It was sunset before we reached the boats that were to convey us to the ship; and we had some difficulty both in getting off and in going alongside of the frigate, owing to the great swell. The night, however, was fine, and the scene enlivened by the lights in the fishing boats, which, like those in the Mediterranean, are used to attract the fish. On shore, the lights of the ports and villa, and the fires of the charcoal burners shining from amidst the dark hanging forests of pine, and those of the limekilns in the direction of Laguna, appeared like a brilliant illumination; and there being not a cloud, the outline of the peak was well defined on the deep blue of the nocturnal sky. 27th _August_. To-day, some of our new friends, both Spanish and English, came on board; but the swell was so great, that only one escaped sea-sickness. Mrs. Galway was fearful of suffering, so did not come, but she sent me some of the beads found in the sepulchres of the Guanches: they are of hard baked clay. Mr. Humboldt, whose imagination was naturally full of South America, has conjectured that they might have been used for the same purpose as the Peruvian _quipos_, but they are inconveniently large for that use. They are not unlike the beads Belzoni found in the mummy pits in Egypt, and they closely resemble some of the many kinds of beads with which the Bramins have counted their muntras time immemorial. The Oriental custom of dropping a bead for every prayer having been adopted by the Christians of the west, and still continuing in Roman Catholic countries, appears, on that account, too common to deserve the notice of a philosophical traveller; and therefore the Guanche shepherds, or goatherd kings, are rather supposed, like the polished Peruvians, to have recorded the annals of their reigns with clay beads, than allowed to tell them with their orisons, like the Bramins of the Ganges, the shepherds of Mesopotamia, or the anchorets of Palestine and Egypt, because the modern monk does the same. The Guanche mummies are now of very rare occurrence. During the early times of the Spanish government of the island, their sepulchres were carefully concealed by the natives; now, intermarriage with their conquerors, and consequent change of religion and habits, have rendered them careless of them, and they are, generally speaking, really forgotten, and only discovered accidentally in planting a new vineyard, or ploughing a new field.