La Caldera de Taburiente

“In the north-east part of Palma, inland, is a spacious high mountain, steep on all sides, called la Caldera, i.e. the Cauldron. This mountain is hollow, like the Peak of Tenerife; the summit is about two leagues in diameter every way, and within descends gradually from thence to bottom, which is a space of about thirty acres.

On the declivity of the inside spring several rivulets, which join all together at the bottom, and issue in one stream through a passage to the outside mountain from which it descends, and after running some distance from thence it turns two sugar-mills. The water of this stream is unwholesome, by reason of its being tainted with other water, of a pernicious quality, which mixes with it in the cauldron. All the inside of the cauldron abounds with herbage, and is covered with laurels, “tea” or pitch-pine, palms, lignum Rhodium and retamas; these last, in this island, have a yellow bark and grow to the size of large trees, but in the others they are only shrubs. The shepherds here are very careful not to let the he-goats feed on the leaves of the retama, because they breed a stone in the bladder, which kills them.

On the outside of the cauldron spring two rivulets, one of which runs northward to the village of San Andrés and turns two sugar-mills, the other runs to the eastward, to the town of Santa Cruz. Besides these there are no other rivulets, streams or fountains of water of any consequence in the island; for which reason the natives build square reservoirs or tanks, with planks of pitch-pine, which they make tight by caulking.”

George Glas