st the dark hanging forests of pine, and those
of the limekilns in the direction of Laguna, appeared like a brilliant
illumination; and there being not a cloud, the outline of the peak was
well defined on the deep blue of the nocturnal sky.

27th _August_. To-day, some of our new friends, both Spanish and
English, came on board; but the swell was so great, that only one
escaped sea-sickness. Mrs. Galway was fearful of suffering, so did not
come, but she sent me some of the beads found in the sepulchres of the
Guanches: they are of hard baked clay. Mr. Humboldt, whose imagination
was naturally full of South America, has conjectured that they might
have been used for the same purpose as the Peruvian _quipos_, but they
are inconveniently large for that use. They are not unlike the beads
Belzoni found in the mummy pits in Egypt, and they closely resemble some
of the many kinds of beads with which the Bramins have counted their
muntras time immemorial. The Oriental custom of dropping a bead for
every prayer having been adopted by the Christians of the west, and
still continuing in Roman Catholic countries, appears, on that account,
too common to deserve the notice of a philosophical traveller; and
therefore the Guanche shepherds, or goatherd kings, are rather supposed,
like the polished Peruvians, to have recorded the annals of their reigns
with clay beads, than allowed to tell them with their orisons, like the
Bramins of the Ganges, the shepherds of Mesopotamia, or the anchorets of
Palestine and Egypt, because the modern monk does the same. The Guanche
mummies are now of very rare occurrence. During the early times of the
Spanish government of the island, their sepulchres were carefully
concealed by the natives; now, intermarriage with their conquerors, and
consequent change of religion and habits, have rendered them careless of
them, and they are, generally speaking, really forgotten, and only
discovered accidentally in planting a new vineyard, or ploughing a new
field.

28th. This morning left the "still vext" bay of Oratava, and before
sunset saw Palma and Gomera. The Canary Islands, supposed to be the
Fortunate Islands of the ancients, were discovered accidentally in 1405.
Betancour, a Frenchman, took possession of them for Spain; but the
natives were brave, and it cost both the Spaniards and Portuguese, who
possessed them by turns, much blood and treasure to conquer the country
and exterminate the people, for their wa