[* The height of Mont Blanc, on a mean of the best accounts, is 15,673 English feet from the level of the sea, Teneriffe 12,150.]

[** Clipperton speaks of it as a fact, Harris’s Voyages, Vol.  I. p. 187.  Mandelsloe pretended to have seen it, ibid. p. 806.  Baudrand was the first who by careful enquiry detected the fiction.  An account of this imaginary tree, curious from being so circumstantial, is here given from a French book of geography, of some credit in other respects.  “Mais ce qu’il-y-a de plus digne de remarque, est cet arbre merveilleux qui fournit d’eau toute l’isle, tant pour les hommes que pour les betes.  Cet arbre, que les habitans appellent Caroe, Garoe, ou Arbre Saint, unique en son espece, est gros, et large de branches; son tronc a environ douze pieds de tour; ses feuilles sont un peu plus grosses que celles des noiers, et toujours vertes; il porte un fruit, semblable a un gland, qui a un noiau d’un gout aromatique, doux et piquant.  Cet arbre est perpetuellement convert d’un nuage, qui l’humecte partout, en sorte que l’eau en distille goutte a goutte par les branches et par les feuilles, en telle quantite qu’on en peut emplir trente tonneaux par jour.  Cette eau est extremement fraiche, claire, fort bonne a boire, et fort saine.  Elle tombe dans deux bassins de pierre que les insulaires ont batis pour la recevoir.  La nuage qui couvre cet arbre ne se dissipe pas; settlement dans les grandes chaleurs de l’ete il se diminue un peu; mais en echange la mer envoie une vapeur epaisse, qui se jette sur l’arbre, et qui supplee a ce manquement.”  Du Bois Geogr.  Part. iii. ch. 17.  Can all this have arisen from Pliny’s arbores ex quibus aquae exprimantur?]

[*** See Captain Glasse’s elaborate account of the Canaries, and Captain Cook’s last Voyage.]

The capital of Teneriffe is Laguna, or more properly San Christoval de la Laguna, St. Christopher of the Lake, so called from its situation near a lake.  Both this and Santa Cruz are built of stone, but the appearance of the latter is more pleasing than that of Laguna.  They are distant from each other about four miles.  The capital of the Great Canary, and properly of the whole government, is the City of Palms:  But that place has been for some time the centre of ecclesiastical government only.  The custom of reckoning the first meridian as passing through these isles was begun by Ptolemy; and perhaps it is still to be wished that the French regulations on that subject were generally adopted.

9 June 1787.

Our ships were at length preparing to depart, when on the evening of the 9th of June, a convict belonging to the Alexander, having been employed on deck, found means to cut away the boat, and make a temporary escape; but he was missed and soon retaken.  It is not probable that he had formed any definite plan of escape; the means of absconding must have been accidentally offered, and suddenly embraced; and for making such an attempt, the vague hope of liberty, without any certain prospect, would naturally afford sufficient temptation.