The photos can be viewed on the link below.
https://cologanvalois.blogspot.com/2011/05/erupcion-en-las-narices-del-teide-1798.htmlTranslated.
It was June 9, 1798, the island of Tenerife remained calm, summer began and the towns of the island were preparing for their parties. It was hot but the breeze of the trade winds cooled the atmosphere. In the early afternoon there was a horrendous roar and the earth shook. The inhabitants of Valle de la Orotava were startled, because they were not able to see what happened. A few hours later, with the night already well entered, there was a faint red light on the teide that at times shone accompanied by frightful roars that alarmed the population of the island.
In his house in Puerto de la Cruz the young Bernardo Cólogan sensed that the volcano had awakened. That was not good news for anyone except for the science lovers among whom he was. It was his opportunity.
El Teide in May 2011 with the tajinaste flowered
Determined not to miss the opportunity, in several hours he gathered the necessary equipment for a long walk to the Teide. The tour had already been done in previous years and it was not complicated, he knew the routes and the shortcuts, but this time it would not be for pleasure.
Tomás his father did not see with good eyes those scorn of explorer who permanently assaulted his son, and less after what happened in Garachico in 1706 when another volcano devastated that city, something that his own grandfather, the old don Bernardo Valois could see with his own eyes. Tomás, although he did not live it or knew his grandfather, he remembered hearing his father Juan tell how the lava scorched everything in its path, houses, granaries, churches and even people. It was a total disaster and I was afraid that the island would be devastated and with them its flourishing commerce businesses.
Oil from the eruption of the Garachico volcano by Ubaldo Bordanova.
Note: It is a free version of the anonymous painting attributed to a Garachico friar that, according to legend, he carried out while fleeing by sea. We can appreciate the natural cove that allowed the refuge of the boats of the strong sea of the north of the island and that was completely destroyed by a lava language .
But the fear of childhood did not reach its adolescence and, that could prevent a 26 year old young man eager for experiences, to go up to see the eruption of a volcano !. Impossible. Furthermore, that was something never seen in the European continent and for which many of the great explorers of those countries would have given their lives just to be present.
No, I had already decided that I would go up immediately. With the help of some mules, and two assistants, they loaded water, food, clothes for the cold of the mountain and their notebooks where he expected to take notes of the event.
It was night and when we reached the Caldera del Teide, the darkness was total, only thanks to the moon could you walk without falling down. Without paths but the intuition of where he was going, they avoided boulders, devilish malpaises that ripped clothes and flesh until they reached the foot of Mount Teide.
But I could not see anything but an incessant roar, tremors of earth and the red of hell rising behind the profile of the mountain. Where was the rash? They followed the walk, something already exhausted and in a clear of the land after the Roques de García could see what was happening, it was the old peak that was crumbling by several points. Lava flowed out of its slope, and it flowed constantly but was punctuated by detonations and frightful blows.
But let it be the one who tells it:
Towards ten o'clock on the night of June 9, 1798, the populations of the southern band of Tenerife, and especially the part of Guia y Chío, the closest to the Canadas, there was a loud detonation and it was observed that the mountain of Chahorra, contiguous to the Pico de Teide, it launched flames and volcanic materials. These eruptions lasted, accompanied by a noise that spread the horror on the entire island, for three days. In a very short time another crater opened at the top of the mountain a mile from the first, weakening the action of the latter, which also vomited torrents of lava. Not far from this crater opened a third, whose explosions were happening very quickly. Finally, a fourth crack let out whirlwinds of smoke and burning stones. This eruption produced the four cones that are seen today and visited by Mr.
El Teide, Tenerife, Canary Islands
The four cones are placed on a slope so quickly that the first seems very high relative to those below. The main stream emerged from the third cone, whose walls are still covered with crystallized sulfur. The lava has flown in the Cañadas enclosure and has extended to the base of "Los Roques": its characters are those of a basilite mixed with crystals of rhyakolite and black Stony waste matter separated from metals during the smelting or refining of ore with metallic reflection.
All these different vents opened successively during the first seven days of the catastrophe. From a relation of the phenomenon made by Bernardo, eyewitness to it, we take the description:
The detonations of the volcano are of different natures: some resemble the boom of thunder, others the noise of a large mass boiling in an immense caldera, assuming that it is possible to form an idea of a boiler of similar dimensions. Now the explosion is sudden, as fast as a continuous and very heavy artillery discharge; Now he imitates, until the mistake is made, the hiss and the special noise of the bomb. The detonation is always heard before the explosion. The torrents of lava that have arisen from the various craters have formed, in certain places, sets of stones of matter of more than twenty feet of elevation, and even when these massifs are not inflamed in the most distant points of the mouths that the they vomited, not for that reason they stop gaining ground.
The noses of Teide today
According to our observations, those that seemed more subdued, advance twelve feet in every two hours. These lavas barely smell any and can approach them without fear. The rocks thrown by the volcano go back to a great elevation, and the time that passes since they begin to rise until they fall, is of ten to fifteen seconds. Those that come out of the upper crater rise perpendicularly, while those of the others rise obliquely.
I will not try to describe this frightful eruption, that there is no painting capable of giving an exact idea of it, and yet it would be impossible for the most fertile imagination to conceive such a picture, especially when in the midst of the darkness and silence of At night, you can hear the mooing of the mountain that echoes the echoes of the contours.
Then, suddenly, jets of flame come to illuminate these deserts places; scorched rocks plow through the atmosphere, collide with each other, break apart, crumble and scatter the fire in all directions.
These eruptions reproduce up to seven times per minute, and are accompanied by lava overflows. The sensations multiply in the presence of such an extraordinary spectacle and the powerful and terrible nature appears even more imposing.
View of the Chahorra volcano, from the southwest of the peak [1798]
(Bottom to the right appears Bernardo himself)
His description, later transcribed by Humboldt, happens to be one of the most precise of those collected by any eyewitness, together with another by Nicolás Segundo de Franchi. The naturalist Alejandro von Humboldt, who visited the island a year later, elaborated his description of the fact based on the stories and writings of Bernardo himself, after which he presented them to the scientific community. At the foot of the noses of Teide, which is what the holes caused by that eruption are now called, there is a plaque that recalls the young Bernardo.
Carlos Cólogan
Posted 29th May 2011 by Carlos Cólogan Soriano
https://cologanvalois.blogspot.com/2011/05/erupcion-en-las-narices-del-teide-1798.html
