The tints of Las Cañádas, seen from above, are the tenderest yellow and a brownish red, like the lightest coat of vegetation turning ruddy in the sun. Where level, Las Cañádas is a floor of rapilli and pumice-fragments, none larger than a walnut, but growing bigger as they approach the Pike. The colours are dun (_barriga de monja_), golden-yellow, and brown burnt red like autumnal leaves. There is marvellous colouring upon the bluffs and ridges of the rim--lamp-black and brown-black, purple (light and dark), vermilion-red, and sombre hues superficially stained ruddy by air-oxygen. The picture is made brighter by the leek-green vegetation and by the overarching vault of glaring blue. Nor are the forms less note-worthy. Long centuries of weathering have worked the material into strange shapes--here a ruined wall, there an old man with a Jesuit's cap; now a bear, then a giant python. It is the oldest lava we have yet seen, except the bed of the Orotava valley. The submarine origin is denoted by fossils found in the flank; they are of Miocene age, like those common in Madeira, and they were known as early as the days of Clavijo (1772). Las Canadas is not wholly a 'dead creation;' the birds were more numerous than on the plains. A powerful raptor, apparently an eagle with black-barred wings, hung high in air amongst the swallows winging their way northwards, and the Madeiran sparrow-hawk was never out of sight; ravens, unscared by stone-throwing boys, flew over us unconcernedly, while the bushes sheltered many blackbirds, the Canary-bird (_Fringilla canaria_) showed its green belly and grey back and wings, singing a note unknown to us; and an indigenous linnet (_F. teydensis_), small and green-robed, hopped over the ground tame as a wren. We saw nothing of the red-legged partridge or the Tetraonidae, reported to be common.