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We had a rather rough passage until off the Canary Islands but in nearing Tenerife we experienced nearly a calm, during many hours we lay in sight of the land, having approached to within twenty miles by 1 o'clock.

About sunrise I saw from the deck what I thought a magnificent sight. Half the Island lay veiled in a dense mist through which I could just discern its rough features, rough and shaggy as a Patagonian beauty. The whole (island) is evidently volcanic and seen at a distance appears to be perfectly bare of vegetation. The other half, in the midst of which the Peak reared its heavy head, 12,800 feet high was, when I first saw it, lit up in perfect splendour by the rising sun. In the midst of the Island, close to the shore is the town of Santa Cruz, guarded by, l think, seven batteries, against which Nelson once made a spirited but desperate rush, which he paid for by leaving an arm and a pair of colours; these last now hang up in glass cases one on each side of the principal altar piece of the Cathedral.

The houses of the town, white and yellow, with roofs of red tiles, looked exceedingly picturesque from a distance. Perhaps the circumstances under which I saw them made me fancy so. The dense mists before alluded to, formed a perfectly black background to the centre of the picture. Just behind the town exactly at each flank of it there rested the base of the largest, broadest most brilliant and best defined rainbow I ever beheld; I think the suite of colours was fully six times as broad as any I had ever seen before and its reflected image was proportionally magnificent.

The form of the town, as seen from the sea, is somewhat triangular, the base running along the shore, the apex partly retreating up the mountains appeared towards the central part of the bow; nearly at this point is the house of the British Consul (Mr Bartlett) on the top of it our national flag was flying in compliment to the like flag waving from our maingaff. The magical effect of this singularly striking scene vanished in a moment with the dissolving cloud. We waited almost till 12 o'clock to be visited by the authorities of the Board of Health, Custom House, etc. as we could not be allowed to go ashore till we had satisfied these parties.

When at length we reached the mole and the town, everything looked baked, dingy and dirty, many of the people, especially the children, were half naked, others rejoicing, for they seemed contented, in trousers, shirt and a blanket, puckered up at one end, and worn like a cloak. The women were certainly better covered but not better dressed: their gowns appeared to be cut in English fashion and might have come from London rag fair: their stockings to my short sight appeared to be a very natural but dirty flesh colour: their shoes, when there any, made their feet appear like those of a camel: over their heads and shoulders was cast a hood of what might have been whitish flannel at some age of the world.

I ought to add that I did not see one that in England would be called a lady, such it seems hardly ever step out of their houses, and riding is quite out of the question, there being hardly a single vehicle on the Island and I should think not more than a dozen horses in Santa Cruz. The beasts of burden are asses, mules, dromedaries and oxen. It is very evident from the pavement of the streets that they never expect a carriage to pass over them and I think there is hardly a mile of road passable for wheels and it would be almost impossible to make them so.

Something like this diagram is the character of the outlines of this part of the Island, rocks or rather mountains receding from and towering above one another in continuous winding chasms, very rough and precipitous and some of their tops of most fantastic shapes seemingly detached from their shoulders and standing out far from the general outline in every direction. On ascending one of them we found it plentifully studded with fig trees, cactuses etc. The Island had just been visited with a plague of locusts which accounted for the almost total absence of verdure. We saw a few of these pests lingering about here and there and the children amused themselves with tormenting them.

A gentleman amused me with an account of these unwelcome visitors; such as getting two of them, changing their heads and bowels and letting them fly away again not much worse for the exchange. I affected to believe it quite possible because his countrymen so often played the same trick with the head and internal structure of their government, by which they might seem [to] prove the effects of the experiment upon a grand and imposing scale. He groaned and told me they had just gone through a revolution of that kind in their own little island, one of their head men and every party connected with him having been dragged from place and power by the spite and selfishness of another set of place hunters. I advised that they should watch the next locusts they operated upon to see how long they were the better for such a reformation.

The gentlemen have a disgusting trick of spitting about their best rooms even as if they were among guanacos. I suppose that this is one reason that they have no carpets in their houses. These are immense awkward buildings mostly of wood, having an interior square court, on each side of which there is an open gallery on each storey. The only good thing about them is they are roomy and airy. The furniture is very poor: a table, sofa and chairs serve for a parlour as large as a barn and not much unlike one, but there is plenty of good eating and drinking and abundance of fruit and wine, at least we found it tolerably so at the English Hotel, kept by Mr Richardson, an Englishman.

They say the Island is an excellent abode for sickly people who should stay at Santa Cruz in winter and go to the interior in summer; but I believe there is no Protestant place of worship. One inconvenience we found in their never furnishing their visitors with soap. Our beds were shake-down, having four posts and a frame to support a muslin cover that enclosed the bed to the very ground to keep off their old fashioned barbarous flies, but it did not exclude their equally blood thirsty fleas. We took dinner, supper and breakfast at the hotel for which we each paid three dollars - 12/6. Captain Gardiner was acquainted with the English Consul so he took us to see him and gave me an introduction. The American Consul is a true Jonathan, we found him examining an invoice in his store. The natives seem a lazy people, bending under the heavy curse of Popery.

We visited their Cathedral, a poor piece of architecture with a few showy ornaments. One of the paintings most conspicuous was a representation of Heaven and purgatory - Mary in Heaven, crowned as Queen, was at the right hand of her Son. (I say it with reverence but with Protestant Christian indignation). He was represented as a plain Man, His mother catching His blood in a basin and distributing it to the priests who applied it somehow to the release of the black souls in purgatory, who were then seen in bright array ascending to Heaven. It was the Pope who let them out, they did not appear to pay him anything but of course that was managed in another place.

The business hours of the shop keepers would suit English young men. The shops are opened about eight or nine in the morning, closed at noon for dinner and a sleep, then re-opened till about six in the evening. There are also plenty of holidays. The Thursday evening we were there, being the first Thursday in the month, was the time for special prayer on behalf of the Mission. Captain Gardiner and myself did not forget to join our Brighton friends on this occasion.