particularly in the winter. In a country in which the soil is dry and the sunshine brilliant, cave-dwelling is not a hardship but a luxury. The Guanche cave cities exist to this day, and in Grand Canary I found them still inhabited. They were made by removing the soft tufa from the more solid basalt, and large, cool, shady rooms were thus obtained. The Guanches were very nice and particular as to the internal arrangements of their houses, and the sleeping rooms were separate from the living rooms. They dressed in skins ingeniously sewn together by means of needles made out of fish bones, and thread made of leather cut into extremely fine strips. They also wore skirts made of palm-leaves and rushes cleverly plaited so as to have almost the appearance of a woven material; caps of fur or skin, and boots or moccasins of leather, completed the costume. The skirts of the women were longer than those of the men; those of the vestal virgins were white, and they also wore an amber girdle and necklace. The men wore their beards pointed, and the women dyed their hair and painted their faces by means of little wooden dies or pastidera,' cut into elaborate patterns. Their food was chiefly gofio-that is, roasted maize, ground and mixed with water or milk as well as cheese, fish, and fresh meat; they drank nothing but water and milk: fermented liquors were unknown among them. A primitive kind of earth-oven seems to have been known to them, and their stone hand-mills for grinding maize are used by the Canarians to this day. In some of the islands the root of a fern was used for bread instead of maize. They made butter by putting the milk into a wooden vessel and suspending it from the branch of a tree; two women, standing a few paces apart, swung the vessel from one to the other till the butter came.

The Guanches are reported to have been strong and handsome, and of extraordinary agility of movement, of remarkable courage, and of a loyal disposition; but they showed the credulity of children and the simple directness of shepherds. So tall were they that the Spaniards speak of them as giants, and their strength and endurance were so great that they were conquered by stratagem but not by force. They ran as fast as horses, and could leap over a pole held between two men five or six feet high; they could climb the highest mountains and jump the deepest ravines. Their endurance as swimmers was so great that they were

These pastidera, many of which I examined in the museums of Santa Cruz and Las Palmas, are said by Berthelot to be the seals of princes.

accustomed to swim across the nine miles strait between Lancerote and Graciosa; having no boats, their method of fishing was to strike the fish with sticks, or catch them in their hands, while swimming. Their skulls which are preserved in the museums of the island, and of which I took photographs, show marked cerebral development, the frontal and parietal bones being well developed and the facial angle good. In the early days of the conquest, before rapine and murder had done their vile work, the Guanches are spoken of as being musical and fond of dancing and singing. These arts, together with those of basket-weaving and pottery-making, were a few relics of a great and remote civilisation, and were preserved in the same way (as Pigot-Ogier suggests) as, if Europe were submerged, the shepherds of the Tyrol, the Alps, and the Pyrenees would preserve the national airs and village dances of their respective countries. The Guanches were, it is supposed, but the mountain shepherds of a submerged world. Though so strong physically, the Guanches were nevertheless a very gentle race: they rarely made war on one another, and when the Europeans fell into their hands they did not kill them, but sent them to tend sheep on the mountains. So tame were the birds in this happy land that when the Spaniards first landed they came and fed out of their hands. To kill an animal degraded a man ; the butcher was a reprieved criminal and an outcast, and lived apart, he and his assistants being supported by the State. No woman was allowed to approach the shambles, and in such horror was killing held by these gentle giants that no man could be ennobled until he had publicly declared that he had not been guilty of killing any animal, not even a goat. Their standard of morality was high; they were monogamists, and adultery was punished by imprisonment and death; robbery was almost unknown among them, and drunkenness not yet invented. The Guanches were bound by law to treat women with the greatest respect, and a man was obliged to make way for every woman he met walking, to bear her burdens, and deferentially to escort her home, should she wish it. If a Guanche were ennobled for any great deed, the people were assembled on the occasion, and among the questions asked, to which a negative answer must be given before the patent of nobility was granted, was: 'Has he ever been disrespectful to women?' The women are not celebrated as having been beautiful, but they were almost as agile and strong as the men. Even in war the women and children were protected, and pillage was forbidden.

Situated at the farthest western extremity of the known world, the ancients regarded the Canary Islands as the limits of the earth, and from their natural and abundant beauty they obtained the name of the Elysian Fields. Ezekiel mentions the fact that the Tyrians traded with the Isles of Elishah (Elysian Fields), and the Carthaginians went thither for the purple of the murex and the red dye of the cochineal. Homer says that Jupiter will send Menelaus to those Elysian Fields which are at the end of the world, where the sharpness of winter is not felt, where the air is always pure and freshened by the ocean breezes.' Hesiod is still more definite, and says, 'Jupiter sent the dead heroes to the end of the world, to the Fortunate Islands which are in the middle of the ocean.' Herodotus thus describes Teneriffe: The world ends where the sea is no longer navigable, in that place where are the gardens of the Hesperides, where Atlas supports the sky on a mountain as conical as a cylinder.' Later we have a more historical description of the Canary Islands, for Juba, King of Mauritania, sent a fleet thither, and wrote a history of the voyage, which he sent to the Emperor Augustus. Pliny gives extracts from this work, and his description of the natural history of the islands is perfectly accurate. In 150 A.D. Ptolemy placed the first terrestrial meridian at Hierro, the most western of the Canary Islands.

From this time till the twelfth century, the islands are lost in the gloom of the dark ages. They seem to have been known to the Moors and Arabs, the depositors of learning and science, and were called by them 'Gezagrel Khalidal'—the Happy Islands. In 1291 the Genoese sent an expedition to the islands, but it never returned. In 1330 we learn that the islands were accidentally discovered by the captain of a French ship running before the wind, who took refuge in one of the ports. On returning to Portugal, the captain reported the circumstances, on which King Alfonso IV. sent an expedition under Don Luis de Ordo with orders to conquer the islands, but he was repulsed by the inhabitants of Gomera. In 1334 another expedition was sent by the King of Portugal, and a landing was effected at Gomera, but history is silent as to the result. In 1341 three caravels were fitted out by Alfonso IV. and despatched from Lisbon. The adventurers landed at Lancerote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Hierro, and Gomera ; but, alarmed by the eruption from the Peak of Teneriffe, they abandoned their intention, and returned to Lisbon with some of the Guanches or natives as captives. The following year another

expedition was undertaken by Luis de la Cerda, grandson of Alfonso X., King of Castile, and on his return he received from the Pope Clement VI., at Avignon, the title of King of the Islands to be conquered in order to extend the fame of the Church to the ends of the world.' But war having been declared by England, Don Luis was obliged to give up the idea of this conquest.

From this time forward Andalusians engaged in the slave trade seem to have touched at the Canary Islands from time to time. About the year 1400 the Spaniards appealed to the Normans to help them conquer the islands, and five vessels, manned by Normans, Biscayans, and Andalusians, set sail under Gonzola Perazza Martel. The Peak of El Teyde being in eruption, they avoided Teneriffe, and went to Lancerote, which they pillaged, and made the king and queen and 170 natives prisoners, whom they brought back to Spain and sold as slaves. The success of this expedition made a great impression on the Normans, and led to the only happy event in the long and painful history of the conquest of the Canary Islands-namely, the expedition of Béthencourt.

The story of Béthencourt and his fatherly rule over the Canary Islands reads like a tale of the good old times,' the golden age of kindly deeds, noble thoughts, and kingly bearing; and were it not that his reign was so short-lived, and was followed by the oldworld ways of cruelty, carnage, and superstition, we should, if it stood alone, be almost tempted to believe, as the poets tell, that the past was better than the present.

Béthencourt was a Norman knight, and, though over sixty years of age, full of enterprise and enthusiasm, and longing for opportunities to do great deeds. Stories had reached Normandy of the wonderful and long-forgotten islands in mid-ocean, inhabited by a strange and gentle people, who had been plundered and carried as slaves to Europe by various Spanish corsairs. These stories reached the ears of Béthencourt and one Gadier de la Sala, who sold their lands to raise funds to fit out an expedition to go in search of the Fortunate Islands. They set sail on May 1, 1400, and succeeded in reaching an island which they named Lancerote. The natives fled to the mountains, but Béthencourt's aim was, if possible, to achieve a bloodless conquest, and his policy was that of gentleness and justice. Finding they were unmolested, the natives came down from their hiding-places and assisted the invaders to build a fort at Rubicon. Béthencourt reigned over Lancerote for three years, but being anxious to conquer the other

islands, he returned to Spain, and obtained from Henry III., who claimed them as his property, a grant of the Fortunate Islands under the title of King. But while Béthencourt was away on this errand, matters went badly in Lancerote. He had left his relative, William de Béthencourt, as regent, but he behaved with such licentiousness and cruelty to the natives that they rose up and killed him, and imprisoned the rest of the Normans in the fort at Rubicon, where they were on the point of dying from famine when Béthencourt arrived from Spain with a newly equipped fleet. The simple natives, headed by their king, laid their complaints against the viceregal foreign government before Béthencourt, who, finding that his own countrymen had been in the wrong, pardoned the Lancerote king, and restored to the natives all the property of which they had been plundered; upon which they laid down their arms, the beleaguered garrison was relieved, and peace was restored. Shortly afterwards the Lancerote king, with all his followers, was baptised.

With his little kingdom of Lancerote now at peace and in good order, Béthencourt thought the time had arrived for conquering Fuerteventura, distant only six miles. He gathered all his forces together, and set sail in June 1405. There were at the time two kings in Fuerteventura who chanced to be at war with one another over questions of pasture, and hence they were unable to combine against the invaders. Their power was, however, as nothing compared with that of two women who were greatly revered for their wisdom, and who had determined that the natives should not resist the foreigners, but should receive them kindly. These women exercised so great an influence over the kings that they laid down their arms and consented to be baptised, and their example was followed by all the islanders. Thus Béthencourt became Lord of Fuerteventura without striking a blow.

Gomera was the next island to submit. Having landed his forces, Béthencourt cautiously proceeded inland, fearing an ambuscade, but presently he saw with surprise a great concourse of people coming towards him armed with swords, darts, lances, and crossbows (implements of war quite unknown among the Guanches), but who showed at the same time every appearance of joy. To his surprise, the leaders accosted him in Spanish and bade him welcome; and the story runs that this kindly reception was due to the fact that about thirty years previously some buccaneering Spaniards had landed at Gomera and given battle to the natives,