After four days I left Santa Cruz by a stage-coach, travelling directly across the middle of the island to Orotava, a small port on the other side. Orotava is situated at the base of the great Teneriffe Peak, one of the greatest in the world, which rises to a height of 12,500 feet above the sea and is supposed to be the Mt. Atlas of ancient fable. Above the town the broad landscape, on which the quaint hut of the toiling peasant contrasts with stately English homes, rises at first slowly and then more rapidly, until at last it sweeps upward far above the clouds. On a hill three miles from the town towards the Peak stands the magnificent English hotel, where I stayed, surrounded with many acres of the loveliest flowers in terraced gardens. It is a perfect fairy-land. The hotel is immense in size, and in winter it is filled with English guests; but I was there in summer and I was the only guest. The hotel commands the finest view of the Peak. It is usually hidden behind the clouds by day, and is visible in the evening. As one sees it first, in the late afternoon, a white cloud is stretched across its middle height, concealing the mountain all but the very summit which appears like a celestial island floating upon radiant clouds in the high heavens. It is fifteen miles to the summit. There is a good road and one can make the ascent on a donkey, all but the last three miles, which most people prefer to walk. Near the summit the ground is hot a few inches below the surface, which is usually the only evidence that it is still an active volcano. But two years ago there issued from the crater for several mouths a volume of smoke which at the distance of the hotel, fifteen miles, appeared as large as the funnel of an ocean steamer.