Leopold von Buch (Brandenburg, Germany, 1774–Berlin 1853) studied geology at the universities of Halle and Gottingen.. He entered the Berlin Academy of Sciences and was an honorary member of more than fifty scientific societies in Germany, France and England.
Buch brought together in his person a series of characteristics that made him an exceptional scientist, since he had a solid training in all branches of science, a prodigious memory, great capacity for work and a physical condition which allowed him to travel on foot various regions of Germany, Italy, the Swiss Alps, Scandinavia and the islands of TenerifeLa Palma, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote, for which he is considered the first German hiker who came to the Islands Canary Islands and the first one who went up to the Teide on the south side.
Stay in Tenerife
Leopold von Buch arrived at the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on May 6, 1815 in order to complete the work that his friend Humboldt had not been able to carry out fifteen years earlier. He was accompanied by Christian Smith (Norway, 1785-Congo, 1816), a doctor and botanist with whom he would produce the first scientific catalog of the flora of the Canary Islands.
The first ascent to Teide was undertaken from the port of La Orotava. The following week they did the same walk again, but this time deviating in the plain of the brooms to go to the south of the Island, where when touring the ravine of Hell they were amazed at the amount of water and existing vegetation. Then they went down to Los Cristianos, surprised by its aridity; They crossed the Valle de Santiago until they reached Icod, walking through the lava flows that had destroyed Garachico in 1706. From here they returned to La Orotava.
During this tour, he would carry out the first detailed study of the island’s volcanic complex.implanting the theory of elevation craters as a scientific explanation of the formation of calderas.
During his stay in La Laguna, from June 12 to 23, he would spend many hours researching in the library of the Marqués de Nava and they made excursions to Monte de Las Mercedes, Taganana, Tegueste, Tacoronte…
On June 24 they went down to Santa Cruz to meet Francisco Escolar, a citizen who had investigated all the Islands from a geognostic point of view, finding his collections and data quite useful.
From the capital they went to Candelaria and Güímar. In most of the towns through which “the famous doctors” passed, they received the hospitality of their inhabitants who offered them bed and food, and even came to drink the goat’s milk recently milked by the shepherds.
After spending more than three months touring the island of Tenerife, they moved to Gran Canaria, where they were from June 28 to August 11. They stayed on La Palma from September 21 to October 3. The visit and stay in Lanzarote, from October 17 to 27, was during the stay of the ship in which they were returning to England, in order to complete their cargo with barrilla.
countless observations
From his tours of the Islands he leaves us countless observations. For this reason, the introduction of his work can be considered as the first tourist guide for German travelers, since it contained statistical tables of temperatures, rains, winds, population, height of the mountains, synopsis of the flora, production of wine, orchilla and barrilla; geognostic descriptions, nature of volcanic manifestations and their connection with other volcanoes on earth, map of Tenerife…
In 1819, four years after having been in Tenerife, Buch began to publish his works in the magazine Abhandlungen der Physikalischen Klasse der Akademie der Wissenschaften, compiling them in a single volume in 1825, with the title Physical description of the Canary Islands. From the translation, carried out by José A. Delgado Luis from Tenerife, we have extracted:
«…The crater is nothing more than a solfatara of sulfurous vapors that are released from the interior both by the top and by the outer enclosure. These vapors transform the rocks into a white clay and the sulfur is deposited inside the holes forming beautiful crystals…
The skirt of Las Cañadas
From the points where the perpendicular rocks that form the cirque end, above Adeje, the entire slope of Las Cañadas is covered with volcanic lavas, which make up such considerable masses that they extend over a space of several leagues, forming small black currents. and uneven. A large number of cones that rise a short distance away, a little above that sea of lava, and other volcanic vents that can be seen in the direction of the Chahorra mountain, clearly indicate the sources from which these prodigious masses of materials…
Von Buch arrived at the Port of Santa Cruz on May 6, 1815 to complete the work that his friend Humboldt had not been able to carry out fifteen years before.
The Pico and the mountain of Chahorra must be considered as a single volcano with two summits, since the distinction between the two cones is only evident because the Peak rises to a more considerable height. In the middle of the slope, the two mountains are entirely united and do not present any discontinuity. Therefore, it is evident that the two volcanoes are nothing more than an immense dome of trachyte, almost entirely surrounded by a mantle of basalt layers. Its shape and location suggest that they were caused by the lifting of a masspushed by internal forces, when it broke through and which, when it broke in the middle of the uplift crater, caused the upper mass to take the shape of a vault…
On the island of Tenerife, no more than a single volcano should be consideredthat it is the trachytic dome that has been given the name of Teide and that the lateral eruptions of historical times have occurred in the vicinity of the main cone and are part of the central crater.
The cones are located following a line that runs from that base to the rocks of the circus; therefore, this arrangement marks the fracture line. The lower mouths are much lower than the upper ones. They spewed out very little lava, but from the third emanated a current that extended far away. He reached the rocks of the circus and spread through the place known as Cañada. The wall formed by these rocks prevented him from continuing further and reaching the inhabited places.
On the west side, almost at the end of the rock enclosure that surrounds the circus, at the base of the Chahorra mountain, four volcanic cones rise which, on June 17, 1798, reminded the inhabitants of Tenerife that they lived next door. foot of a volcano.
