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In places, too, the surface was streaked with light yellow patches, probably of sun-gilt tosa or pumice. On our right, or to the north-north-east of the Pike, rose La Fortaleza, alias the Golliada del Cedro.
The rounded grassy hill-heads setting off the horizontal curtains of dry stone, 'horticultural fortifications' which guard the slopes, and which rise to a height of 3,000 feet; the lower monticules and parasitic craters, Signal Hill, Race-course Hill, Sao Martinho and Santo Antonio, telling the tale of throes perhaps to be renewed; the stern basaltic cliff-walls supporting the island and prolonged in black jags through the glassy azure of the transparent sea; the gigantic headlands forming abutments for the upper arch; the chequered lights and shades and the wavy play of sunshine and cloudlet flitting over the face of earth; the gay tenements habited in white and yellow, red, green, and, not unfrequently, blue; the houses built after the model of cigar-boxes set on edge, with towers, belvederes, and gazebos so tall that no one ascends them, and with flat roofs bearing rooms of glass, sparkling like mirrors where they catch the eye of day; the toy-forts, such as the Fortaleza do Pico de Sao Joao, built by the Spaniards, an upper work which a single ironclad would blow to powder with a broadside; the mariner's landmark, 2,000 feet high, Nossa Senhora do Monte, white-framed in brown-black and backed by its feathery pines, distance-dwarfed to mere shrubs, where the snow-winds sport; the cloud-cap, a wool-pack, iris-tinted by the many-hued western sky, and the soft sweet breath of the serre-chaude below, profusely scented with flower and fruit, all combined to form an ensemble whose first sight Northern travellers long remember.
In the Lucre Basin the most interesting are those of Rumiccolca and Piquillacta. It is commonly supposed that this was an Inca fortress, intended to separate the chiefs of Cuzco from those of Vilcanota. It is now locally referred to as a "fortaleza."
This "Fortaleza" is the same edifice which, after many changes, was at last, and is still, used as a gubernatorial residence, the latest reconstruction being effected in 1846.
At length, after the constant labour of twenty days, the fort began to assume a formidable appearance, and received the name of Fortaleza de San Jorge da Mina, or Fort St George at Mina. In a church constructed within its walls, a solemn mass was appointed to be celebrated annually, in honour of Don Henry, Duke of Viseo, of illustrious memory.
To the west and east the wall has broken down, but the Fortaleza, as the Canary men call it, stands yet, scarred into chimneys, shining, half glassy, half like fired clay. And further to the east, beyond the gap called the Portillo, the cliffs rise again as one follows the trail over that high desert to Vilaflor. White pumice lies under these cliffs, looking like a beach.
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