Las Cañadas

Las Cañadas, 1838 Shortly after this, we entered upon what the physical geographers call the region of Pine Wood; and then a spot famous for honey more delicious than that of Hymettus; the savine and thyme, gently moved by the exhilarating mountain air, seemed to afford what might be called an apiarian heaven. In a few hours we had climbed from the climate of the tropics to that of Archangel; and passing the first snow, where but a week ago two men had been frozen to death, we entered the beginning of the Pumice plains; and a most remarkable scene it was that broke upon our sight. An indescribable stillness pervaded every thing about us; plains of white sand like the desert extended in one direction; and in another direction we looked over hillocks and undulating ground, covered with snow, excepting where the gigantic broom, the cytacuse and another shrubs, stood up.

In parts, this tract of country was thick with shrubs, and in other places it was like downs quite to the base of the conical-shaped Peak. Those parts of it that were not covered with snow, were of a most beautiful colour. Poets talk of secluded valleys where solitude dwells; but if she haunts some regions of the earth more than others, it is such spots as this that I am describing; separate and unsympathetic, the mountain looked the very emblem of the solitude, and as if it would forbid intrusion and too close inspection.

Thomas Debary, Notes of a residence in Canary Islands (1851)