the sea was hidden almost to its
horizon by a vast plain of heaving mist. All I could see plainly was the
old crater itself, barren, vast, tremendous, with its fire-scarred walls
and its fumaroles. To the west some smoked still, smoked furiously. But
though I stood upon the highest peak, another one almost as high lay
behind me. Chahorra gaped and gasped, as it seemed, like a leaping,
suffocating fish in drying mud. Its crater opened like a mouth and
around it lesser holes gaped. On the plain of the old crater there rise
two separate volcanoes--one, the true peak, rising 5000 feet from the
Canyada floor (itself 7000 feet above the sea), and Chahorra, nearly
4000. But so vast is the ancient crater that these two peaks, one yet
alive and the other dead, seem but blisters or boils upon its barren
plain. To the north, miles from the edge of my peak, I could see the
crater cliff rise red. To the west and east the wall has broken down,
but the Fortaleza, as the Canary men call it, stands yet, scarred into
chimneys, shining, half glassy, half like fired clay. And further to the
east, beyond the gap called the Portillo, the cliffs rise again as one
follows the trail over that high desert to Vilaflor. White pumice lies
under these cliffs, looking like a beach. Once perhaps the crater was
level with the sea. It may even be that the crater walls were broken
down by outer waters, not by any volcanic flood.

None knows at what time the peak of Chahorra and the great peak were
truly active. But obviously the final peak itself was the result of a
last great eruption. Perhaps the old crater had been quiescent for
thousands of years, and then it worked a little and threw up El Teyde.
At some other time Chahorra rose. At another period, in historic times,
the volcano above Garachico, even now smoking bravely, sent its lava
into Garachico's harbour and destroyed it. But the last peak as it
stands is the work of two periods of activity at least. The first great
slope ends at another flat called the Rambleta. Here was once an ancient
crater. Then the fires quietened, and there was a time of lesser
activity. It woke again, and threw up the last weary ash-cone of a
thousand feet or near it.

All things die, but who shall say when a volcano has done its worst? A
quiet Vesuvius slew its thousands: Etna its tens of thousands. Some day
perhaps Teneriffe will wake again, either in earthquakes or lava-flow,
and cause a Casamicciola or a Catania. T