Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Their Isolated
State Is Merely Apparent; For It Ceases When, On Embracing A
Greater Number Of Objects, We Come To Discover The Intermediate
Links.
Those learned enquirers who trace Egyptians wherever there
are mummies, hieroglyphics, or pyramids, will imagine perhaps that
the race of Typhon was united to the Guanches by the Berbers, real
Atlantes, to whom belong the Tibboes and the Tuarycks of the
desert:
But this hypothesis is supported by no analogy between the
Berberic and Coptic languages, which are justly considered as
remnants of the ancient Egyptian.
The people who have succeeded the Guanches are descended from the
Spaniards, and in a more remote degree from the Normans. Though
these two races have been exposed during three centuries past to
the same climate, the latter is distinguished by the fairer
complexion. The descendants of the Normans inhabit the valley of
Teganana, between Punta de Naga and Punta de Hidalgo. The names of
Grandville and Dampierre are still pretty common in this district.
The Canarians are a moral, sober, and religious people, of a less
industrious character at home than in foreign countries. A roving
and enterprising disposition leads these islanders, like the
Biscayans and Catalonians, to the Philippines, to the Ladrone
Islands, to America, and wherever there are Spanish settlements,
from Chile and La Plata to New Mexico. To them we are in a great
measure indebted for the progress of agriculture in those colonies.
The whole archipelago does not contain 160,030 inhabitants, and the
Islenos are perhaps more numerous in the new continent than in
their own country.
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