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Peak of Teneriffe Its Crater Eruption of Chahorra Palma Great Caldera Lancerote Great Eruption Sudden Death Fuego, Cape de Verde Islands Cotopaxi Its Appearance Great Eruptive Force Tunguragua Great Eruption of Mud and Water Fish thrown out Quito Its Overthrow Pichinca Humboldt's Ascent Narrow Escape Antisana Sangay Rancagua Chillan Masaya
Perhaps the old crater had been quiescent for thousands of years, and then it worked a little and threw up El Teyde. At some other time Chahorra rose. At another period, in historic times, the volcano above Garachico, even now smoking bravely, sent its lava into Garachico's harbour and destroyed it. But the last peak as it stands is the work of two periods of activity at least.
Connected with it are numerous mountain-ridges, out of which sulphuric vapours constantly ascend, and another crater called Chahorra, close upon 10,000 feet high, and to the west of it are several cones which were in a state of eruption in 1798. Surrounding the peak is a plain bordered by mountain-ridges and covered with pumice stones, the only vegetable which grows on it being the retama.
The peak itself is very steep, and its ascent is rendered yet more arduous by the pumice-stone which rolls away beneath the feet. "At thirty-five minutes past six," says M. Dumont d'Urville, "we arrived at the summit of the Chahorra, which is evidently a half-extinct crater.
There M. Le Gros was led by the beauty of the spot to settle. It was he who augmented scientific knowledge by the first accurate ideas of the great lateral eruption of the Peak, which has been very improperly called the explosion of the volcano of Chahorra. This eruption took place on the 8th of June, 1798.
We may say, that in active volcanoes the frequency of the eruptions is in the inverse ratio of the height and the mass. The Peak also had seemed extinguished during ninety-two years, when, in 1798, it made its last eruption by a lateral opening formed in the mountain of Chahorra. In this interval Vesuvius had sixteen eruptions.
All I could see plainly was the old crater itself, barren, vast, tremendous, with its fire-scarred walls and its fumaroles. To the west some smoked still, smoked furiously. But though I stood upon the highest peak, another one almost as high lay behind me. Chahorra gaped and gasped, as it seemed, like a leaping, suffocating fish in drying mud.
From this crater there has been no eruption since 1706, when the finest harbour in the island was destroyed. But from the side of the peak there rises a supplementary mountain named Chahorra, on the top of which there is also a crater, whence there was an eruption in 1798. So great was its violence, that masses of rock were thrown to a height of upwards of 3000 feet.
Once perhaps the crater was level with the sea. It may even be that the crater walls were broken down by outer waters, not by any volcanic flood. None knows at what time the peak of Chahorra and the great peak were truly active. But obviously the final peak itself was the result of a last great eruption.
At four a.m. the ascent was resumed, and a second esplanade, called the Alta Vista, was soon reached, beyond which all trace of a path disappears, the rest of the ascent being over rough lava as far as the Chahorra Cone, with here and there, in the shade, patches of unmelted snow.
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