This they stormed, though a
terrific fire was opened upon them; and Nelson, who was about to draw
his sword as he was stepping on shore, was struck by a musket-ball on
the right arm. Had not his step-son, Lieutenant Nisbet, and one of his
bargemen, John Lovel, bound up his arm, he would in all probability have
bled to death. Captain Troubridge having, in the meantime, succeeded in
collecting two or three hundred men on the beach, all who had escaped
being shot or drowned, marched to the square, and took possession of the
town. He, of course, had to abandon all hopes of taking the citadel;
but, though eventually hemmed in by eight thousand Spaniards, he was
able, by threatening to burn the town, to make terms, and to retire with
his little band from the place. In this disastrous affair, the English
lost, killed and wounded, two hundred and fifty men, and several
captains and other officers. Blake, it may be remembered, in the time
of the Commonwealth had cut out from this same bay some rich Spanish
galleons, and it was hoped that Nelson would have been equally
successful in a like attempt. The islanders do not bear us any ill will
in consequence, and I found a good many Englishmen living in the place.
Many of them are engaged in exporting Teneriffe wine, in days of yore
well known as Canary wine.

Talking of wine, the disease which has destroyed the vines of Madeira
has also committed great havoc here, but the people have been saved from
ruin by the discovery of a new article of export. The cactus, that
thick-leaved, spiny plant used often in the south to form hedges, which
look as if the ground was growing a crop of double-edged saws,
flourishes in the most arid soil in Teneriffe. The cactus had some time
before been introduced from Honduras with the cochineal insect, which
feeds on it, by a native gentleman; but his fellow-islanders turned up
their noses at the nasty little creature, and said that they would
rather produce wine as had been done for the last three hundred years or
more. When, however, their vines sickened and died, too glad were they,
one and all, to have such for their support, and everybody, high and
low, took to planting cactus and breeding the cochineal. The female
insect is in form like a bug, but white; the male turns into something
like a gnat, and soon dies. The insects are shut up in boxes to lay
their eggs on bits of linen, which are pinned to the cactus plants by
one of their own