Santa Cruz Bay

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1883 · Authors: Olivia M. Stone

The British traveller of Irish origin Olivia Mary Stone undertook a journey through the Islands from September 1883 to February of the following year. From this stay arose the book: Tenerife y sus seis satélites , published in England in 1887. It is a work that occupies an exceptional place in the extensive travel literature about the Archipelago due to its engaging narrative, its incessant curiosity, and the review it contains of various aspects of the culture and social reality of the Canary Islands at the end of the 19th century.

We highlight from this book, on this occasion, the passage that narrates her arrival aboard the steamer Paraná in the Santa Cruz bay on that afternoon of 5 September 1883. In it she describes a coastline now totally transformed, whose raw and simple beauty was framed by the majesty of the Anaga mountain range. 

“The view of the bay is very beautiful. The city looks out over the anchorage, climbing the mountain that rises immediately from the seashore. The houses, with numerous balconies, are painted in different colours, giving variety to a city that stands out for its flat roofs. In the port of Santa Cruz the breakwater extends into the sea forming a right angle with the beach. A small stone pier juts out halfway along the western side, forming a kind of quay that offers the scant protection possible. Although it does not serve as protection for the ships, it is very practical for disembarking from boats. The towers of the two main churches stand out clearly above the houses in that transparent air. However, the beauty of the landscape lies, above all, in the abrupt curve that the bay draws towards the west side of the Anaga mountains. The shining city, the calm waters of the anchorage, still with some swell, on whose surface float boats of various shapes and nationalities, the atmosphere of activity that exists on the quay and in the small boats of the landing stage, the wide and extensive curve of the bay clearly enhanced by the foam where the sea breaks on the dark beach, all form a placid and pleasant scene. The astonishment and grandeur, the main characteristics that make it worthy of our attention and that give it an individuality and majesty rarely equalled, arise before the abrupt end of the bay, of gentle arc, under the relentless cliffs of the mountains to the west. These pile up with their uneven and jagged profiles, raising their wild crests in the blue sky in a form at once grand, beautiful and awe-inspiring. The northern area of Tenerife, from Punta de Anaga to the capital, is a convulsive mass of volcanic mountains. The valleys hidden in these solitary places, watered by mountain dew and warmed by a subtropical sun, must be lonely corners to enjoy and into which we hope to penetrate.”

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