[Footnote: The canary bird builds, on tall bushes rather than trees, a nest of moss, roots, feathers and rubbish, where it lays from four to six pale-blue eggs. It moults in August and September; pairs in February, and sometimes hatches six times in a season. The natives declare that the wild birds rarely survive the second year of captivity; yet they do not seem to suffer from it, as they begin to sing at once when caged. Mr. Addison describes the note as 'between that of the skylark and the nightingale,' and was surprised to find that each flock has a different song--an observation confirmed by the people and noted by Humboldt (p. 87).] The country folk were habited in shirts, drawers derived from the Moors, and tasseled caps of blue stuff, big enough for carpet-bags. The vine still covered every possible slope of black soil, and the aloes, crowned with flowers, seemed to lord it over the tamarisks, the hemlocks, and the nightshades. Upon this _monte_, or wooded height, most of the gentry have country-houses, the climate being 12 degrees (Fahr.) cooler than by the sea. La Brigida commands a fine view of the Isleta, with its black sand and white foam, leek-green waters upon the reefs, and deep offing of steely blue. Leaving the carriage at the forking road, I mounted, after a bad descent, a rough hill, and saw to the left the Pico de Bandana, a fine regular cone 1,850 feet high. A group of a few houses, El Pueblo de la Caldera, leads to the famous Cauldron, which Sir Charles Lyell visited by mistake for that of Palma. Travellers compare it with the lakes of Nemi and Albano: I found it tame after the cup of Fernando Po with its beautiful lining of hanging woods. It has only the merit of regularity. The unbroken upper rim measures about half a mile in diameter, and the lower funnel 3,000 feet in circumference. The sides of _piedra pomez_ (pumice) are lined and ribbed with rows of scoriaceous rock as regular as amphitheatre-seats, full 1,000 feet deep, and slope easily into a flat sole, which some are said to have reached on horseback. A copious fountain, springing from the once fiery inside, is collected below for the use of the farm-house, El Fondo de la Caldera. The fields have the effect of a little Alpine tarn of bright green. Here wild pigeons are sometimes caught at night, and rabbits and partridges are or were not extinct. I ascended Bandana Peak to the north-north-east, the _piton_ of this long extinct volcano, and enjoyed the prospect of the luxuriant vegetation, the turquoise sea, and the golden sands about Maspalomas, the southernmost extremity of Grand Canary.