I obtained a guide, and struck up the proper right of a modern lava-bed which does not reach the sea. The path wound around rough hills, here and there scattered with fig-trees and vines, with lupines, euphorbias, and other wild growths. From the summit of the southern front we sighted the Cima de Ginamar, popularly called El Pozo (the Well). It is a volcanic blowing-hole of oval shape, about fifty feet in long diameter, and the elliptical mouth discharged to the north the lava-bed before seen. Apparently it is connected with the Bandana Peak, further west. Here the aborigines martyred sundry friars before the _Conquistadores_ 'divided land and water' amongst them. The guide declared that the hole must reach the sea, which lies at least 1,200 feet below; that the sound of water is often to be heard in it, and that men, let down to recover the corpses of cattle, had been frightened away by strange sights and sounds. He threw in stones, explaining that they must be large, otherwise they lodge upon the ledges. I heard them dash, dash, dash from side to side, at various intervals of different depths, till the pom-om-m subsided into silence. The crevasses showed no sign of the rock-pigeon (_Columba livia_), a bird once abounding. Nothing could be weirder than the effect of the scene in clear moonlight: the contrast of snowy beams and sable ground perfectly suited the uncanny look and the weird legends of the site. Beyond the Cima we made the gay little town of Telde, which lodges some 4,000 souls, entering it by a wide _fiumara_, over which a bridge was then building. The streets were mere lines of scattered houses, and the prominent buildings were the white dome of San Pedro and San Juan with its two steeples of the normal grey basalt. Near the latter lay the little Alameda, beggar-haunted as usual. On the north side of the Barranco rose a caverned rock inhabited by the poor. We shall see this troglodytic feature better developed elsewhere.