Books as Blogs

As our anchor rattles downwards, two excise boats with the national flag take up their stations to starboard and port; and the boatmen are carefully watched with telescopes from the shore. The wiser Spaniards have made Santa Cruz, Tenerife, a free port. The health-officer presently gives us pratique, and we welcome the good ’monopolist,’ Mr. William Reid, and his son. The former, an Ayrshire man, has made himself proprietor of the four chief hostelries. Yates’s or Hollway’s in the Entrada da Cidade, or short avenue running north from the landing-place, has become a quasi-ruinous telegraph-station. Reid’s has blossomed into the ’Royal Edinburgh;’ it is rather a tavern than an hotel, admitting the ’casuals’ from passing steamers and men who are not welcome elsewhere. One of these, who called himself a writer for the press, and who waxed insultingly drunk, made our hours bitter; but the owner has a satisfactory and sovereign way of dealing with such brutes. Miles’s has become the Carmo, and Schlaff’s the ’German.’ The fourth, Santa Clara, retains her maiden name; the establishment is somewhat collet monté, but I know none in Europe more comfortable. There are many others of the second rank; and the Hôtel Central, with its café-billiard and estaminet at the city-entrance, is a good institution which might be made better.