Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/95

 GRAN CANAEIA. 69 cone rising above the surrounding waters. The epithet " Great " would seem to have been applied to it by Bethencourt, not on account of its size, ranking only- third in this respect, but in honour of the valour of its inhabitants. Its nearly round contour bristles with headlands, especially on the north-west side, formed by the projecting spurs of the cenjtral mountain. If the form of the coast is due, as seems probable, to the erosion of running waters, the currents must evidently have trended directly east and west. Such a hypothesis would be fully in accord with the existence of a former Atlantis, by which the waters of the Gulf Stream would have been deflected southwards. But however this be. Gran Canaria presents a summary of all the other islands, at least in the variety of its geological phenomena, and the beauty of its scenery. It has its " caldrons," like Palma, its wild barrancas, or gorges, and waterfalls like Gomera, its lava-streams and sandhills like Lanzarote, its pine forests like Hierro and Teneriffe, besides extensive cultivated tracts, aqueducts kept in good repair, some rising industries, and a relatively well-developed trade. It is also compara- tively more densely peopled than the rest of the archipelago, although nearly half of its rugged surface cannot be reclaimed for tillage. The central peak of Pozo de la iS'ieve (" Snow Pit ") rises to a height of nearly 6,700 feet almost in the geographical centre of the island. But this peak is a cone of very small size resting on a dome-shaped pedestal, which formerly occupied all the centre of the island, and abov6 which rise some other craggy heights, such as the "rocks " of Saucillo, of Cumbre, Bentaiga, and ^ublo, the last-named forming a monolithic block 380 feet high. Close to the south-east base of the central cone is seen the profound Tirajana gorge, which has been eroded to a depth of over 4,000 feet, and which sends its overflow seawards through the narrow fissure of IjOS Gallegos. The west side of this abyss presents two wide openings towards the south and south-west of the island, where the Caldron or Cirque of Tejeda forms a regular amphitheatre enclosed by an unbroken rocky wall 2 1 miles in circumference. From the edge of the precipice a complete view is commanded of the vast ellipse with its numerous converging streams, lines of wooded crests, and scattered villages. On the sur- rounding plateaux a few clusters of pines still survive, mere remnants of the forests which formerly clothed all the higher grounds in the island. Besides these large cirques produced by erosion, there are others formed by volcanic action. Such are, east of the Cumbre, the Caldera de los Marteles, with a stream rushing down over a series of waterfalls, and the Caldera de Bandama, a perfectly round and regular crater near some Tertiary conglomerates in the north-east of the island. This caldron, which has a depth of 770 feet, has been compared by Leopold von Buch to the Lago d'Albano in the Latin hills. Ts'ear it is the Cima de Ginamar, another igneous opening, which has only been half fiUed in. There still remains a "bottomless" funnel, in which long echoes are awakened by stones thrown from side to side. The most recent lavas in Gran Canaria appear to be those of Isleta, a small group of insular volcanoes connected with the north-east angle of the large island