October, by which time, if we had had anything like luck, we should have
been close on the line, we found ourselves about thirty miles from the
Peak of Teneriffe, becalmed. This was a long way out of our course,
which lay three or four degrees to the westward at the very least; but
the sight of the Peak was a great treat, almost compensating for past
misfortunes. The Island of Teneriffe lies in latitude 28 degrees,
longitude 16 degrees. It is about sixty miles long; towards the
southern extremity the Peak towers upwards to a height of 12,300 feet,
far above the other land of the island, though that too is very elevated
and rugged. Our telescopes revealed serrated gullies upon the mountain
sides, and showed us the fastnesses of the island in a manner that made
us long to explore them. We deceived ourselves with the hope that some
speculative fisherman might come out to us with oranges and grapes for
sale. He would have realised a handsome sum if he had, but
unfortunately none was aware of the advantages offered, and so we looked
and longed in vain. The other islands were Palma, Gomera, and Ferro,
all of them lofty, especially Palma--all of them beautiful. On the
seaboard of Palma we could detect houses innumerable; it seemed to be
very thickly inhabited and carefully cultivated. The calm continuing
three days, we took stock of the islands pretty minutely, clear as they
were, and rarely obscured even by a passing cloud; the weather was
blazing hot, but beneath the awning it was very delicious; a calm,
however, is a monotonous thing even when an island like Teneriffe is in
view, and we soon tired both of it and of the gambols of the blackfish
(a species of whale), and the operations on board an American vessel
hard by.

On the evening of the third day a light air sprung up, and we watched
the islands gradually retire into the distance. Next morning they were
faint and shrunken, and by midday they were gone. The wind was the