celebrated case of barratry was going on in 1863, the date of my first
visit, when Lloyds sent out a detective and my friend Capt. Heathcote,
I.N., to conduct the legal proceedings. I innocently asked why the
British vice-consul was not sufficient, and was assured that no resident
could interfere, _alias_ dared do his duty, under pain of social
ostracism and a host of enmities. In those days a man who gained his
lawsuit went about weaponed and escorted, as in modern Ireland, by a
troop of armed servants. Landlord-potting also was by no means unknown;
and the murder of the Marquess de las Palmas caused memorable sensation.

Indescribable was the want of hospitality which characterised the
Hispano-Englishmen of Las Palmas. I have called twice upon a
fellow-countryman without his dreaming of asking me upstairs. Such
shyness may be understood in foreigners, who often entertain wild ideas
concerning what an Englishman expects. But these people were wealthy;
nor were they wholly expatriated. Finally, it was with the utmost
difficulty that I obtained from one of them a pound of home-grown
arrowroot for the sick child of a friend.

On the other hand, I have ever met with the greatest civility from the
Spanish Canarians. I am especially indebted to Don J. B. Carlo, the
packet-agent, who gave me copies of 'El Museo Canario, Revista de la
Sociedad del mismo nombre' (Las Palmas)--the transactions published by
the Museum of Las Palmas. Two mummies of Canarian origin have lately
been added to the collection, and the library has become
respectable. The steamers are now so hurried that I had no time to
inspect it, nor to call upon Don Gregorio Chil y Naranjo, President of
the Anthropological Society. This savant, whose name has become well
known in Paris, is printing at Las Palmas his 'Estudios Historicos,'
&c., the outcome of a life's labour. Don Agustin Millares is also
publishing 'La Historia de las Islas Canarias,' in three volumes, each
of 400 to 450 pages.

I made three short excursions in Grand Canary to Telde, to the Caldera,
and to Doramas, which showed me the formation of the island. My notes
taken at the time must now be quoted. _En route_ for the former, we
drove past the large city-hospital: here in old times was another strong
wall, defending the southern part, and corresponding with the northern
or Barranco line. The road running to the south-south-west was
peculiarly good; the tunnel through the hill-spur suggested classical
and romantic Posilippo. It was well parapeted near the sea, and it had
heavy cuttings in the white _tosca_, a rock somewhat resembling the
_calcaire grossier_ of the Paris basin. This light pumice-like
stone, occasionally forming a conglomerate or pudding, and slightly
effervescing with acids, is fertile where soft, and where hard quite
sterile. Hereabouts lay Gando, one of the earliest forts built by the
_Conquistadores_. We then bent inland, or westward, crossed barren
stony ground, red and black, and entered the pretty and fertile valley
with its scatter of houses known as La Vega de Ginamar.

I obtained a guide, and struck up the proper right of a modern lava-bed
which does not reach the sea. The path wound around rough hills, here
and there scattered with fig-trees and vines, with lupines, euphorbias,
and other wild growths. From the summit of the southern front we sighted
the Cima de Ginamar, popularly called El Pozo (the Well). It is a
volcanic blowing-hole of oval shape, about fifty feet in long diameter,
and the elliptical mouth discharged to the north the lava-bed before
seen. Apparently it is connected with the Bandana Peak, further
west. Here the aborigines martyred sundry friars before the
_Conquistadores_ 'divided land and water' amongst them. The guide
declared that the hole must reach the sea, which lies at least 1,200
feet below; that the sound of water is often to be heard in it, and that
men, let down to recover the corpses of cattle, had been frightened away
by strange sights and sounds. He threw in stones, explaining that they
must be large, otherwise they lodge upon the ledges. I heard them dash,
dash, dash from side to side, at various intervals of different depths,
till the pom-om-m subsided into silence. The crevasses showed no sign of
the rock-pigeon (_Columba livia_), a bird once abounding. Nothing
could be weirder than the effect of the scene in clear moonlight: the
contrast of snowy beams and sable ground perfectly suited the uncanny
look and the weird legends of the site.

Beyond the Cima we made the gay little town of Telde, which lodges some
4,000 souls, entering it by a wide _fiumara_, over which a bridge
was then building. The streets were mere lines of scattered houses, and
the prominent buildings were the white dome of San Pedro and San Juan
with its two steeples of the normal grey basalt. Near the latter lay the
little Alameda, beggar-haunted as usual. On the north side of the
Barranco rose a caverned rock inhabited by the poor. We shall see this
troglodytic feature better developed elsewhere.

To visit the Caldera de Bandana, three miles from the city, we hired a
carriage with the normal row of three lean rats, which managed, however,
to canter or gallop the greater part of the way. The boy-driver,
Agustin, was a fair specimen of his race, obstinate as a Berber or a
mule. As it was Sunday he wanted to halt at every _venta_ (pub),
_curioseando_--that is, admiring the opposite sex. Some of the
younger girls are undoubtedly pretty, yet they show unmistakable signs
of Guanche blood. The toilette is not becoming: here the shawl takes the
place of the mantilla, and the head-covering, as in Tenerife, is capped
by the hideous billycock. To all my remonstrances Don Agustin curtly
replied with the usual island formula, 'Am I a slave?' This class has a
surly, grumbling way, utterly wanting the dignity of the lower-order
Spaniard and the Moor; and it is to be managed only by threatening to
withhold the _propinas_ (tip). But the jarvey, like the bath-man,
the barber, and generally the body-servant and the menial classes which
wait upon man's person, are not always models of civility.

We again passed the hospital and ascended the new zigzag to the right of
the Giniguada. The torrent-bed, now bright green with arum and pepper,
grows vegetables, maize, and cactus. Its banks bear large plantations of
the dates from which Las Palmas borrows her pretty Eastern names. In
most places they are mere brabs, and, like the olive, they fail to
fruit. The larger growths are barbarously docked, as in Catholic
countries generally; and the fronds are reduced to mere brooms and
rats'-tails. The people are not fond of palms; the shade and the roots,
they say, injure their crops, and the tree is barely worth one dollar
per annum.

At the top of the Cuesta de San Roque, which reminded me of its namesake
near Gibraltar, I found a barren ridge growing only euphorbia. The
Barranco Seco, on the top, showed in the sole a conspicuously big house
which has no other view but the sides of a barren trough. This was the
'folly' of an eccentric nobleman, who preferred the absence to the
company of his friends.

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