from stitching on shirt buttons to repairing
broken telescope-stands.

Anybody who has got off a ship into an
open boat in rough weather, can, by multiplying
his sensations sevenfold, imagine what
the Edinburgh professor must have felt when
he had to land at Santa Cruz. Were they
called the "Fortunate Isles" because you are
lucky if you get well ashore without mishaps?
or because the moment you arc ashore you are
in full tropical warmth and sunshine, a pleasant
change after the wet blanket of the Trade-wind
region? Mr. Smyth failed to see the Peak in the
grand way in which some travellers have done.
People have talked of sighting it ten miles out at
sea: our author is thankful to catch a momentary
glimpse of it through a gap of cloud, while lying
off a misty breaker-coast which reminds him of
many a rough bit along the shores of Scotland.
His first good view of it is from the great lava
plain, girt with old walls of basalt, which was
the original (probably submarine) crater, and
from one corner of which the present Peak rises.
He got up thus far within six days of his landing,
with a long team of twenty mules and
drivers — the latter so honest and trustworthy,
that nothing is ever lost, nor anything stolen,
except some of the water-supply. Guajara is
their destination, a peak just on the lip of the
vast old crater of which we have spoken, nine
thousand feet high; and here they have got
comfortably fixed, twenty-four days after leaving
England.

Everybody who has written about the Peak
makes a great deal of the zones of vegetable
life through which you pass in the ascent. The
island itself, which, by the way, is not all
"Peak," being sixty miles long, and from six
to thirty wide, produces the usual tropical plants
down by the sea; then come the sub-tropicals,
lemons, oranges, figs, and so forth; then, at
one thousand nine hundred feet, nothing but
pears and a few peaches; heaths appear at two
thousand four hundred feet; English grasses at
two thousand eight hundred feet; at four
thousand seven hundred begins the codeso, an
aromatic sort of acacia peculiar to the island; then
a few pine-trees (the whole mountain used to
be girdled with them— they will have to be
replanted if the inhabitants wish to save their
garden mould, much of it brought across from
Africa; as it is, the winter rains are washing it
wholesale into the sea; all the "terracing" in
the world is a very poor protection compared to
that afforded by the fibrous roots of a tree);
higher still, at five thousand three hundred feet,
they find the retama, another plant known only
here, Cytisus nubigemis is its name, a kind of
broom, which has the power of lasting six
months, if necessary, without water, and of
throwing out such a supply of flowers, that the
natives of the lower level bring up their bees
every year, that they may take advantage of the
retama blossoming. The growth of one of these
singular plants is a lesson in patient endurance.
First, the little tender seedling bending to the
slow grinding avalanche of clinkery materials,
amidst which, however, it manages to force down
a root of most precocious length; then, when it
has grown into a sturdy little bush, it bends back
to regain the lost ground. Then comes the
full-grown plant, a joy to bees and to the bit of
soil which it overshadows, lasting many a year,
while the whole hill-side by little and little goes
crumbling, and scraping, and sliding down past
it. Then comes the stage of decay, till nothing
is left but a dead white stump, with a few
mouldering branches lying below it, very useful,
though, to travellers who mean to camp out at
two miles above the sea level, and who, of course,
have not brought their fuel with them. Cross-
ing the plain which forms the interior of the old
"crater of elevation" must have been rough
work enough; what with ridges of greenstone,
and blocks of trachyte, and crevasses filled up
with fine sand, and wastes of pumice-stone
shingle, and small "parasitic craters" like
monstrous chimneys, and a scorching sun overhead
reflected from all the glittering barrenness
around, no wonder Mr. Smyth's muleteers
dropped behind, and paid stealthy visits to the
water-barrels. Not a leaf of any kind, not
even a retama, in the whole district. How
glad they must have been when they got to a
bit of damp ground, where, by digging holes, a
few bucketsful of muddy water could be
obtained for the mules! Mr. Piazzi Smyth has
been at the Cape on astronomical business, and
he cannot help noticing the absence of life
about this alpine spring, where, by a great
chance, they put up six pigeons, and contrasting
it with the crowds of creatures, savage and
gentle, which would be found at a drinking-
place in South Africa. Within less than three
hours after this halt, the whole party— astronomer
and wife, the two sailors, the vice-consul's
nephew (acting as interpreter), and two
Spaniards are comfortably drinking tea on the
summit of Guajara, with two tents up, and
everything ready for making a snug night of it.
Talking of tea, we may remark that one of the
most difficult duties which fall to our astronomer
is settling the question whether you can
or cannot make good tea with water at one
hundred and ninety-three degrees. Water
"boils" at this temperature on the Peak; but
of course it is not so hot as the "boiling water"
below; however, you can raise the heat to two
hundred and twelve degrees, or higher, and, even
if you could not, cold water draws out a much
purer and less coarse infusion than hot, the
only objection to its use being the time it takes,
for it has not, like boiling water, the property of
at once expelling the air from the infused leaves.
Now, owing to the low barometric pressure,
water at one hundred and ninety-three degrees
would completely expel the air from tea-leaves,
so that the "tea" was as strong as it would
have been below, and much more delicate in
flavour. You must, however, drink it off at
once; "boiling water" at one hundred and
ninety-three degrees soon cools, especially with
a barometer at twenty inches. People have
talked a great deal about the feverish symptoms