[Santa Cruz was reached early on April 10, and in the afternoon he proceeded to Laguna, which he made his headquarters for a week. That day he walked 10 miles, the next 15, and the third 20 in the course of the day. He notes finding the characteristic Euphorbia and Heaths of the Canaries; notes, too, one or two visitations of dyspepsia from indigestible food. He writes from Laguna:--] From all that people with whom we meet tell me, I gather that the usual massive lies about health resorts pervade the accounts of Teneriffe. Santa Cruz would reduce me to jelly in a week, and I hear that Orotava is worse--stifling. Guimar, whither we go to-morrow, is warranted to be dry and everlasting sunshine. We shall see. One of the people staying in the house said they had rain there for a fortnight together...I am all right now, and walked some 15 miles up hill and down dale to-day, and I am not more than comfortably tired. However, I am not going to try the peak. I find it cannot be done without a night out at a considerable height when the thermometer commonly goes down below freezing, and I am not going to run that risk for the chance of seeing even the famous shadows. [By some mischance, no letters from home reached him till the 26th, and he writes from Guimar on the 23rd:--] A lady who lives here told me yesterday that a postmistress at one place was in the habit of taking off the stamps and turning the letters on one side! But that luckily is not a particular dodge with ours. We drove over here on the 17th. It is a very picturesque place 1000 feet up in the midst of a great amphitheatre of high hills, facing north, orange-trees laden with fruit, date palms and bananas are in the garden, and there is lovely sunshine all day long. Altogether the climate is far the best I have found anywhere here, and the house, which is that of a Spanish Marquesa, only opened as a hotel this winter, is very comfortable. I am sitting with the window wide open at nine o'clock at night, and the stars flash as if the sky were Australian.