EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 21, 23 December 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

THE CANARIES. The Canary Islands lie about 60 miles off the African coast, but as they belong to Spain we may include them in our survey of Europe. With an area of 2800 square miles, they are of volcanic origin, and are mountainous, their cones and craters and beds of pumic stone and layers of lava still plain for us to see. Wonderfully pleasant islands they are—as thousands of people know after having spent sunny days there. We may wander about the low sand dunes. We may come from Santa Cruz to Teneriffe which rises 12,000 feet into the sky, or to Orotava with its queer masses of sand said to have been blown across the sea from the Sahara. There are palms and dates and bananas. There is excellent lace ml embroidery—but the tourist who buys these wares from the deck of the ship while at, say, Las Palmas, should take care that he is not purchasing material made in England’s green and pleasant land. Islands of wonder are these scattered rocks, now green and fertile, which so many people from North Europe and Great Britain visit in the winter. It is rarely that the sun is not shining. Here are gardens glowing with colour: — geraniums as high as a man, roses in December, loveliness inland where the birds are numerous, grandeur by the sea . •. . you should watch the Atlantic breakers thundering up one of the western bavs outside Las Palmas : and all the laziness of a people who know nothing of the urgency of Fleet Street. And when the sun goes down and the velvet sky is blue and pricked with stars, you may hear musicians serenading, and the songs they sing drift out over the calm waters to your shin as she turns again home the lights twinkling behind.—(G).