A Day in Tenerife

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1861 · Authors: Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton (Torquay, 1821-Trieste, 1890) was one of the greatest explorers and travellers of all time. Expelled from the University of Oxford for indiscipline, he was sent to India as a non-commissioned officer in the British army. Having entered Mecca disguised, visited the forbidden city of Harar in Ethiopia, and discovered Lake Tanganyika, made him a famous figure worldwide. Burton was a solid anthropologist and an extraordinary polyglot who spoke dozens of languages and dialects. He translated into English One Thousand and One Nights , the Kama Sutra and the Ananga Ranga . His literary output is very extensive and extremely varied. 

Wanderings in West Africa is the first of five books Burton wrote about West Africa during his stay as a diplomat on the island of Fernando Poo. It is in this book that his notes on his first visit to Tenerife in September 1861 are included. He dedicated an entire chapter to it, entitled "A Day in Tenerife, 2 September". In it, he recounts the mythological origins and the conquest of the Islands; some historical and philological data about the culture of the Guanches, which clearly show his consultation of the scarce bibliography on Canarian topics at that time. He also made a brief description of Santa Cruz in 1861 and its surroundings. We highlight a small fragment in which he first focuses on the natural phenomenon produced by the waves on the volcanic cavities of the coast, then mocks the historical figure he himself calls "Saint Nelson", and concludes by mentioning a cochineal exploitation that was booming in the Archipelago at that time. 

«[...] Starting from the right, there is a gap in a high black rock wall, to which the roar of the waves has given the name Valle del Bufadero . It is a hollow that serves as a bellows to raise the storm when least desired. Here "Saint Nelson" first landed his men and, according to native tradition, tried to march on the mountains but was repelled with stones and rocks. Beyond are the castles of San Miguel and Paso Alto, apparently connected, a cat ladder clings to the sides of a high coal-black rock where the powder magazine is located, and on whose flanks, it is said, the batteries are hidden. Then there is a stretch of flattened land at the mouth of a dry ravine, it is the cochineal plantation of Don Manuel de la Concha, the well-known Captain General of Cuba [...]».

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