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Title: With a Camera in Majorca

Author: Margaret D'Este

Release Date: April 30, 2017 [EBook #54634]

Language: English

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Majorcan Country Girls.

To those who are unacquainted with the Spanish language, the pronunciation of Majorcan names is such a stumbling block that the following phonetic rendering of some of those most frequently met with may be found useful:—

Jaime

= Ha-eé-may

Lonja

= Loan-ha

Andraitx

= An-dreítsch

Lluch

= Lee-oók

Sollér

= Sole-yair

Iviza

= Evéess-a

Mahon

= M’hone

Aubercuix

= O-ber-cóotsh

Puig (signifying Peak)

= Póotsch

Bañalbufar

= Ban-yal-boo-fár

Felanitx

= Fay-la-néetsch

Map of Majorca

In the spring of 1906 we found ourselves with three months to devote to foreign travel, and after some deliberation we decided to spend them in exploring those “Iles oubliées” of the Mediterranean—Majorca, Minorca, and Iviza—and in ascertaining for ourselves whether they were worth visiting and what were the possibilities of a stay there.

Their names, it is true, lingered in our memories like some familiar echo from far-off schoolroom days, but with regard to all practical details we were extremely ignorant, and it was without knowing a soul in the islands or a soul who had ever been there, that we set out on the last day of January to visit the Balearics—those homes of famous slingers.

A railway journey of twenty-two hours takes the traveller from Paris to Barcelona by way of Toulouse. The change from France to Spain is an abrupt one. After racing through flat lands of vine, through sand dunes and salt lagoons, one crosses the frontier into a dry place of 2red and orange hills, where stone villages stand bare and unshrinking in the strong sunlight, and here and there a palm—solitary outpost of the south—waves her dusty plumes; and the night falls suddenly upon a sky crystal clear, as the sun slips in glory behind the strong outline of the purple Pyrenees.

An old writer has left it on record that the thing which chiefly repented him in his life was having gone anywhere by sea when he might have gone by land. Since it is decreed, however, that islands shall be reached by water, one subject of remorse was spared us as we boarded the steamship Miramar at half-past six on the evening of February 5th. And so great is the power of comparatives to cheer, that though the worst of sailors, we derived a certain happiness from the reflection that we had at any rate chosen the lesser evil in sailing from Barcelona instead of taking the twenty-four hour crossing from Marseilles.

Behold us then at dawn gliding into the Bay of Palma and gazing around us with that undefined expectancy that even in these prosaic days of travel tinges with romance the landing on an unknown shore.

“From the grounds round the Castle of Bellver a most lovely view of Palma is obtained through the pine-trees....”

(page 31)

“... the little harbour of Porto Pi, guarded by an old Moorish signal tower.”

(page 32)

3Here is nothing of the wild and rugged mountain scenery that meets the eye on approaching Ajaccio. Rather like some Fortunate Isle safe from the reach of tempests does Majorca lie serene and dreaming upon the water. The great bay opening to the south is enclosed upon the east by a level shore terminating far out at sea in the blue headland of Cape Blanco, while closer at hand the western coast line is indented with many a rocky promontory and wooded headland curving down to the harbour’s rim. A low cliff of orange sandstone encircles like a sea wall the head of the bay, and upon this cliff stands Palma, a sea of colourless houses massed upon the water’s edge and stretching backwards to the wide plain—deep blue and level well-nigh as the sea itself—that forms the background to the town and to the great cathedral that towers high above all other buildings.

At its eastern rim the plain rises slightly to the double peaks of the Puig de Randa, far inland; on the west the panorama is closed by a distant range of sapphire blue mountains, the Sierra of the interior.

We land, and are rattled quickly away in an omnibus to the Grand Hotel—but a few minutes distant from the quay. It was no small relief to find that we were spared a further encounter with the Spanish douane, for the ruthless violation of our trunks at the frontier station of Port Bou was still fresh in our memory, while the very hour of our sailing from Barcelona had been marked by a last attempt at extortion. A Customs official who was patrolling the wharf in all the glory of helmet and sword, took upon himself to detain a packing case of ours, containing a saddle, and, on the ground that he could not see what was inside, he forbade it to be put on board.

It was late—it was dark—the boat was about to sail, and we had retired to our cabin. Our hired porter raved 4and shrieked upon the quay, then came to us and said we must have the case opened or it would be left behind. I stumbled upstairs again, my Spanish deserting me at such a rate that by the time I reached the shore my vocabulary was literally reduced to the one word, sombrero—which, unhappily, did not bear upon the matter. The douanier was polite, but firm. With shrugged shoulders he said the Senorita would comprehend that with the best will in the world he could not see through a deal board.

At that moment the gleam of a street lamp fell upon an upturned palm protruding from beneath the military cape—and into it I slipped a peseta, which produced such a furious access of shrugging and protestation that for one brief moment I thought I had insulted the man. But on looking round I saw that all was well, porter and case being already half-way on deck—and with a sense of deep annoyance at having tipped a person I would willingly have fined, I followed them and went to bed.

On the Palma quay all is peace. By a simple arrangement involving a certain annual subsidy to the Customs officials, the proprietor of the Grand Hotel has ensured protection for his guests’ luggage, which escapes even the most nominal examination. The hotel omnibus merely draws up for a moment in front of the Douane on entering the town; the officials, armed with long probing rods, saunter out, open the carriage door and wish us good day—and on we go again.

The town is still half asleep, and as we drive up to the hotel its shutters are being unshipped by yawning 5faquins. We find a large and handsome five-storied building with an imposing façade, and balconied windows that look out upon the small central square of the town. The interior conveys a truly southern impression of silence and space, due to the great expanses of marble pavement and to the cool stone walls and passages which prevent the conveyance of sound. The dining hall is immense; so are the lobbies that run round the central well of the house, and off which the bedrooms open. We go upstairs, and within an hour of our arrival have become pensionnaires of the hotel at 10s. a head a day, and are installed in two excellent rooms on the third floor, comfortably furnished, fitted with electric bells and light, heated by hot water, and reached by a lift, while our wants are being ministered to by a cheerful white-capped chambermaid answering to the name of Dolores.

With brains still jumbled by travel it is almost impossible to realise, in the midst of such up-to-date comfort, that we are really and actually in Majorca—an island that might, for all we knew to the contrary a few weeks ago, have proved an inhospitable rock. Memories recur of nights spent en route at Paris and Toulouse, and we go to the window half-expecting to see a vista of wide boulevards and to hear the familiar clanging of electric trams as they glide up and down some arcaded street of cafés and shopfronts.

6We are sharply recalled from such visions: a sea of pale yellow-ochre tiles, unbroken, though intersected by narrow crevasse-like streets, stretches down to a strip of brilliant blue water in the harbour below. On flat house tops lines of wet linen flap wildly in sun and wind. Jutting up above the mass of irregular roofs are fantastic turrets and aviaries, painted blue and red, the homes of innumerable pigeons now wheeling in flocks over the town, their wings singing as they cleave the air above our heads. From scattered belfrys and towers unmelodious bells clash out wildly for a few moments and then relapse into silence; and like a running accompaniment to the murmur of the streets is heard the gobble, gobble of many turkeys, and the bright eye of one of these birds is seen watching us fixedly through the Venetian shutters of a small upper room across the way. No, truly! this is all very unlike a northern city.

Majorca is in fact a stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, where the East and West—rather than the north and south of her geographical position—may be said to meet.

She has had many masters in her day: the earliest colonists of whom we have any record were the sea-faring Rhodians, who were said to build “as though for eternity.” But not the faintest trace of their occupation survives. Their successors were the Carthaginians, who left footprints in Minorca by founding Mahon, the capital, the reputed birthplace of Hannibal. Then came the Romans, who in 123 B.C. founded Palma and Pollensa; 7Balearic slingers fought under Julius Cæsar in Gaul as they had done under Hannibal at Cannæ. Five hundred years later the islands were captured by the Vandals—were retaken by the Byzantine general Belisarius, and fell subsequently with the greater part of Spain into the hands of the Visigoths.

In the eighth century came the resistless tide of the Saracens, who held the island for an uninterrupted period of nearly five hundred years, and might have kept it longer had they not strained the patience of their Christian neighbours to breaking point by their piratical habits. They had become such a menace to the marine commerce of Europe that the then Pope preached a crusade against the Balearic bandits, and an allied fleet sailed from Pisa and Catalonia in the twelfth century. The pirates’ nest was smoked out, Palma succumbing after a long and stubborn siege. The allies, however, proved unable to retain their prize, and the island relapsed to the Moors, who so far took their lesson to heart as to somewhat amend their ways.

But the great assault was yet to come. On Sept. 6, 1229, Don Jaime I—King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona—destined to live in history by the title of El Conquistador, set sail for Palma with 150 galleys and 18,000 soldiers, besides a great company of Spanish knights aflame with religious zeal, the lust of conquest, and the hope of glory. We are told that the Christian host encountered a great storm on the way, and that they were grievously sick before they landed near Porto Pi to the west of the town.

8Here the infidels attacked them, but were beaten back and besieged within the city, which fell some three months later after a desperate resistance, and was entered by the victorious Spanish army on December 31, 1229.

From that memorable day may be said to date modern Palma. Everything around one testifies to the break that separates the history of the town since the conquest from the old period of Arab domination. The names of the streets immortalise the Conqueror and succeeding sovereigns or notables of the invading race. The scutcheons that ornament the public buildings display the arms granted to Palma by Don Jaime—a castle in the sea, with a palm-tree issuant, quartered with the arms of Aragon and surmounted by the Bat, cognisance of the Counts of Barcelona.

The town houses of the aristocracy are the old palaces of the nine noble families whose ancestors accompanied the Conqueror and settled in the island. The Governor’s residence stands where did the Moorish sheikh’s palace; the Cathedral occupies the site of the principal mosque. So thorough were the invaders in destroying or converting to other uses the Moorish buildings, so fierce was their Christian zeal—“which spared not even stones”—that hardly a trace remains of the oriental Palma, that city crowned with minarets and peopled with 80,000 souls, which attained under the Moors a glory and magnificence that have never since been equalled.

The Palma of the present day is a prosperous town of some 60,000 inhabitants. She has burst her ancient limits, and her eastern outskirts are thick with factories and windmills extending to the plain, while outside her western fortifications has sprung up a large residential suburb, and the wooded slopes above the bay are thronged for miles with villas and summer residences. Only the town that lies inside the walls is the old Palma, and this—in its main features—has probably altered little since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

“The gateway by which Don Jaime is said to have made his triumphal entry into Palma in the year 1229.”

(page 10)

“The Riéra is seen flowing beneath the bridge that leads from the gate of Santa Catalina to the suburb of the same name.”

(page 9)

9A wide thoroughfare divides the town into the upper and lower Villas, and starting from the harbour, takes a right angle near the Grand Hotel and makes its exit through the Porte Jésus in the north-west walls. This is the principal artery of the town, and was originally—like the Rambla of many another Spanish city—the bed by which the river found its way to the sea; but in the year 1403 a disastrous flood, causing the loss of hundreds of houses and lives, so alarmed the inhabitants that the river was turned from its course and conducted into the moat that surrounds the town. Spanish rivers are proverbial for their lack of water, and it is difficult to credit the Riéra—which in its normal state suggests nothing more dangerous than a gravel pit after rain—with such powers of destruction in bygone days.

The gigantic scale of Palma’s encircling fortifications may perhaps best be realised by a glance at the accompanying picture, where the Riéra is seen flowing beneath the bridge that leads from the gate of Santa Catalina to the suburb of the same name.

10The fortifications date from very different periods. The completed design of moat and rampart as it now stands was originated in the sixteenth century and only finished a hundred years ago; but remains of the old Moorish defences still exist, though they suffered severely in the great siege of 1229, and were strengthened and largely rebuilt by the Spanish conquerors.

A picturesque gateway on the north of the town, now called Santa Margarita, but dubbed by the Moors the Gate of the Christians, is pointed out as having been the one by which Don Jaime made his triumphant entry into Palma. This gateway, like the other survivals of the ancient fortifications, stands some way within the Muralla of the present day, which encompasses the town as with a raised highway—one might almost say a common, so incredibly vast are the earthworks within the walls. Hither the townsfolk ascend at evening to enjoy the sea breeze and the glorious view over land and sea. Cows graze peacefully along the ramparts, surrounded by children at play; and wheeling flights of pigeons execute aerial manœuvres overhead, while squads of new recruits march unendingly backwards and forwards from morning to night in the dry bed of the moat below, and the bastions re-echo the sharp words of command.

The moat on the eastern side is devoted to rope-making, and there men are seen walking backwards all day long, spinning as they go, and the dull thud of heavy mallets is heard as they beat out the bundles of esparto grass.

“... the Plaza del Mercádo, lying in the shadow of the old hexagonal tower of San Nicolas, and flanked by the great balconied house of the Zafortéza family.”

(page 12)

“At intervals along the ramparts stand ancient sentry boxes of weathered sandstone....”

(page 11)

11On the southern ramparts overlooking the harbour and immediately beneath the cathedral, is the broad terraced walk that forms Palma’s most beautiful promenade. At intervals along the low parapet stand ancient sentry-boxes of weathered sandstone, and one looks past them out to sea, with a bird’s-eye view of the harbour and its shipping backed by the white suburb of Santa Catalina and the pinewoods of Bellver. Above us rise clustered houses, with here and there a group of slender palm-trees leaning from some garden, and crowning all stands the great cathedral, rich with pinnacles and flying buttresses, and turning to the harbour a cliff-like face of sandstone deep tanned by centuries of sun and sea.

Small wonder that the townspeople love to stroll on their beautiful Muralla de Mar. It is probably the only portion of the ramparts that will survive the work of destruction now proceeding—for the doom of the fortifications is sealed. The last part they played in history was during the Spanish war of succession in 1715, when Palma hotly espoused the cause of the Austrian archduke and was reduced by General Aspheld with an army of 10,000 men. Modern science has rendered the old walls useless as a defence—modern hygiene considers them an undesirable barrier to fresh air.

And so they are to go.

For the last thirty years the work of pulling them down has proceeded with but occasional pauses from lack of 12funds. Already a wide breach has been made on the side next the sea; to the north a large section of the moat has been filled in and converted into a square with gardens; and workmen are now engaged in throwing down the eastern walls. The outer casing of masonry is being gradually stripped off and the vast earthworks shovelled into the moat. To the onlooker it seems as if ants had been set to remove a mountain as he watches one trolley-load of rubbish after another slide down to the glacis below without making the slightest perceptible difference.

Yet it is only a question of a few years before walls and moat alike shall have vanished. Gone will be the old entrance gates with their scutcheons and turrets and their deep archways of black shadow where lurks the douanier watching for his prey. Gone will be the bridges with their ceaseless stream of passengers plying to and from the town. Gone—alas! will be one of Palma’s most picturesque features.

A cheerful scene greets the eye of the stranger who starts out on a voyage of exploration the morning after his arrival at the Grand Hotel. Facing him, as he emerges into the street, is the Plaza del Mercádo, lying in the shadow of the old hexagonal tower of the church of San Nicolas, and flanked by the great balconied house of the Zafortéza family. If it happen to be a Saturday morning a busy throng is congregated on the square; the ground is strewn with displays of glass and crockery, of coarse green and brown pottery and graceful waterjars, while the sellers of young orange-trees, of toys and jewellery, of cheap rocking chairs and folding trestle bedsteads, vie with one another in attracting the attention of possible purchasers.

“The patio in some houses is merely a plain courtyard enclosed by whitewashed walls, with perhaps a clump of bananas growing in the centre.”

(page 14)

“Long flights of steps lead to the higher part of the town, some broad and shallow, the playground of innumerable boys....”

(page 13)

13Long flights of steps lead to the higher part of the town—some broad and shallow, the playground of innumerable boys; others steep and so narrow that the tall houses almost meet overhead.

The cobbled streets of the oldest and most aristocratic quarters of Palma resemble ravines, and are barely wide enough to admit of the passage of the heavy two-wheeled carts that come lumbering through, scraping either wall with their axles and compelling foot passengers to seek the shelter of the nearest archway. An oriental atmosphere of mystery hangs about the massive, fortress-like walls of the great houses that tower on either side, turning to the outer world a blank and inscrutable face of reserve that offers not the faintest indication of the life existing within. External windows are represented by a few heavily-barred apertures high overhead, but if you chance to find the great nail-studded porte-cochère standing open you are at perfect liberty to go in and look about you.

The universal plan of all the better houses is that inherited from the Arabs—of a patio or open courtyard in the centre of the building, from which a staircase 14ascends to the dwelling rooms on the first floor. In some houses this patio consists of nothing more than a plain courtyard enclosed by whitewashed walls, with perhaps a clump of bananas growing in the centre; but in the palaces inhabited by the nobility and dating back some centuries the courtyard is frequently of great beauty and constitutes the chief architectural feature of the house.

The residence of the Oleza family in the Calle de Moréy has a fine courtyard in Rénaissance style; handsome pillars of red marble support the vaultings of the house, and the gallery that spans the marble staircase rests upon a wide flattened arch bearing the family coat of arms. The ground floor is devoted to stables, coach-house, and domestic offices, and in the court stands that characteristic feature of Moorish and Spanish patios—the well, from which the household draws its water supply. The bucket is lowered from a wrought-iron support in the form of a crozier, and on being brought up brimming its contents are upset into the font-shaped receptacle of stone close by, from which they flow through an orifice into the water jar placed on a slab below.

The palace of the Marquis de Vivot in the Calle Zavella is not as ancient as many another, dating as it does from the beginning of the eighteenth century only, but its patio is the largest in Palma and certainly one of the most beautiful. It is approached by fine portes-cochères and has in the centre a paved space where carriages stand at the foot of the great staircase. From eight beautiful marble columns spring the graceful arches that uphold the house, and in brilliant relief against the black shadows of the recess stands out the clear red of two immense oil-jars containing palms.

“In the court stands that characteristic feature of Moorish and Spanish patios—the well.”

(page 14)

“The patio in the palace of the Marquis de Vivot is one of the most beautiful in Palma....”

(page 14)

15I am not competent to enter into the details of wrought work and sculpture with which the patios of Palma abound, but even to the visitor unversed in architecture a voyage of discovery in the older quarters is full of interest. The meanest back street may produce a richly-carved window frame or a staircase with a stone balustrade of quaint and original design. The Calle de Sol boasts a house front in purest Rénaissance style, five big windows on the first floor being wreathed in gargoyles and strange stone monsters.

In the Calle de la Almudaina we come upon an ancient machicolated archway spanning the street. This once formed part of the wall that encircled the very kernel of the old Moorish city, and is the only survival of the five gateways that afforded entrance to the Citadel.

Not far from here is the equally ancient Moorish Bath, a small building some twenty feet square standing in an orange garden. It is in the Byzantine style, and is built of small bricks scarcely thicker than the intervening layers of mortar. The circular basin which no doubt occupied the floor of the building has disappeared, and the interior contains nothing but twelve much-worn pillars standing in a square, the eight centre ones supporting the cupola of the roof, while the four corner columns are by an ingenious—and I believe very unusual—arrangement 16omitted from the circle and left standing back in the angles of the building.

An air of incredible age pervades this blackened and cobwebbed relic of Islamism that lingers, unaltered and half forgotten, in the very heart of the Christian city. It forms—with the Almudaina arch and the signal tower of Porto Pi—the only authentic memorial of the race which occupied Majorca for a period of five hundred years.

The churches of Palma are many. One of the oldest is that of Monte Sion, which is said to have adopted both the site and the name of a still older Jewish synagogue: as one skirts its walls, huge, blank, and dungeon-like, one is quite unprepared for its exquisite doorway—one of the richest pieces of sculpture in Palma. It is a fine specimen of rococo, dating from 1683, and constituting in its delicacy of detail and beauty of proportion one of the finest of the many beautiful church doors for which Palma is famed.

Scarcely less magnificent is the west front of the great church of San Francisco, with its immense doorway in late Rénaissance style, surmounted by an exquisite rose window. This church contains the tomb of a scion of a noble Catalonian house—the famous Rámon Lull, warrior, scholar, and saint—who in the reign of Jaime II. founded a college for the instruction of twelve monks in oriental tongues, and was himself martyred in Algeria by the infidels whom he went forth to convert. His body was secured by some Genoese fishermen, who set sail for Italy with their precious burden; but when off the coast of Majorca their boat refused to advance till the martyr’s body was brought on shore, where it was laid to rest in its native soil by the monks of San Francisco.

“An air of incredible age pervades this blackened and cobwebbed relic of Islamism....”

(page 16)

“The exquisite doorway of Montesion is one of the richest pieces of sculpture in Palma.”

(page 16)

17The tomb is a beautiful Gothic monument of red marble, but the effigy of Rámon Lull, surrounded by fretted canopies and fantastic heraldic beasts, is only dimly visible in the deep gloom of the church.

A trap door leads down to an immense crypt, where a huddled-up human skeleton is pointed out and the story told of a bloody tragedy enacted in the church in the year 1490. Two of Palma’s greatest families were at deadly feud, and while attending the ceremonies of the Jour des Morts, upon some slight pretext came to blows. The church became a slaughter-house, and before swords were sheathed more than three hundred dead and wounded were left on the field of battle.

Whether the skeleton in the crypt is one of those that fell that memorable day may be doubted; but it is not improbable, for the church and its monastery were founded shortly after the conquest—by monks of the order of St. Francis of Assisi—and were from earliest times one of the chief places of burial for the nobility. The walls of the adjoining cloisters are thick with scutcheons and memorial tablets to those who were once the greatest in the land.

18A beautiful colonnade of slender Gothic pillars encloses the monks’ garden, where two geese—sole occupants of the Paradiso—chatter angrily at the intruder. No other sound but the soft rustlings of palm branches and the whispers of the wind in the orange-trees breaks the silence of the long galleries and deserted cells.

From the upper corridor with its broken pavement chequered with dazzling patches of sunshine one looks out from under the deep overshadowing eaves to where the cathedral spires rise dim and distant across half the city. The atmosphere of infinite peace that pervades these cloisters—the sense of seclusion, although so near the busy life outside the walls—must have appealed deeply to the brown-frocked friars who once paced these beautiful walks “revolving many memories.”

Bitter must have been the day of expulsion when this monastery, like all the others in the island, was suppressed in 1835.

The church of San Nicolas contains a statue of Santa Catalina, a Majorcan saint of great fame, and—incorporated in the outer wall, is the rock on which she was sitting in the bed of the Riéra at the moment when she was informed of her admission into the convent of St. Magdalen. The interiors of these southern churches are so dark that it is with difficulty possible to make out the statues that occupy the side chapels; here may be seen a black Madonna and child of miraculous power; there a group of saints laden with ex-votos in the shape of flat silver images of men and women and models of human limbs, hung upon their arms by grateful devotees; in another niche is a life-sized Christ upon the cross—wearing a fringed crimson petticoat to the knees and a broad silver girdle with a bunch of artificial roses stuck in it, while matted locks of real hair straggle out from beneath the crown of thorns.

“In the ancient monastery of S. Francisco a beautiful colonnade of slender gothic pillars encloses the monks’ garden....”

(page 18)

“From the upper corridor one looks out to where the cathedral spires rise dim and distant across half the city.”

(page 18)

19In the Cathedral the darkness is so intense by contrast with the blinding light outside that it is some considerable time before one’s eyes become sufficiently accustomed to the gloom to perceive the details of the rich interior. The roof of the nave rises 150 feet above the level of the pavement, and is divided from the side aisles by fourteen great columns 70 feet in height, slender and stately as the shafts of forest trees. High overhead—where the delicate ribs of the vaulting cross—are carved the armorial shields of knights, who for this privilege paid heavy sums in bygone days towards the building of the church. Eight chapels, gorgeous with statues and gilding, occupy either side aisle, and above them are Gothic windows—so little suited to this land of fierce light that they have had to be bricked up, with the exception of a few tiny apertures through which the sun shoots golden arrows. The faint light that penetrates the rich rose windows above the choir lies in jewelled stains upon the pavement, and does little to dispel the solemn gloom.

From the dim east end, far away, where wreaths of incense rise and the high altar is outlined in brilliant points of light, comes the distant chanting of priests and the response of choir boys—and suddenly a great 20rush of harmony fills the cathedral as the voice of the organ sinks and swells like a storm-wind among the columns, and dies trembling away in the uttermost recesses of the great building.

Worshippers move to and fro in constant succession; men spread their handkerchiefs upon the stone floor and remain upon their knees in prayer, wholly oblivious of the coming and going around them. Women, dressed in deepest black, kneel motionless at the grilles of the various chapels, where lamps burn with a dull red spark before the image of saint or Saviour. A stately Suisse in wig and gown paces up and down and receives the visitor desirous of seeing the treasures of the sacristy; here are exhibited heavy silver candelabra, embroidered vestments, jewelled crosses, and reliquaries—and in company with these may be seen, bedizened with tawdry velvet and sham ermine, the mummified body of Majorca’s second king, Don Jaime II., who died in the year 1311.

It was in the old church of Santa Eulalia, not far away, that in 1256 a general assembly was called to proclaim this Don Jaime—the second son of the Conqueror—heir to the crown of Majorca, his elder brother’s inheritance being the throne of Aragon, which carried with it a merely nominal suzerainty over the island kingdom. Before long, however, a dispute arose over the terms of allegiance due to the King of Aragon, and in 1285 Don Jaime was dispossessed of his kingdom by Alfonso III. for thirteen years, after which time it was restored to him by the usurper’s son, and retained till his death.

“The patios of Palma abound in sculpture and wrought-iron work....”

(page 15)

“The machicolated archway spanning the street of the Almudaina is the only survival of the five gateways that afforded entrance to the Citadel.”

(page 15)

21He was succeeded by his son Sancho, who died without children, and the crown then passed to his uncle, the fourth son of the Conqueror, and through him to Don Jaime III., the last King of Majorca, who fell upon the field of Lluchmayor in 1349, in a last attempt to regain the crown wrested from him by Pedro IV. of Aragon.

So ended—within little more than a hundred years of its creation—the independent monarchy founded by Jaime the Conqueror, and the islands have from that time been incorporated with the kingdom of Aragon.

In the fine sixteenth-century town hall is preserved a full-length portrait of the Conqueror, which represents him as a grave-faced man with a pointed beard and hair cut square upon the shoulders, robed in crimson mantle, ermine collar, crown, and sword. For many centuries it was the custom to celebrate the anniversary of the capture of Palma by exhibiting this portrait outside the town hall, surmounted by the royal standard of Aragon and surrounded by the portraits of eminent Majorcans.

The town contains innumerable other features of interest, but before leaving this portion of my subject I must not omit a mention of the Lónja—the Exchange—a large building standing near the harbour, and one of the 22first objects to attract the attention of the traveller as he nears the quay. Its keep-like walls and turreted parapets are usually the subject of much admiration, but I must confess that to us the great building seemed too symmetrically square and too conspicuously new to awaken in us any enthusiasm for its exterior.

Severely rectangular it undoubtedly is—but its appearance of newness is misleading, for it dates from the fifteenth century, when it was the custom for Spanish towns to vie with one another in the splendour of their Exchanges; its claim, therefore, to be one of the finest Lónjas in Spain is a legitimate source of pride.

It is said to have been begun in 1409, when the merchants of Palma, having rendered the King of Aragon great aid in the conquest of Sardinia, received permission to levy a tax on all the outgoing and incoming wares of foreigners and pirate persons; and so large was the sum accruing from this protective toll that after applying part of it to the defence of their commerce at sea they devoted the remainder to building this splendid Exchange—a testimony to future generations of the extent and prosperity of Palma’s trade in the Middle Ages.

The interior is extremely striking, containing nine fluted and twisted columns of great height, their delicate groinings spreading in palm-like tracery over the roof. The building has long been disused, and the light that enters as the shutters are flung wide of the great windows looking out to sea discloses nothing but some old paintings upon the walls and a jumble of sculptured fragments piled upon the stone seats that surround the hall.

“The interior of the Lonja—Palma’s ancient Exchange—contains six fluted columns of great height....”

(page 22)

“The great church of S. Francisco has a doorway in late Rénaissance style....”

(page 16)

23It will perhaps be thought strange that a town so comparatively easy of access as Palma, and possessing so much to attract the artist and the antiquarian, should be so little known to the world at large. Yet if we reflect how small a distance from the beaten track will suffice to deflect ninety-nine per cent of the travelling public, it is no subject for wonder that Majorca is still an unknown isle.

A certain number of travellers pass through Palma on their way to and from Algiers, but the island in general is as yet barely aware of the existence of the tourist, and he is quite a recent institution even in Palma itself, where the opening of the Grand Hotel three years ago may be said to have inaugurated a new era.

Viewed in the light of a tourist resort the old town is so far behind the times that she brings me in mind of some old-fashioned châtelaine who with dignity offers her guests of her best, without in any way altering her mode of life to suit the standard of modern requirements. I can recall but two shopkeepers in Palma who knew any language but Spanish, and at the Bank a special clerk is hastily summoned if an Englishman chances to enter the door. An English church—the earliest sign of a recurring visitors’ season—is as yet only represented by a mission-room in the suburb of Santa Catalina, where the 24Church of England service is read every Sunday by a Wesleyan minister.

To the globe-trotter it will come as a surprise to find that he is no longer under the world-wide ægis of Thomas Cook, and that that name by which he has hitherto conjured conveys nothing whatever to a Majorcan official. The foreigner who visits the remoter villages of the interior is still looked upon as something of a curiosity; he will have to drive in native carriages, live on native food, and bid a temporary farewell to that cosmopolitan standard of comfort provided for all who travel the world’s highways. But he will at least be sure of one thing—an unfailing welcome by an island race noted for its charming manners.

I think the courtesy of the natives is one of the first things to strike the new-comer in Palma. Many a time as we rambled about the labyrinthine streets of the town did a Spanish lady come out of her way to ask if she could be of any use in directing us; in any difficulty you may apply without hesitation to one of the common soldiers with which the town swarms, and with all the instinct of a well-bred man he will immediately do his utmost to be of assistance, nor would his own colonel more deeply resent the inference of inferiority conveyed by the offer of a tip.

The bow with which a native gentleman asks you to enter his patio and photograph what you will is only equalled by that of the peasant who rises from table at a wayside cottage to ask the passing stranger to be seated and to share his meal.

25In a country where manners cease to form a distinction between the classes social intercourse becomes easy and natural. A market-woman will enter the democratic tram, dragging with her an unmanageable and overflowing basket, and the gentleman seated next her will without hesitation accept half of it on his knees, hand it after her when she rises, and raise his hat as she turns to thank him. There is neither thought of condescension on his part nor of presumption on hers.

School attendance is not compulsory in Majorca, and many of the peasants with whom we came in contact were wholly illiterate; yet in no instance had the proverbial twopence extra for manners been spared in their education. I remember how when talking to a muleteer we once regretted our inability to speak Spanish more fluently.

“Ah, but the Señora speaks well!” he said quickly; “think how difficult I should find it if it was I who had to learn her language!” And an old man chimed in, “And I, Señora, cannot even write!”

The patois spoken by the peasants is a dialect composed of the old Catalonian tongue alloyed with a strong dash of Provençal French, and it bears very little resemblance to the Spanish of Castile, which became the language of the educated classes after the union of Ferdinand and Isabella. The latter is, however, the tongue taught in the schools, and the stranger who can speak “castelláno” will find himself understood throughout the Balearic Islands, barring by a few of the older and more illiterate peasants.

26The people of Palma are so little accustomed to Spanish-speaking foreigners that some of the shopkeepers cannot be brought to mention the price of an article to their customers, but persist in counting out the required sum into their own hand and exhibiting it in dumb show—to the exasperation of a certain German lady who objected to being “treated like a child.”

The shopping expeditions of more or less speechless tourists must necessarily be productive of many a laughable incident, yet I never saw a native betray the slightest amusement at the mistakes committed; I have indeed had my hand wrung with heartfelt sympathy by a good woman to whom I was struggling to explain myself.

The chief shopping centre for visitors is perhaps the Platería—a narrow street occupied by working silver-smiths—where gold and silver chains are measured off and sold by the palm, and bits of old enamel and peasant jewellery, in the shape of antique pendants and crosses, are displayed in the little windows. Amongst the most fascinating objects are clusters of silver-gilt buttons set with amethyst and garnet, such as are worn by the countrywomen on fête days, and dozens of minute silver charms representing baskets, lanterns, tubs, and other familiar objects, reduced to the scale of a mouse’s belongings; while hanging everywhere, of all sizes and shapes, are the silver chain purses used by every Majorcan, and exported by the thousand—to be sold at double the price by fashionable jewellers in London.

Few foreigners leave Palma without a souvenir in the 27form of a piece of old-fashioned faïence or majolica—the latter an imitation of the Arab lustre ware—manufactured at the neighbouring fabrique, along with the pretty glazed tiles, originally introduced from Valencia, with which the Majorcans face the steps of their staircases. Other local industries include lace-making and embroidery, basket-weaving, the plaiting of complicated string seats and backs to the native chairs, tanning and shoemaking—in which latter branch a large export trade is carried on with South America. Shoes are cheap, and it is quite noticeable how neatly shod the Majorcans of all classes are.

The Majorcans are good workers, and their charges moderate. The scale of wages is low, but so is the cost of living, and it would be difficult to find a more contented and prosperous-looking race than these islanders.

Extreme cleanliness is one of their most salient characteristics; they are noted too for their good looks, and it is indeed rare to find a plain face among them; and this, combined with a sensible, cheerful expression and a natural talent for effective colouring in dress, renders them a remarkably picturesque and attractive people. The country girls still retain the muslin coif, or rebosillo, which once formed the universal female headgear, but in Palma this has given way to a handkerchief worn somewhat far back on the head over beautifully dressed hair.

Scarlet skirts are much in vogue among the working classes, but, on the whole, soft half-tones are preferred to the primary colours, and a crowd of market-women 28presents a gay kaleidoscopic scene in which lemon-yellows, sage-greens, salmon-pinks, brown-reds, and turquoise blues are worn side by side with charming and harmonious effect.

In the early morning the big market-place in the upper town is the rendezvous of countless housewives, bargaining busily, basket on arm, for the day’s provisions. Under the long arcades bordering the cobbled square are installed the sellers of fruit and vegetables, with plaited ropes of garlic, pans of fresh olives, strings of scarlet capsicums and bitter tomatoes, hampers of newly picked oranges, bunches of pale Majorcan dates and still paler bananas, and masses of figs turned out en bloc from big rush baskets lined with leaves. A neighbouring booth supplies flat fig cakes stuffed with almonds and aniseed, and slices of dark red Carne de Membrillo—an excellent quince preserve, in consistency like damson cheese.

From the fish market, where the morning’s catch is displayed upon marble slabs, rises a very babel of voices. Loud and shrill is the clamour of the fishwives as they detain the passer-by with a scaly hand, and seek to repair the mischief with a no less scaly apron. Crabs and lobsters lie sprawling upon their backs, and wave stemmy legs amongst marine creatures never seen upon a hotel table—giant shell-fish, octopuses lying in knotted heaps, jelly-like squids, ugly thorny monsters who are all head, and gorgeous little fishes coloured like macaws—scarlet, blue, yellow, or glittering with metallic greens and reds.

“The country girls still retain the pretty muslin coif or rébosillo....”

(page 27)

“These dogs can boast a longer pedigree than any dogs under the sun, for they are descended from the hunting dogs of the old Egyptians....”

(page 29)

29By midday all will have been sold, and the market square given up to tall, cadaverous-looking dogs that saunter round the deserted stalls and pick up what fragments remain. Gaunt, listless, and apparently starving, these dogs of Palma attract the attention of every new-comer; and thanks to a fellow-guest at the Grand Hotel, our own interest in them was specially aroused. This Swiss scientist had come to Majorca to study the domestic animals of the island, and the result of his researches had proved a theory he had long held—that somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean would be found descendants of the dogs of ancient Egypt.

This island breed, known locally as Iviza dogs—but dubbed by the unappreciative foreigner “degenerate greyhounds” and “pariahs”—can boast a longer pedigree than any dogs under the sun, for they are descended from the much-prized hunting dogs of the old Egyptians. Introduced ages ago by Greek or Phœnician colonists, they are now peculiar to the Balearics, where they are found in great numbers.

They are the size of a large greyhound, with smooth coats usually yellow and white. Nothing will fatten them: the pampered favourite of a great house is as lean as his scavenging confrère of the market-place, and, like him, he wears a look of melancholy weariness not unfitting 30an old, old race that has existed since the dawn of history. The chief characteristic of the breed is their long, pointed ears, which when pricked stand stiffly erect, and never droop as do those of the somewhat similar hounds imported from Algeria and Morocco. These ears, with the long, narrow muzzle, give the dogs a striking resemblance to the jackal-headed god Anubis of Egyptian sculpture.

They are mild, timid creatures, quite useless as watchdogs, but popular as pets, and—like their original ancestors—much valued for purposes of the chase. Landowners keep them for coursing hares and rabbits, of which they catch extraordinary quantities; and so devoted are the dogs to this sport that those belonging to peasants on large estates have frequently to be hobbled, and are seen wearing steel bracelets on their fore and hind leg, connected with a light chain.

Another interesting relic of a bygone race is seen in the survival in the Balearics—so our Swiss professor pointed out—of the Greek type of horse familiar to travellers who have seen the statues of Balbus—père et fils—in the Naples Museum. These animals are not very common, but here and there one comes across a horse differing utterly from the prevailing Andalusian type. Round and compact, often black in colour, and with stiff mane and tail, these horses have a remarkably arched crest and a slightly convex outline of nose—the profile of head and neck being represented rather by the segment of a circle than by the right angle formed at the 31apex of the skull by the lines of the slender Spanish horse.

Mules are largely used in the Balearics, Majorca being especially celebrated for its breed. They are big, handsome animals, unusually docile, owing to the gentle treatment they receive, and a good pair of carriage mules is more sought after and more valuable than is a pair of the best Continental horses. Nearly all the carriages of the Palma gentry are drawn by fast-trotting mules, and towards evening a perfect procession of galarétas wends its way westward along the sea road, each with its match pair of strong, sure-footed beasts that make nothing of the hills to be encountered.

Half an hour’s drive along this road brings one to the wooded knoll beyond Santa Catalina, on which stands the old castle of Bellver, a well-preserved thirteenth-century fortress, whose yellow walls rise above the surrounding pines, foursquare and stately. In olden days it was used as a residence by the Kings of Majorca—in later times it served as a state prison—and now it stands empty, the last use it was put to having been as an astronomical station for the English expedition which went out to Palma in 1905 to observe the solar eclipse. From the grounds round the castle a most lovely view of the town is obtained through the pine-trees, and it is amongst these woods that a new hotel is now being 32built, to be opened this year under the name of Hotel Victoria. It will be under the same management as the Grand Hotel in Palma, and being connected with the town by a service of trams it will no doubt prove extremely popular with visitors who prefer life amid country surroundings.

A mile or so beyond Bellver we come to the little harbour of Porto Pi, the mouth of the creek guarded by an old Moorish signal tower, now converted into a lighthouse, though still used for signalling purposes.

It is not till we get beyond Porto Pi that we reach the real country and find ourselves amongst olives and asphodel; and here the Spanish ladies descend from their carriages and stroll bareheaded along the road—the only form of exercise in which they indulge. The Majorcan roads are upon the whole very good, though dusty in dry weather; and they are kept in far better repair than one would be led to expect from watching the leisurely procedure of the Péon caminéro, who brings stones and earth upon the scene in small basketfuls, moistens them with a watering-pot, and stamps them in patiently with a small rammer. When, however, he has occasion to spread road metal in greater quantities he takes a high hand with the public, and procuring large boulders he arranges them on alternate sides of the road, so as to compel passing vehicles to drive over the fresh stone; he is considerate enough to remove these stumbling-blocks at nightfall, but it is a ludicrous sight to see a whole string of smart carriages twisting in and out of these obstacles as if in a driving competition, in obedience to the arbitrary behest of the road-maker.

“The Castle of Bellver is a thirteenth century fortress, and has a circular patio with an upper and lower colonnade.”

(page 31)

“At the château of Raxa the grounds are laid out in Italian fashion, with orange and cypress terraces, and splendid flights of marble steps.”

(page 35)

33The almost universal type of native carriage is the galaréta, a light-running covered vehicle, in appearance not unlike a baker’s cart on four wheels. The hinder part is entered from the rear, and is seated like a wagonette; there is a window on either side, and another dividing it from the broad hooded seat in front on which the driver sits.

To the foreigner these covered carriages appear intensely uncomfortable; if he be above the medium height his head comes in irritating contact with the roof; he can see hardly anything of the landscape from the windows, and he never ceases to marvel at the natives who can pack themselves in incredible numbers into one of these little-eases and emerge unruffled and cheerful at the end of a long drive. Yet it must be admitted that in its own country the galaréta possesses several distinct advantages over the open carriage; its occupants are indifferent to sun and rain, and can protect themselves from both dust and wind; on the hottest summer’s day a draught can be created by lowering the glasses and drawing the Venetian shutters with which each window is fitted, while upon the homeward drive the chilly night air can be as easily excluded.

Like all Southerners the Majorcans dread the change of temperature that takes place at sundown, and towards evening they wrap themselves in cloaks and mufflers, while the fearless foreigner sits out on a terrace to 34enjoy the sunset and is extremely indignant at waking next morning with a sore throat.

In a land where the new-born year is so amazingly precocious it is difficult to remember that in England he is still in his white swaddling clothes; by the end of January the plain around Palma is decked with miles of almond orchards in full bloom, their faint scent filling the air and their laden branches covering the country with billowy white masses. The wind has forestalled the date of the Carnival, and his last night’s Battle of Flowers has flung deep drifts of snowy confetti upon the sprouting wheat beneath the trees. But there are still snow-caps on the blue hills away to the north, and a sudden rattling storm of hail reminds us that even in Majorca Spring is not yet fully enthroned.

By February a vast expanse of young wheat has clothed the land in a garment of the crudest Pre-Raphaelite green—almost startling in its intensity when seen in contrast with sea or sky.

By the first week in March new potatoes and green peas are in the market, the orchards are knee-deep in beans, and the whole island is fragrant with bean blossom. In the carob groves—where the knotted trunks and twisted limbs of the old trees cast strange shadows on the swaying corn—are purple anemones, pink gladiolus, and a blue shimmer of honey-scented grape-hyacinths.

The long days of unbroken sunshine are now devoted to excursions into the surrounding country, and visitors 35begin to leave the town in which they have wintered and to roam further afield.

A favourite drive is to the neighbouring Château of Raxa, a country seat belonging to the Count of Montenegro, where the grounds are laid out in Italian fashion with orange and cypress terraces, stone vases and statues, and splendid flights of marble steps. Roses, violets, freesias, and heliotrope were in full bloom in the gardens on March 3rd, and the women engaged on the orange harvest handed down to us branches heavy with fragrant golden fruit. Oranges are nothing accounted of in Majorca, and lemons are looked upon as so far below all price that they are given one for the asking, any idea of payment being vigorously scouted.

The road to Raxa runs for many miles through a red plain given up to olive culture; whether it is the soil of Majorca that is responsible for the extraordinary grotesqueness of the olive-trees I cannot say, but they resemble nothing I have ever seen in other lands. Stretching away in quaint perspective on either hand are distorted grey forms suggestive of an enchanted forest; many of the old trees stand on a kind of tripod formed by the splitting and shrinking of their own trunk; here a hoary veteran of many centuries has wound himself into an excellent imitation of a corkscrew; a group of twisted crones appears to gossip together with uplifted hands, while two sprawling wrestlers are locked as in a death-struggle in each other’s arms. Here squats a gnarled mass like nothing so much as a gigantic toad; 36there a boa-constrictor twines itself in folds about its prey, and an antediluvian monster stoops to examine with interest the strange human insect that has adventured itself within reach.

So endless are the variations of form assumed by these extraordinary trees, so fascinating is each fresh discovery, that one wanders on and on, like children in a bewitched wood, and a determined effort of will is required to tear oneself away from such a scene and return to the carriage awaiting one on the prosaic high-road.

The same weird olive groves will be found on the way to Alaró, a small inland town lying at the foot of the mountains, near which are the ruins of the castle—famous in Majorcan history—which one morning in March we set out by rail to visit.

Majorcan trains are not fashionable in their hours, and it was little after daybreak that we steamed out of the Palma station and glided away through richly cultivated fields of beans and wheat, where pleasant homesteads stood embowered in almond orchards and fat yellow lemons bobbed over the garden walls. As the line approaches the mountains the country becomes wilder and more open; vast undulating expanses of stony red ground are being slowly ploughed by mule teams, and miles upon miles of fig-trees cast a white shimmer over the plain—their leafless branches so pale as in the distance to resemble blossoming orchards. The dark glistening green of carob groves contrasts vividly with the feathery grey of the olive, and as a background to the scene a dark belt of pine-trees crowns the red slope and stands out in brilliant relief against the indigo blue ranges of the Sierra.

“... an antediluvian monster stoops to examine the strange human insect that has adventured itself within reach.”

(page 36)

“One enters the precincts of the old fortress of Alaró through a Moorish gate-tower with a curious double archway....”

(page 38)

37Within an hour we descend at Consell and change to the branch line forming the connection with Alaró; a small tram was awaiting us outside the station, and this proved to be the branch line. No road was in sight, but the tram lines vanished into an endless perspective of beanfields, and through these we were slowly drawn by two horses harnessed tandem fashion. Our only fellow-travellers in the tiny front compartment—reserved for the rich who could afford to pay threepence—were a couple of buxom market-women, most deeply interested in our appearance.

Quaint things happen so easily in Majorca that we were not much surprised on reaching Alaró when the tram conductor got down, shouldered our camera and the heavy luncheon basket, and without a word marched away towards the village inn as though it were his business in life to conduct strange ladies there. Setting rocking chairs for us among the wine barrels, he lit a cigar and proceeded to assist in the saddling of the two donkeys that had been ordered overnight for our ascent to the castle of Alaró. One was a riding donkey for my companion, the other a pack animal to carry our impedimenta, its pack saddle being furnished with panniers and 38fitted with the native breeching strap—a wooden contrivance shaped like a Cupid’s bow, which fits across the donkey’s hind legs and rubs off all the hair.

Away we started in brilliant sunshine with an old man and a boy in attendance, and turning into a narrow track between stone walls we followed a babbling torrent through carob and orange gardens and began to wind up the hillside by a steep zigzag path. Innumerable sheep-bells tinkled among the olive yards, and the voice of a herdsman rang out in a Gregorian chant from far up the heights where he tended his goats among holm oak and pine. Sheer above us towered the perpendicular red scarp of the cliff on which the castle stands, a small white speck upon its edge the Hospedéria of the summit.

A couple of hours’ stiff climb brings one to the back of the cliff, and scaling a rough rock staircase one enters the precincts of the old fortress through a Moorish gate tower with a curious double archway—the outer arch being round-headed and the inner one pointed.

Like a great wedge of cheese with straight cut sides does the cliff of Alaró stand out into the plain; its perpendicular front rises sheer in a terrific precipice, its only approach a steep ascent commanded by a fortified tower. Small need to be told that by assault the castle was impregnable; but it was subdued by siege and starvation in 1285, when Alfonso the Beneficent of Aragon warred with Jaime II. of Majorca. What followed the surrender of Alaró is known to every Majorcan; the Conqueror, exasperated by the vain but most gallant defence of the castle, had its two governors burnt alive at the stake in the presence of his whole army.

“Many of the old olive trees stand on a kind of tripod formed by the splitting and shrinking of their own trunk.”

(page 35)

“... running a nightmare race with each foot rooted to the ground.”

(page 35)

39So perished the heroes Cabrit and Bassa, leaving their names to be handed down through the centuries as the names of men who died loyal to their king at a time when the greater part of the island had gone over to the usurper.

When Majorca again came into the hands of the legitimate line the ashes of the canonised heroes were placed in an urn and deposited beneath an altar in Palma Cathedral, where they remain to this day; and every succeeding generation hears from childhood up the stirring tale of how the two patriots fought and how they died.

The little oratory of Our Lady of Refuge stands upon the summit of the cliff, and no doubt originated as the chapel of the fortress. Subsequently it became a renowned sanctuary, and attached to it, as is usual in Majorca, is a small hospéderia, or hostelry, where pilgrims and visitors can obtain a night’s shelter. The view from this point is worth coming far to see; unrolled like a map at one’s feet, far, far below, is the great southern plain, from the Bay of Palma on the west, where the dark mass of the cathedral still shows just visible above the faint haze enveloping the city, to the glittering Bay of Alcúdia upon the far east coast. All the cities of the plain—Inca, Benisalém, La Puebla, Múro, and Lluchmayór, lie outspread before us. Behind us, range upon range, are the wooded slopes of the Sierra, the topmost peaks still crowned with snow; threads of quicksilver flash down the mountainsides, and valley, plain, and hill alike are 40enveloped in a grey sea of olive-trees, dwarfed by distance to the semblance of lavender bushes.

Some idea of the height of the rock on which we stand is obtained by dropping a stone over the edge; peering over the abyss as we lay full length on the ground we launched a small boulder into space, and, watch in hand, timed its descent.

“One, two, three,” the seconds ticked away, and still the stone fell, though to our eyes it appeared already to have reached the olive groves; “four, five, six,” and not till now did a dull crash come up from below to tell us that the stone was at its journey’s end. We arose cautiously and walked back along the very centre of the cliff, feeling in every nerve that were we to stumble nothing could save us from covering fully thirty feet in our fall and disappearing over the edge of the precipice.

Rejoining our donkeys, we set off on our downward ride. Midway we were overtaken by a party of boisterous young men who tore down the mountainside laughing and shouting, gave us a breathless good-day in passing, and vanished with giant strides down a precipitous shortcut, apparently intent on breaking their necks. We looked on aghast, but our guides evidently considered it no abnormal way of descending a mountain.

“Going downhill no one is old,” says the island proverb reassuringly; no doubt the subsequent stiffness of our own knees was the result of not having gone down sufficiently fast.

41The Palma carnival differs so greatly from that function as celebrated on the Riviera as to be worthy of mention. There the tourist element and its accompanying ostentation of wealth are the most conspicuous features of the performance. Here, in Palma, all this is wholly lacking, and the carnival has retained its native character to a truly refreshing degree. It is essentially a people’s festival, with hardly a foreigner present.

From three o’clock in the afternoon till late at night the whole town is en fête; all the shops are shut, and the shop people sit in merry groups before their doors; the balconies overlooking the Borne are crowded, and the wide Borne itself is a seething throng of people on foot sauntering up and down, and chaffing one another in high good-humour.

The troops—of which five or six thousand are quartered at Palma—send a large contingent to the crowd of holiday-makers; infantrymen in long, blue coats, crimson trousers, and bright green gloves, mingle with pretty girls in kerchief and rebosillo, whose hair is powdered thick with coloured confetti. Here is an old peasant, come in from the country, wearing under his hat a handkerchief wound round his head in the style of his Catalonian ancestors; his wife has donned her gayest shawl, and has brought the baby, who chuckles with delight at the festive scene and wears a funny little straw hat shaped like a Saracen turban trimmed with scarlet pompoms.

Tiny maidens of four and five are costumed as grand 42ladies, and walk about, quaintly dignified, with proudly trailing train and flaunting fan, in rich brocade skirts and velvet bodices, with long, white gloves, and hair elaborately dressed with flowers and high tortoise-shell combs. A party of Arabs, draped in white sheets and armed with spears, lead about an unfortunate comrade disguised as a dancing bear, who is vigorously kept up to his part throughout the day; and small boys, dressed as Pierrots, or rejoicing simply in the disguise afforded by a pasteboard nose and a high falsetto voice, caper unrestrained through the crowd.

Towards evening a couple of hundred carriages turn out into the streets; galarétas, landaus, dogcarts, and wagons form into line and follow each other in slow procession round and round the Borne. The smart barouche and pair of the Captain-General is preceded by a humble donkey-cart, and followed by a heavy country charrette overflowing with clowns. Every one is dressed according to taste, and every one is free to throw things at every one else. The imperturbably correct coachman of a stylish turn-out gets hit on the nose by an egg-shell stuffed with confetti; the gentleman seated beside him—who wears a mask and an amazing tow-wig—replies with a well-directed volley, and a furious fusillade ensues, the enemy coming up to the very windows of the galarétas to pour in a deadly fire among the occupants.

Mounted officers, armed with paper rockets, do battle with the people in the balconies, who, in return, hail down missiles and torrents of confetti upon their 43assailants. Eggshells fly in showers from carriage to carriage, smashing upon any head they meet with. On the wide Place Weyler the confetti lie so thick that the square resembles some cathedral floor—tinted by stained glass windows, and the carriages and horses are so tangled up in coloured streamers that they appear to have broken through a great rainbow spider’s web and carried it bodily away with them.

By eight o’clock the Carnival is a thing of the past, and the gay, good-humoured crowd is in full retreat, thoroughly tired out.

And at midnight the stars look down upon a sleeping city, whose stillness is only broken by the sonorous chant of the watchmen going their rounds with lantern and staff. The familiar cry—so associated with Palma—again rings out beneath our windows:—

Although it falls to the lot of few of us to remain as sublimely unconscious of geography as was Charles Lamb—who asserts that though he held a correspondence with a very dear friend in New South Wales he was unable to form the remotest conjecture as to the position of that Terra Incognita—yet I think I may safely assume that not many of my readers are familiar with the geography of Majorca, and a glance at the sketch-map given in this volume may be of service in acquainting them with the principal places of interest in the island.

The fact which perhaps chiefly strikes one is the miniature scale of distances. Just as the mouse occupies the same space on the page of a book on natural history as does the elephant, so does Majorca appear in its own particular map to be as large as Ceylon; and it gives one repeated shocks of surprise to find that what looks like a day’s journey is a matter of two hours by rail, or a morning’s carriage drive. There are half a dozen excursions 45which visitors to the island rarely fail to make; one is to Sollér, only a day’s expedition by carriage from Palma—though, as it possesses a comfortable little hotel and is in the midst of beautiful scenery, it is a favourite place for a lengthened stay. The old towns of Pollensa and Alcúdia upon the east coast attract a certain number of foreigners every season; and the fame of Arta’s stalactite caves draws thither a large number of sightseers, being easy of reach from the railhead at Manacór.

But with these exceptions the interior of Majorca enjoys an almost perpetual immunity from tourists, most of whom are far from enterprising.

It was to Arta that we ourselves were bound when we quitted Palma on March 12th, but having plenty of time before us, and being fond of driving tours, open air, and scenery, we decided to do the whole journey by road, and to spend as many nights en route as we found desirable. Our carriage was one of the hotel victorias, drawn by an excellent pair of little grey horses; our luggage was of the most modest description, consisting of two of those feather-weight valises, made of brown cardboard, that can be bought for a few shillings in most Continental towns, and that belie their frail appearance by resisting ill-usage to an almost incredible degree. Our driver was a friendly and reliable native, who in all the years he had driven hotel carriages had never been asked to conduct anybody across the island. It was indeed an unheard-of thing to do. Was not the railway there to take people to Arta? and was it not well known that the southern 46districts of the island contained nothing that could be of any possible interest to any one? However, it was no affair of his if English ladies were eccentric; his not to question why. Their motives might be inscrutable, but he was there to carry out their wishes, whether wise or foolish.

No June morning could have been more glorious than the one on which we left the Grand Hotel, and, rattling over the cobbles down to the harbour, struck out southwards towards Lluchmayór. For a couple of hours we crossed a great plain, carefully tilled and tended. In the orange gardens the golden crop was being gathered by peasants mounted on easel-shaped ladders. Stretches of corn and beans alternated with extensive fig orchards, which in July supply a harvest so bounteous that even the pigs fare sumptuously upon the fruit. Thick as faggots of dead wood were the leafless branches of the old trees—their elbows stuck out at an aggressive angle as though resenting the proximity of their somewhat heathenish-looking neighbour, the prickly pear, which in Majorca is termed the “Moorish fig,” as opposed to the “Christian fig” of cultivation.

Standing up above the level of the orchards, and extending over the plain in numbers that suggest an immense pyrotechnic display in preparation, are countless wind wheels, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, furnished with a tail to keep their heads to the wind, and with sets of wooden slats that furl and unfurl like a fan, according to the strength of the breeze. Raised upon stone platforms and spinning round rapidly, these wheels are engaged in raising water from wells and pumping it into the great reservoirs that in summer supply the irrigation aqueducts intersecting the fields.

“... countless windwheels, twenty feet or more in diameter, engaged in raising water from wells....”

(page 46)

“On some of the hills windmills are massed in a gregarious manner characteristic of Majorca....”

(page 51)

47At noon we reached Lluchmayór, and after lunching at the inn we visited the great high-backed church that prides itself on being the largest in the island outside Palma. It was deserted save for the presence of three old charwomen, who alternately chatted and laughed or piously mumbled Ave Marias and Pater nosters as they plied their flappers about the pulpit and the quaint old pews, resembling settees, with curved backs and deep seats inlaid with scenes in coloured woods. A wax figure of Santa Candida in a glass case, and some marvellous embroideries with inch-deep scrolls of gold thread set with precious stones, are amongst the most treasured possessions of this church.

On again, through Campos, whence we look back to catch a last glimpse of the Palma Cathedral—far away across the plain; and the evening shadows are lengthening fast as we drive into Santagný, where we are to spend the night.

Santagný is the southernmost town in Majorca, and as such suffered sorely in bygone time from the Algerian and Moroccan pirates who infested the neighbouring islet of Cabréra. In the sixteenth century the town was encircled with walls, to prevent the repetition of a raid that devastated the whole countryside and forced the inhabitants to fly for safety to the interior of the island. 48But centuries of safety have razed the fortifications more surely than any piratical attack, and one massive gateway—standing in the market-place—alone remains to testify to the dangers run by the townspeople in olden days.

The fonda, or inn, at Santagný proved to be one of those truly primitive establishments that cause one to ponder the eternal question as to which comes first—the tourist or the inn. The problem regarding the hen and the egg is itself not more elusive than the vicious circle in which one becomes involved when dwelling on this subject. It is highly improbable that the accommodation at Santagný will undergo any improvement until visitors have shown some sign of wishing to come to the town; it is equally improbable that visitors will show any signs of wishing to come to Santagný until the accommodation has been improved.

I must admit that the supper passed off in comparative style. We sat in a small, whitewashed room downstairs—our driver and a soldier also supping there at another table—and in place of the bell of conventionality we clapped our hands between the courses, which consisted of an excellent omelette, a dish of meat and rice, and oranges sliced with sugar. Our hostess’s attentions were somewhat spasmodic owing to the periodical raids she made on certain small boys whose noses were flattened on the window-pane, and at whom she dashed out very suddenly—belabouring such as came under her hand with a large market basket. In the outer room a guitar was 49being strummed, and the voices of the men sitting drinking there broke out now and then in a resonant chorus. All this was very nice and native; but when we went upstairs to our bedrooms it was still very native—only not so nice.

Three small and stuffy cubicles opened off the landing at the head of the stairs; the only one that obtained any light or air was the end one, which had a small window in the outer wall of the house, but—as if to compensate for this advantage—it lacked a door, the privacy of its occupant being dependant upon a flimsy curtain that fluttered airily to and fro in the doorway. Each cubicle contained a bed, a chair, and a straw mat on the floor; and outside, on the landing, stood one small washstand, with a set of toilet appliances destined to be shared by all the occupants of the bedrooms. That the centre room was already engaged was evident from an unmistakably masculine snore that proceeded from it. Horses munched loudly in a stall below, and the petulant voices of dreaming pigs rose to the skies from an adjoining farmyard. Even our driver—who never considered his duties at an end until he had personally inspected our sleeping quarters for the night—expressed disapproval at the prospect, although his sympathetic shrugs plainly intimated that as we had made our beds so must we lie upon them. I speak figuratively, for as a matter of fact our beds were not made at all, though we had been more than two hours in the house.

Amidst such unpromising surroundings did we eventually retire for the night, waking to find that our 50neighbour of the middle room had most opportunely taken himself off in the small hours of the morning, leaving us in sole possession of the washstand, so that our toilet was accomplished in comparative safety, and with no other interruption than the sudden appearance of our hostess on her way upstairs to fetch a sausage from the attic. It is but fair to say that this was the only fonda we met with in the whole of our wanderings that was so primitive in its arrangements.

On going down to breakfast our hostess presents us each with a thick tumbler containing a species of strong, brown broth, very nourishing, I should suppose, for an invalid; swelling with pride, she reveals the fact that the strange beverage we are drinking is tea—and it is doubtless on the strength of this compliment to our nationality that she presently tenders us a bill for fourteen pesetas—ten shillings and sixpence—a sum not overwhelming in itself, but absurdly high according to the standard of charges current in Majorcan inns.

Five pesetas—four shillings—a day for each person is the recognised charge for board and lodging at all the best fondas in Majorca. At a little hotel, such as that of Sollér or Alcúdia, one’s pension may run as high as six or even seven and a half pesetas; but these are the outside prices; and one’s driver’s food—for which one is expected to pay while on tour—should never exceed two pesetas a day.

At small native inns an arrangement as to terms should always be made on arrival. Particularly is this the case 51in out-of-the-way villages where strangers are rarely seen, and where the innkeeper will occasionally endeavour to make a profit out of all proportion to the accommodation provided for his guests. This sharp dealing is so little in keeping with the character of the average Majorcan that I can only explain it by quoting the people’s own saying, to the effect that there is not room for honour and profit in the same pocket. I think that the opportunity offered of enriching themselves easily at the expense of well-to-do foreigners proves too great a temptation for certain fondistas who have lost the finer feelings possessed by their compatriots not engaged in trade.

Quitting Santagný we drove on to Felanitx, a pretty little town surrounded by low hills whose crests are occupied by many windmills frantically waving their arms on the sky line. Windmills are everywhere. Some stand singly upon barrow-like mounds crowned with cactus tangles, others are massed upon ridges in the gregarious manner characteristic of Majorcan corn mills. All have either six or eight sails, which gives them a very full-bodied appearance; and some are furnished with tail feathers, and resemble large dragon-flies that have interrupted their whirring flight to settle for an instant with outspread gauzy wings upon a little tower of dazzling whiteness. An old miller leans out of a little upper window in one of the mills, filling it up so completely that we wonder if he will ever get back again.

“Buena vista!” we call up to him as he watches us from his lofty perch.

52“Ah, yes!” he replies, looking far out over the sunny landscape, “from here one sees all the world!”

It is in truth a very lovely world upon which he looks down this bright March morning. The almond orchards are streaming down the hill slopes and invading the town in torrents of young spring verdure; the houses are screwing up their eyes in the sunshine, even the tiniest windows being half built up with slabs of freestone, while many are closed entirely. Old women sit at their doorways plaiting and spinning, and greet us cheerfully as we pass, and leaving the town we take a pretty road through pine and heath, almond and olive, arbutus and carob, and set out to visit the old castle of Santuíri. Within half an hour of our destination the carriage halts, and a rocky goat-path leads us to the summit of the crag upon which the ruins stand.

Santuíri was one of the great mediæval burgs of Majorca, and is in far better preservation than either of its fellows of Alaró or Pollensa. In the fifteenth century its walls were strengthened against an expected attack of the Moors, and much of these defences still remains.

Proud, and most desolate, is this old sentinel of the southern coast. Buzzards hang in mid-air beneath the battlements—brown specks against the dim blue plain below; sheep graze amongst spurge and St. John’s wort on the grassy knolls within the fortress. The old gray walls are trimmed with golden patches of coronilla and crowned with a chevaux-de-frise of bristling aloe spikes. A narrow path cut in the face of the crag, and unprotected by any parapet, leads to the machicolated gate tower; above your head there are slits for boiling oil, and at your back is sudden death in the shape of a precipice, with nothing to break your fall but the fixed bayonets of some huge aloes rooted in the crevices of the cliff below. Assuredly it was well to be on good terms with its lord when craving admittance to the Castle of Santuíri.

“All the windmills have either six or eight sails, and some are furnished with tail-feathers.”

(page 51)

“Santuiri was one of the great mediæval burgs of Majorca, and is in better preservation than either of its fellows of Alaró or Pollensa.”

(page 52)

53A twin height across a little valley is occupied by the Oratorio of San Salvadór—the shrine of a wonder-working Madonna whose fame dates from the Middle Ages, and who is visited annually by thousands of pilgrims from all parts of the island.

To this shrine we ascended in the afternoon, the latter part of the route being a steep hillside, clothed with prickly pear and a sweet-smelling dwarf gorse, up which we slowly toiled on foot, the zigzag path marked out with twelve stations of the Cross, depicted in faïence tiles upon freestone pillars. Attached to the Oratorio upon the summit is a large hospedéria containing some forty bedrooms, built for the reception of pilgrims; the four brown-frocked friars who minister to the wants of visitors were busily engaged in sawing timber in the entrance-hall amidst a litter of fresh shavings, and one of them interrupted his work to take us into the adjoining chapel. In pitch darkness we groped our way to a niche at the back of the high altar, and were shown by the light of a match a little old stone statue—the Blessed Virgin of San Salvadór—only second in power to Our Lady of Lluch.

A special room is set aside for the votive offerings 54presented to her: the walls are thickly hung with uniforms, children’s garments, and bridal gowns; there are toys and medals, and stacks of crutches; there are rows of photographs of the Virgin’s protégés, who attribute their escape from accident and illness to her shielding power; there are crude childish representations of fires, shipwrecks, thunderbolts, runaway horses, and all the perils that humanity is heir to. Some of the ex-votos date from the attack of the Moors in 1737; others come from far countries—such as the one “promised to Our Lady in the fire of Santiago.”

One of the most pathetic offerings that I saw at another Majorcan shrine was a thick plait of long black hair—“promised to Our Lady” on such and such a date, doubtless by some soul in sore need. The belief in miraculous intervention as an answer to personal sacrifice is deeply ingrained in the islanders, and is, I should imagine, a source of much consolation to them.

After buying a few rosaries and ribbons bearing the name of Our Lady of San Salvadór we walked to the end of a hill-spur where stone seats invite the wayfarer to rest before beginning the steep descent. The sun was setting, and the scene before us recalled some Egyptian evening in its strength of colouring; far beneath us lay the great dim plain with its white towns, wrapped in the violet mists of sunset and melting away into the transparent blues and purples of the distant sierra. The roofs and walls of the Oratorio and the pine-trees upon the hilltop stood out in inky relief against a sky stained with orange and crimson, fiery lake and scarlet; the clouds were black, glowing coals backed with gold—the whole heavens were aflame in conflagration.

“The old grey walls of Santuiri are trimmed with golden patches of coronilla and crowned with a chevaux de frise of bristling aloe spikes.”

(page 52)

“Far beneath us lay the great plain, wrapped in the violet mists of evening.... The Oratorio de San Salvador will for ever be associated with the most beautiful sunset we ever witnessed in Majorca.”

(page 54)

55Long after the glory had faded away a pure, brilliant glow illuminated the sky and lighted us on our homeward way, and we returned to Felanitx with the memory of San Salvadór for ever associated in our minds with the most beautiful sunset we ever saw in Majorca.

On March 15th we left Felanitx and continued our journey across the great southern plain. The road to Manacór runs along a low ridge and commands extensive views on either hand; asphodels fringed the wayside, and every patch of waste ground displayed the Spanish colours in gay yellow daisies and a tiny scarlet ranunculus, the Adonis vernalis. The weather was glorious; a shower during the night had laid the dust and cleared the air, and blue cloud-shadows chased merrily across the landscape.

“Bon dia tengan!” comes in cheerful greeting from the fields where groups of peasant women, in big straw hats, ply their hoes among the wheat. When they found we wished to take a photograph of them their amusement was unbounded, and their merry laughter was quite infectious.

Unceasing is the care of the crops, and unremitting is the labour bestowed upon the land before it assumes that market-garden-like neatness that is the ideal of the 56Majorcan peasant. Centuries of cultivation have converted much of the land into rich, productive soil, but a glance at a recently reclaimed field shows one the difficulties with which the original cultivator has to contend, difficulties that would surely daunt a less stout-hearted race. Slabs of bed-rock and countless myriads of loose stones cover the surface of the ground: by blasting and patient excavation a certain proportion of these are removed, and the intervening patches of earth are dug by hand, the first harvest being represented by a scanty crop of wheat sprouting in the interstices of the rock paving. The second or third year it will perhaps be possible to drive a narrow sharp-pointed ploughshare between the stones, lifting it briskly out of the ground when the shaft mule is brought up with a jerk by a more than usually stubborn boulder. Each year hundreds of tons of loose stone are collected and disposed of in one way or another; some are stacked in cairns among the crops and go by the name of clápers; others are carried with infinite toil to the boundaries of the field and built into a dry wall a yard or more thick—coped with the masses of rock that work up through the soil almost as quickly as they are removed from the surface; others again are thrown into great stone reservoirs built for the purpose and filled to the brim with blocks big and little. Gradually the plague of stones begins to abate. What one generation has begun, a future one will accomplish, and eventually the land will assume the appearance of a rich alluvial plain, and Dame Nature will put on as benevolent a smile as though she had 57proposed from the very first to bountifully reward the industrious peasant.

But always there will be miles upon miles of beautifully built stone walls to tell a different tale. Truly may it be said of the Majorcans, as of their Catalonian forefathers—that from stones they produce bread.

All the morning we drove, and by noon we had passed the town of Manacór and were descending towards the sea through a silent, sun-steeped land of rock and asphodel. Asphodels surrounded us for miles, their starry sceptres swaying in the wind and shining like silver where the sunlight struck through them. It is strange that no southern artist has painted us a Madonna of the Asphodels.

Down by the seashore stands a small group of freestone houses called the Port of Manacór, and after lunching at the fonda we set off on foot to visit the famous stalactite caves close by. There is nothing in the surface of the surrounding country to suggest the existence of vast subterranean caverns; the guide simply leads the way across the wide moor to a walled enclosure, where, half concealed by boulders and scrub, a flight of rock steps leads down to the Cuevas del Drach—the Dragon Caves of Manacór.

Armed with acetylene lanterns we descend, and plunge into a perfect labyrinth of halls and passages; some of the scenes are very beautiful; there are “cascades of diamonds”—frozen falls that sparkle like hoar frost in the sun—and wonderful statuesque formations under 58fretted canopies fringed with glittering icicles; there are myriads of stalactites hanging from the roof, some snow-white and thorny, others like pink glass, that ring musically when struck with a stone. There is an immense cavern where one sits down to rest; weird shadows cast by the lamps dance upon the walls, and falling drops of water tinkle loudly in the silence. There are precipices and bottomless pits—into which the guide tosses stones—and atmospheric lakes, into which one is liable to walk unawares—the surface of the water being invisible to the sharpest scrutiny. There are bright blue pools, crystal clear, in the depths of which stalagmites appear like white sea-anemones and seem to mirror back the pendant bosses of the roof. One may walk for miles and not have seen all, but the heat in these caves is trying to many people, and one is not sorry to come out into the cold upper air after spending an hour or two in a temperature of nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Many years ago some Spaniards were lost for days in the Drach caves, and the spot is still shown where in their despair they scratched upon the walls: No hay esperanza—There is no hope!

In the caves of Arta, people are said to have entered who have never been seen again, alive or dead.

The little inn at the Puerto de Manacór is a typical Majorcan fonda. Our rooms were floored with cheerful red tiles, and the walls were almost awe-inspiring in their spotlessness; it is a popular saying that on Saturdays the 59Majorcans whitewash everything within reach. From our windows—furnished with wooden shutters in place of glass—we looked down upon a vine-covered pergola and a little bright blue bay encircled by a snow-white beach. Our beds were good, and the bed-linen excellent—the lace-trimmed pillow-cases and beautifully embroidered monograms testifying to the skill with which the women ply their needle. Supper was served on the first-floor landing, and consisted of fish, omelette, chicken and rice, and dessert; and at nine o’clock our hostess mounted the stairs to inform us that there would be no milk for our morning coffee unless some could be procured from Manacór (an hour distant)—the local dairy being inconsiderate enough to have two fine kids at the moment.

She bade us a friendly good-night, and as an afterthought pointed out that being in the country here, it was the custom to empty bedroom basins out of the window. We promised to avail ourselves of the permission, and retiring, were gently lulled to sleep by the rhythmic breathing of the tide below.

It is strange to hear of snow and frost at home while we are living in a long succession of June days. Under a cloudless expanse of blue—unbroken save by a transparent white moon in the eastern sky—did we leave the Puerto on the morning of March 16th. Retracing the 60road to Manacór, we drove through tracts of pine wood and rosemary, and at midday reached Arta—an oriental-looking town of white houses and palm-trees—the Yartan of the Moors, in whose day it was an important colony. Their principal mosque was converted by the Conqueror into the great church that stands upon the hillside and with fortress-like walls and wide-arched upper gallery dominates the town. Crowning the same hill is the wall-encircled church of San Salvadór, used in olden times as a refuge for non-combatants during Saracen attacks, and in more recent days as a lazaretto in time of pestilence—which led to its being pulled down and rebuilt about a hundred years ago.

In the vicinity of Arta are to be found certain tumuli of unknown origin, that correspond more or less to those monuments of a pre-historic race which exist in most of the islands of the Mediterranean. In a deserted olive-yard—where the poisonous solanum sodomacum trailed its miniature yellow and green melons among the stones and big, pale periwinkles grew—we came upon the Clápers de Gegants, or Giants’ Cairns. A ring wall of large stones weighing several tons apiece had evidently existed at one time; but most of the blocks had fallen in, and the central mound—whether watch tower or burial tumulus—was a mere chaos of stones and brambles. To any one who has seen the far finer megalithic monuments of Minorca, no Majorcan remains will appear of much importance.

“Arta is an oriental-looking town of white houses and palm trees—the Yartan of the Moors.”

(page 60)

“Groups of peasant women were plying their hoes among the wheat....”

(page 55)

61From Arta it is a pretty drive to the castle of Cap de Péra, an old fortress with portcullised gateway and peaked Moorish battlements, around which one can walk on a narrow ledge laid on stone brackets. Prickly pear and masses of crimson and white stocks run riot within the walls and cluster about the little chapel of the summit. Beyond the castle the road winds by a steep ascent to the lighthouse of the Cap de Péra—built upon the extreme eastern point of the island, whence a splendid view is obtained, the low coastline of Minorca being dimly discernible far out at sea.

At nine o’clock the following morning we set out for the stalactite caves of Arta—said to be the most wonderful ones in the world, with the exception of certain caverns in New South Wales. For an hour and a half we descended towards the coast through a plain of fig orchards and palmetto clumps—the latter portion of the route being a mere cart-track of surprising badness—and finally drew up under a grove of picturesque old Pinus maritima near the seashore—the finest trees we had yet seen in an island where good timber is rare.

Fifteen minutes’ walk along a cliff path, with a turquoise blue sea below, and the scent of pines and gorse filling the warm air, and we come to the entrance to the caves. A great cleft opens in the face of the cliff overhead—a natural ante-chamber to the caves, supported by Herculean pillars of live rock, and to this we ascend by a long flight of massive stone steps, as though to the portals of some grand old Egyptian temple. Following our guide 62we pass through an iron grille and descend through cool depths of grey rock till we seem to have reached the very heart of the hills.

So strange is the under world through which one is led for the next two hours that at times one doubts whether it is not all a dream. Now we wander through lofty halls hung from roof to floor with stony curtain folds, where tall stalagmitic palm-trees stand in groups—their rugged stems hard as marble, white as though bleached by long confinement in these sunless caves. Now we seem to be exploring a coral world in the depths of the sea, and half expect to meet startled fishes darting hither and thither among the fantastically sculptured grots and low-fretted arches through which we creep. Now we enter the great hall of columns, and wait in darkness upon a high rock-platform, while our invisible guide busies himself below with Bengal lights. Suddenly a vista of gigantic columns leaps out of black space, monstrous shadows retreat into a perspective of infinite extent, and—as though in some strange operatic scene—we find ourselves standing in a great vaulted crypt, Gothic in its indescribable richness of architectural detail, Egyptian in its gigantic proportions and massive grandeur. Still larger is the great cavern known as the Cathedral, the roof of which attains a height of a hundred and fifty feet; so weird and grand beyond belief is the effect created by this vast interior when lighted up—so wonderful is the mimicry of hangings and sculpture—so regular the slender turrets and fretted pinnacles that enrich the structure, 63that it is difficult to realise that the scene before one is Nature’s own handiwork.

Wending our way down the Devil’s Staircase we next descend to a spot below sea-level to visit the “lost souls”—a company of black and burnt-up looking little figures seated beside a salt-water pool that goes by the name of the Styx. Endless is the imagery suggested by the stalactite formations; some resemble isolated statues, others intricate groups of Hindu gods. There is an organ with musical pipes, there are strange echoes that live far away among the rock caverns of the roof, and huge lurking shadows that—startled by the light of our lanterns—glide swiftly out of their recesses and disappear into the darkness ahead. But always we return to the aisles of ghostly columns that distinguish these caves from all others I have ever seen.

Questioned as to the presumed age of these columns our guide throws up his hands in despair, and, leading us to a small stalagmite in process of formation, shows us a couple of copper sous embedded in its glassy surface; it is twenty years since they were placed there, and in that time the stalagmite has risen to the rims of the coins and they are now fixed in their place by the most delicate silver film. Allowing fifteen sous to the inch, a rough computation sets the rate of growth of this particular stalagmite at something between three and four thousand years to the foot—a period doubtless considerably exceeded in the case of the larger columns.

The gem of the whole collection is the great palm-tree 64that stands alone in one of the outer courts. There are others that equal it in girth—its stem measures little more than three feet in diameter—but its splendid shaft ascends flawless, joint above joint of white coral-like stalagmite, till it unites with the roof sixty or seventy feet above the level of the floor. Since the world was young it has stood in these Halls of Silence—a silence of æons, broken only by dropping water and occasional earthquake shocks that have flung masses of stalactite to the ground. These horizontal rings in its stem may have been deposited in the days of palæolithic man; while that joint was being formed Babylon and Nineveh rose and passed away, and the Pharaohs in long procession filed across the world’s stage and vanished.

The falling drop has now finished its work and has shifted to another spot where it has begun the base of a second column. Some day the capital of this one also will be completed....

It is a glimpse into Eternity that appals one.

On March 18th we left Arta. A hum and a buzz in the street proclaimed it Sunday morning, and on emerging from our inn we found a couple of hundred people—including two Civil Guards and all the elders of the place—assembled to see us off. This interest was centred less in ourselves than in our victoria, for to people whose only notion of a carriage is the Spanish one of the baker’s-cart pattern, the sight of so long, low, and altogether remarkable looking a vehicle was of thrilling interest. It was probably the first ever seen in this part of the island, and had it been a motor-car it could not have made a greater sensation. Beasts of burden bolted at so novel an apparition, mules in carts swerved violently; children would drag their small brothers and sisters half a mile across country to catch a glimpse of us, and we brought whole village populations running to their doors.

“A cliff path with the turquoise-blue sea below leads to the entrance to the caves of Arta....”

(page 61)

“At the port of Andraitx fishermen in red Phrygian caps were mending their nets....”

(page 67)

65Stepping into our carriage with a gracious and comprehensive bow to the throng around, we were whirled away at a gallop down the crowded street, and quitting the town we struck out for Santa Margarita on our return to Palma. Long processions of country carts were returning from Mass, with men and women seated upon sacks at the bottom of the vehicles; but the fields were deserted save for an occasional swineherd tending his beasts among the carob groves.

Near Sineu we passed a large corral of young mules with their mothers; so proudly do these quaint, long-eared infants follow the handsome black mares that one is irresistibly reminded of the inquiry put by an interested listener to the man who was boasting of his mother’s beauty—“C’était donc Monsieur votre père qui n’était pas beau?”

The night was spent at Sineu, and returning to Palma the following morning we settled down at the Grand Hotel for a week before starting on our second driving 66tour, which was to introduce us to the North-western corner of the island.

For the next few days the weather behaved as badly as it occasionally will do in southern lands where its reputation is at stake. The Palma natives became first apologetic, then exasperated;—“Fie, for shame!” screamed an old woman angrily, addressing the rain from her shop door where we had taken shelter in a downpour—“Fie, for shame! What, then, will the English ladies think of us!”

But the spirit of perversity had entered into the Spring; she sprinkled snow upon the mountains, and kept the mail-boats imprisoned at Barcelona; she drenched the shivering population till the very swallows sat disconsolately on the clothes lines, drooping their wet wings; and she persisted in making such ugly threatening faces that it looked as if we should never start for Andraitx at all. Reason certainly pointed to our remaining at Palma; we were warm and comfortable at the Grand Hotel—we got far better food than we ever did on our travels, and the Dark-room itself was more commodious than might be our future quarters in some village fonda. On the other hand time was passing, and we had yet much to see; finally we decided to risk all and to go.

The heavens were black with clouds when we set off on the morning of March 27th, but before we had been 67gone half an hour our lucky star shone out, and the weather executed a complete volte-face such as one is led to believe any climate but our own would be ashamed of. Brilliant sunshine dried up the puddles with that amazing rapidity peculiar to porous soils, and the day suddenly decided to be quite, quite fine.

So excellent may be the results obtained from flying in the face of Providence—if only it be done at the right moment.

Merrily our little horses jingled along the splendid carretera real—the royal road—that leads to Andraitx; now we follow the coastline and catch glimpses of blue waves and fringes of white foam between the stems of the pine-trees; now we turn inland among the olive groves—where the old trees pirouette airily or stand with feet gracefully crossed upon the hill slopes, amidst pink and white cistus and bushes of wild mignonette. In three hours we reach Andraitx, where the carriage road terminates, and having no further use for our victoria we send it back to Palma, with instructions to meet us the next day but one at the village of Estallenchs beyond the mountains.

Andraitx, the old Andrachium of the Romans, is a prosperous-looking town lying in a green valley of almond orchards; most of the inhabitants are sea-faring folk, and down by the shore—five miles distant—we found a little colony of houses where fishermen in red Phrygian caps were mending their nets until the gale should abate. It was assuredly no day to put out to sea so long as white 68foam was running up the face of the cliffs, driven by a wild west wind.

The church of Andraitx is one of the oldest in the island; it stands upon rising ground above the town, its great blank walls plain—even in a land of plain exteriors; and beside it stands the fine old Possession-house of Son Mās, said to date back to the time of the Moors. The Possession-houses of Majorca were originally the country seats of the Spanish nobility; once inhabited by the great landowners, they have now descended to the level of farmhouses and have become the residence of the principal tenant farmer upon the estate, who goes by the name of the Amo, or master. These fine old buildings usually stand in the centre of some large property, and are almost invariably fortified and adapted to stand a siege.

Very picturesque is the straggling yellow pile of Son Mās, with its high walls and machicolated tower. Passing under a heavy stone archway we cross a large courtyard, where pigeons are stepping through stately minuets upon a vine pergola, and ascend by a flight of steps to a broad open gallery, supported on pillars, that runs along the front of the house. We are shown the spacious kitchen and living rooms of the present occupants, and are then led through suite after suite of disused apartments—whitewashed, stone-flagged, shuttered, given up to bats and cobwebs. In the rooms occupied by the Señor, when on rare occasions he pays a visit to his estate, are a few pieces of the old furniture—some wooden chests, such as 69take the place of wardrobes in Majorcan households, a carved bedstead, and a few old paintings—fast going to decay. Soon there will be nothing save the stone scutcheon in the courtyard to preserve the memory of the founder of Son Mās.

Behind the house is an enormous reservoir containing a water supply that would outlast any conceivable siege to which the inhabitants might be subjected. The cement roof of the tank forms a wide terrace—some ninety by thirty feet—and two well-shafts, thickly lined with maidenhair fern, give access to the water.

A winding staircase leads to the summit of the old watch-tower, where from an open loggia under the roof the besieged could hurl down missiles upon the foe before the gate. In an unguarded moment I attempted the ascent of this tower, and never shall I forget the sensation of that climb; losing sight of my feet from the very start—my head being always three turns higher up the steps—and momentarily expecting to stick fast for good, I thrust myself in spirals up the narrowest corkscrew stairs it has ever been my fate to encounter. Judging by my own sensations I should guess the staircase to have measured nine inches in width—but it is possible it may have been rather more.

As we sat at supper that evening there came a knock at the door and the Alcalde was announced; a shy little man fingering a felt hat slipped into the room and made us a low bow; he was the Burgomaster, come to pay his respects and to inquire if we had all we wanted. While 70entirely appreciating the kindness that prompted his visit we could willingly have dispensed with it, on account of the immense exertion required to express ourselves in Spanish at all, and the impossibility of doing so as we should wish. We gathered that he was placing himself and all he possessed at our disposal, and we did our best to rise to the occasion; but sentiments of gratitude are sadly lamed by a limited vocabulary. We tried to improve our position by asking if he could speak French, and expressing our disappointment when he negatived the question. The interview was punctuated by rather painful silences—and it was with a certain sense of relief that we saw our friendly visitor bow himself out again on being assured there was nothing he could do for us.

All that night a terrific storm raged. Mingled with the rattling of hail and the crash of thunder came the sound of the Sereno hammering at the house door to wake the fondista, and shortly afterwards we heard the latter come upstairs and pound lustily upon the door of an adjoining bedroom; some señor had to be called to catch the diligence, which—according to Spanish custom—leaves Andraitx at the extraordinary hour of two o’clock in the morning.

By the time we had finished breakfast the sun was shining hotly once more, and we were able to start for San Telmo. Seated in a small carreta—a very light skeleton cart on two wheels, with rush mats spread over the bars of the bottom and sides—we set out at a foot’s pace to visit the old castle on the coast, an hour and a 71half distant. For a mile or so one ascends by a very steep mountain road, but after crossing the col this road deteriorates into the roughest of cart tracks, winding down to the sea through a valley of pine-trees, olives, and carobs.

A country road in Majorca may mean anything—from a tract of bedrock scattered with loose stones of any size, to a soft, uneven hill-path, barely wide enough for a wheeled vehicle to pass. Short of coming to actual steps, a carreta is expected to follow anywhere where a pony can obtain a footing, and many a time did the bumps and lurches to which we were subjected recall George Sand’s driving experiences in the year 1838.

Speaking of what is now one of the finest roads in the island she narrates in lively French how in her day the journey was perilously accomplished—“with one wheel on the mountain and one in the ravine.... The jolting is indescribable ... yet however frightful a concussion the driver receives, he sings all the time in a loud voice—only breaking off to bestow curses upon his horse if the animal hesitates for an instant before plunging down some precipice or climbing some rock wall.... For it is thus one proceeds—ravines, torrents, quagmires, ditches, hedges, all present themselves in vain—one does not stop for so little. Besides, it is all part of the road; at first you think you must be steeplechasing for a wager, and you ask your driver what possesses him. This is the road, he replies. But that river? It is the road. And this deep pit? The road. And that bush also? Always 72the road.... A la bonne heure! And all that remains for you to do is to commend your soul to God and to contemplate the landscape, while awaiting death or a miracle.”

Descending from the carreta shortly after starting, to lighten the load of the floundering pony, I had at first persuaded the stout proprietor to follow my example; but within a very short time he had climbed in again, observing with a loud gasp that the way was long. It was not the first time he had been to San Telmo; only a year ago he had driven two English ladies there, and they too had had a camera, and on the way it fell out of the cart and was lost. To this day he could remember their lamentable cries of “La máquina, la máquina!” But five days later it was picked up by an old man, who thought it was a bomb and carried it home very cautiously. The ladies were very pleased—oh yes, they gave him more than a day’s wages for it.

The little castle of San Telmo was built in the sixteenth century for the protection of Andraitx. It stands on a rocky prominence by the seashore, and is in good preservation, its barrel-vaulted dining hall serving as a workshop for the old man who lives there. From the flat roof of the tower, where rusty cannon still occupy the embrasures, one looks down upon a pretty beach, where long green waves, lit up by the sun, break gently upon the sand, and great conch shells are sometimes found amongst the foam fringes of the surf. Some three hundred yards out from the shore is the low turtle-backed 73rock Pentaleu, where the Conqueror first set foot on quitting his storm-tossed galley; and screening the northern side of the little bay are the bare grey flanks—dreaded by sailors—of the Dragonéra, Majorca’s westernmost outpost. A lighthouse occupies the knife-like ridge of the summit, and cutting along through the Freu—the narrow strait between the island rock and the mainland—comes a little white steamer, the Barcelona boat, bringing a welcome cargo of mails after a silence that has lasted more than a week.

The following morning, March 29th, we set out for Estallenchs, our cavalcade consisting of one riding mule and a sturdy donkey to carry the luggage. No expedition could have offered a greater contrast to our tour of the preceding week than did this journey across the mountains. On the southern plain a whole day’s march of thirty miles is accomplished in a morning’s drive; in the Sierra we take four hours to cover a distance of twelve miles. Up and down among the hills winds the mule track; now we are high above the lapis lazuli sea, on a mountain path knee deep in palmetto fans and the red-velvet flower of lentiscus bushes; now we descend to a torrent bed hemmed in by great grey cliffs scarred with red scarps where part of the hillside has broken off and poured like an avalanche into the bed of the valley. Now we enter the pine woods where the white allium and many orchises grow, and the air is fragrant with rosemary and gorse. Further on we come to a winding rock staircase cut in the face of the cliff, down which, our guide tells us, 74it is not safe to ride; the only surprising thing is that any animal except a goat should be expected to descend it; and here our baggage donkey distinguished himself by slipping down and lying motionless, but quite unhurt, till he was unloaded and dragged on to his legs again.

A rough cart track winds for some way into these lonely hills, and we meet timber carts descending with loads of fir-trees, the mules stumbling and sliding on their haunches down the steep hillside—the heavy two-wheeled carts, with powerful brakes on, crashing and jolting behind them over boulders and tree-stumps.

As we approach human habitations again, traces of cultivation once more appear; small terraces are levelled on the mountain side and planted with almond-trees, from which our men snatch handfuls of young milky nuts in passing—a universal habit that has given rise to the sarcastic proverb, “The laden almond-tree by the wayside is sure to be bitter.” At last, after a long and fatiguing descent by shallow paved steps, we come in sight of Estallenchs—a pretty village nestling in a fold of the hills, backed by cliffs, grey peaks of sun and shadow; in front a valley opening down to the sea, with hill slopes clothed in almond, olive, and fir.

The inn is a very humble building, and does not even entitle itself a fonda. The master of the house was absent, and the old woman left in charge spoke no Spanish; we spoke no Majorcan, and by way of facilitating conversation she suddenly sent an urgent message to the village doctor, who arrived post haste, thinking that some accident had befallen the English señoras. Somewhat dashed at finding us both uninjured and in good health, he yet conversed with us very pleasantly in our attic chamber, offered to show us the place, translated various requests for us, and before leaving ordered our dinner. Thanks to his ministrations we lacked for nothing that night, the only hitch occurring at bedtime, when our best efforts to obtain candles resulted in a dish of olives being set before us.

“... the pretty village of Estallenchs, backed by great grey cliffs, and with a valley in front opening down to the sea.”

(page 74)

“The light streaming through the great outer door revealed the usual spotless interior of a Majorcan house.”

(page 75)

75The following morning a cheerful jingle of bells announces the arrival of our good Pépé and the victoria; the approach to the inn being too narrow for a carriage to pass, our belongings are carried up to the main road and there bestowed upon the box. Village dames look on from their doorways and nod affably, and one of them invited us to come in while waiting for the carriage to be packed, and took the deepest interest in our proceedings when we proposed photographing her room—only regretful that her floor was not yet covered with the tiles she showed us stacked in readiness. The only light streamed through the great stone archway of the outer door, and revealed the usual spotless interior of a Majorcan house, the walls snowy with repeated coats of whitewash. Good string-seated chairs and stools were ranged neatly round the room, and on the shelves stood the graceful water-jars in daily use among the people. Boxwood spoons and forks hung in a rack by the chimney corner, and over a clear fire of almond-shells upon the hearth bubbled a pot of bean soup; nothing would content the 76good housewife but that we should taste it—and most excellent it was. Everything about the place was tidy and exquisitely clean.

You might search in Majorca for a long time I fancy before you would find a slattern.

The scale of wages in the island is low—a labourer rarely earning more than eighteen pence a day; but there is every sign of general prosperity. The necessaries of life are very cheap, and a well-built stone house can be obtained in country villages at a rental of from two to three pounds a year.

The drive from Estallenchs to Bañalbufár is—from the point of view of scenery—one of the finest in the island; high above the sea runs the road, following every curve of the rugged coast; dark, fir-crowned cliffs tower overhead, and mountain ranges in splendid perspective jut out into the blue Mediterranean. Headland upon headland, point upon point—each intervening bay outlined with a semicircle of snow-white foam—they stretch back to where the faint blue battering-ram of the Dragonéra is still dimly visible in the haze of distance.

Perched on a rock pinnacle above the sea stand the yellow walls of an old watch tower; these towers, or ataláyas as they are called, were in olden days tenanted by coastguards, who from their lofty eyries watched the sea and gave the alarm to the countryside when any suspicious sail appeared on the horizon; a system of smoke-signals was in use by which the movements of a hostile fleet could be communicated to all the other 77ataláyas along the coast and to the inhabitants of the interior.

Bañalbufár is a small village built upon a mountain slope high above the sea, chiefly noticeable for the marvellous terracing of the surrounding hillsides; the terraces are so narrow and the walls so high that seen from below the effect is that of an unbroken stone wall several hundred feet in height, while from a little distance they resemble a gigantic flight of curved steps or an inverted amphitheatre upon the hillside. Vines and tomatoes are largely grown by the industrious inhabitants.

Down by the sea, in the cavernous recesses of overhanging rocks, are some curious corn mills, to which one descends by a steep paved path, the tiny mountain stream that works the mills raging and sluicing alongside in a polished aqueduct at such prodigious speed that upon touching the water your hand receives a smart blow.

Here upon a small headland below the village we ate our luncheon, among clumps of purple stock and bushes of bright green spurge—devouring the while a week’s budget of letters that Pépé had brought out with him; after which we rejoined our carriage and began the long ascent of the Col that lay between us and Palma. Like a snake does the white road wind in loops up the mountain side; the Pinus maritima clothes the hill slopes to the very summit, but rarely attains an even respectable size. In this respect Majorca differs strikingly from Corsica, where grand forests of Laricio pine 78flourish in the rockiest of soils. Natural timber is indeed a feature entirely lacking in the greater part of Majorca, owing to the fact that whenever it is in any way possible to utilise the ground it is devoted to the more profitable culture of the olive and almond.

Leaving the mountains behind us we presently pass Esporlás, with its rushing stream bordered by Lombardy poplars, and its great cloth factory, where hanks of dyed cotton are hanging out to dry; and soon after reaching Establiments—a trim and prosperous townlet nine kilometres from Palma—the rain comes down in torrents. We meet flocks of drenched sheep, and tilted country carts returning from market, each carter fast asleep inside, with his head on a pile of sacks and a blanket drawn up to his chin, leaving all responsibility to the sagacious mule who steps aside to let us pass. The wheat fields are dripping, the wet air is heavy with the scent of flowering may, and Palma itself is spanned by a bright rainbow. Let it rain! we are back in comfortable quarters once more!

On the 2nd of April we went to spend a few days at Sollér—the one inevitable expedition for all visitors to Palma. By the most direct route the drive only occupies three hours, but it is best to make a détour by way of Valldemósa and Miramár, so as to include the beautiful scenery of the north coast.

79Long and straight and flat is the road to Valldemósa, the cornfields on either side decked out with blue borage, gladiolus, and pink allium, and bordered with a fringe of flaring yellow daisies—the kind known in English gardens as annual chrysanthemums. A brilliant touch of colour is given by a row of bright vermilion flower-pots, set out on the snow-white parapet of a country house; but actual flower gardens are as lacking among the homesteads of Majorca as among those of most southern lands—and the peasants would no doubt marvel greatly at the sentiment which induces an English cottager to allot so much valuable space to flowers when he might devote it to the utilitarian onion or the practical potato.

A couple of hours’ drive brings one to the foot of the mountains, and passing through a fine gorge the road ascends to the village of Valldemósa, perched upon a saddle among the hills. It was here that in the sixteenth century Santa Catalina was born—the pious maiden who on her walks used the leaves of the olive and lentisk as rosaries, and who from her cell heard mass being celebrated in Palma Cathedral, ten miles distant; but Valldemósa’s chief claim to fame lies in her great Carthusian monastery, a huge yellow pile occupying the ridge above the village. Originating as the summer palace of the Moorish rulers of Majorca, the great building was subsequently used as a residence by the kings of Aragon, and it was not till the year 1400 that it fell into the hands of the monks; fortified, 80restored, and added to at various times, the monastery eventually covered an enormous area of ground, and sufficient still remains to amaze us at the lavish style in which twelve Carthusian friars and their Father Superior were housed.

When the monastery was suppressed in 1835, the Spanish government made over the newer wing of the building to private persons, and nine Majorcan families occupy the monks’ old quarters to this day. Very charming are these monastic residences, entered from the cool, whitewashed cloisters; each set of rooms is quite secluded from the rest, and each has its small terrace garden to the south, where lemon-trees bask in the sunshine, screened by the high walls that divide each monk’s territory from that of his neighbour on either side. From the low parapet in front one looks out over a steep declivity of orange groves and ranges of hills stretching down to the gorge—the gate of the plains.

It was in one of these apartments that George Sand passed the winter when she visited the island with her two children in the year 1838, accompanied by the invalid Chopin. The accommodation provided for one Carthusian friar—three good-sized rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, with as many bedrooms above stairs—afforded ample living room for the party of four; but the winter proved bitterly cold, and all the comforts of a northern home were lacking in an island where open fireplaces are unknown, and a brazier filled with charcoal is the only means of warming a room. At great expense an iron stove was brought up to Valldemósa and installed in one of the rooms, where it smelt abominably. In other matters the unfortunate strangers were no happier; the grand piano—imported from France—gave such endless trouble at the Palma customs that they would willingly have had it sunk in the harbour—but even that was not permitted. It was only after protracted wrangling that it was finally liberated upon the payment of four hundred francs.

“It was here that George Sand passed the winter when she visited the island with her two children in 1838, accompanied by the invalid Chopin.”

(page 80)

“The mountain ranges stretch back in splendid perspective to where the faint blue battering-ram of the Dragonéra is dimly visible in the distance.”

(page 76)

81The attitude of the Valldemósans too was anything but pleasant or conciliatory to the French exiles; the expulsion of the monks was too recent for them to have become reconciled to the occupation of the monastery by lay residents, and they looked with intense suspicion on these foreigners who never came to church and who scandalised society by allowing a little girl of nine to roam the country attired in rational costume.

There were doubtless faults on both sides; if the peasants regarded George Sand as a heathen, she looked upon them as uncharitable and bigoted barbarians, and she contrasts the result of their so-called religion with the abomination of desolation of philosophy in which—as she ironically remarks—her own children were brought up.

Life in Majorca seems to have offered few attractions to the foreigner in those days; setting aside the difficulties of transit—difficulties rendered doubly trying in the case of an invalid—the discomfort of the pig-boat 82by which one came to Palma, and the shocking state of the roads, to which I have previously alluded—setting all this aside, the very character of the islanders seems to have been radically different when George Sand sojourned amongst them from what it is now. According to her, the Majorcans were dirty and impertinent; they cheated one shamelessly at every turn; they were calculating, selfish, and utterly heartless where their own interest was concerned; letters of recommendation to twenty Palma residents would hardly suffice to prevent a stranger from wandering homeless about the town on arrival; and if any luckless foreigner presumed to complain of the treatment he received, or so much as ventured to express disapproval at the presence of scorpions in his soup, a torrent of indignation and contempt descended on his head.

Now our own impressions of the Majorcans differed so wholly from the above description that it is difficult to realise that the writer was referring to the same people. Our experience of the island was, however, necessarily a brief and superficial one—and though I have endeavoured faithfully to record all that befell us on our travels I am open to the charge of having taken too couleur-de-rose a view, or—in the more pithy Minorcan phrase—of having unconsciously resembled “the ass of Moro, who was enchanted with everything.”

I therefore quote the following words written by one not open to this charge—the Austrian Archduke Louis Salvator, who for more than twenty years made the island 83his home, who travelled about among the peasants, and who probably knows the island and its inhabitants more intimately than do most of the natives themselves:—

“The Majorcans,” he writes, “are gentle, cheerful, open-hearted, compassionate, and charitable to the poor; faithful in friendship, and extremely attached to their wives and children; very hospitable, like all the Balearic peoples—this applies to rich and poor alike, who all heap kindness upon the stranger and entertain him with their best.”

How to reconcile this opinion with that of George Sand I do not know—for it is not usual for the racial characteristics of an island people to alter so completely in fifty years. I can only imagine that the French authoress must have arrived in Majorca at an inauspicious moment; that she unintentionally roused the animosity of her neighbours, and that she may have been actually unlucky in the people with whom she came in contact; while anxiety over the condition of her sick friend did not improve her temper. It must not be supposed, however, that her winter at Valldemósa was one long Jeremiad; she thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the scenery and the flowers, and her vivid imagination, her spirit, and her sense of humour carried her through trials that would have depressed many another person.

An apology is due to her memory for the deliberate charge brought against her in Murray’s guide-book of having damaged a certain “priceless historical document” during her stay in the island. The document in 84question is a curious illuminated map of Europe and the north coast of Africa, made for Amerigo Vespucci in the year 1439 by a Majorcan draughtsman; and George Sand is most unjustly held up to the reprobation of all future travellers as having obtained permission to copy this map, and as having upset her inkpot over it.

That an inkpot was upset over it she herself records in dramatic narration, but her account of the affair goes to show that she had neither part nor lot in bringing about the accident; her hair stands on end with horror as she recalls the scene....

She was being shown the library collected by Cardinal Despuig, uncle to the then Count of Montenegro, when the house-chaplain volunteered to show her the precious map—the gem of the collection. Spreading it on a table he unrolled the beautiful illuminated parchment—whereon large cities share the Sahara with equally large savages mounted on camels; but the vellum was reluctant to remain flat, seeing which, a servant placed a full inkstand upon a corner of the map to keep it open. But alas! its weight was insufficient! The scroll gave a crack—a leap—and lo! it was again rolled up, with the inkstand inside!

Horror and confusion reigned; the chaplain fainted away; the servants were petrified—and then, losing their heads, dashed up with sponges, brooms, and pails of water, and fell upon the map with zeal so fatal that kingdoms, oceans, isles, and continents were overwhelmed in common ruin.

George Sand declares she was not even touching the 85table at the moment of the catastrophe—but adds prophetically that she quite supposes the blame of it will to all time be laid at her door. The map was subsequently restored by skilful hands to nearly its pristine glory, and is now to be seen under glass in the house of the Count of Montenegro at Palma.

The big monastery-church of Valldemósa contains little of interest beyond some good marble mosaics, and hanging on the wall is a curious apparatus not unlike a pool-marker, with lettered pegs that fit into holes—the talking board used by the silent monks when they wished to communicate with one another.

From Valldemósa an hour’s drive brings one to Miramár, the large estate purchased in 1872 by the Archduke Louis Salvator. Before arriving at the house itself one passes the roadside hospedéria, kept up—with true Majorcan hospitality—by the lord of the manor for the benefit of travellers: free quarters for three days, with firing, salt, and olives, are offered to all comers, and the woman in charge cooks the food that visitors bring with them. This hospice makes an excellent centre from which to explore the north coast of the island, and good walkers would discover countless delightful rambles amongst the pinewoods that clothe the cliffs down to the water’s edge.

The Archduke’s own house is a plain building standing 2,000 feet above sea-level; the name Miramár—Sea View—has attached to the site ever since the thirteenth century, when Don Jaime II.—acting on the recommendation of 86Rámon Lull, his seneschal—founded a college there. Never was a name better deserved; like a silver mirror the placid Mediterranean lies outspread below one, its motionless surface flecked with tiny fishing boats; dark, fir-clad cliffs slope precipitously to the sea, and far below lies the red rock Foradada like some gigantic saurian in the blue water. Look-out points, or Miradórs, are constructed in various parts of the grounds, commanding glorious views; and perched upon a rocky spur lower down the hill is a tiny chapel, recently built, dedicated to St. Rámon Lull. One of its foundation stones was brought from Bougie in Algeria—where the saint met his death by stoning—and another from San Francisco, in memory of the missionary Juan Serra, the Majorcan founder of the Pacific city.

For the last eight years the Archduke has not resided at his Majorcan home, greatly to the regret of the people; the house is uninhabited, but is shown to visitors by the caretaker.

Its chief interest consists in the entirely native character of its contents; everything in the house is Majorcan—the thick, soft matting on the floors, the string-seated rocking-chairs and the fat stools of stuffed basket-work; the handsome brass braziers and the carved four-post bedsteads; the inlaid chests and cabinets, and the splendid collection of faïence ware, of which the owner is a connoisseur. Majorcan too is the vulture in the garden—a fierce, brown bird, who hisses at visitors, and jumps wrathfully from branch to branch of the aviary in which he has lived for seventeen long years.

“The port of Soller is a fishing village of narrow streets....”

(page 89)

“We came up with a palmer from the Holy Land, posting along at five miles an hour.”

(page 87)

87The Archduke is the author of a very exhaustive and profusely illustrated work on the Balearics, “Die Balearen in Wort und Bild”; but unfortunately it is too costly a work to become generally known, or it would bring many travellers to visit the islands which the author loves so well.

On leaving Miramár we continue along the coast to Deya, a picturesque village of clustered houses and steep streets of steps, perched upon an isolated peak and backed by high mountains. Here we caught sight of a strange figure striding along the road ahead of us, and presently we came up with a holy palmer, who might have stepped straight out of the twelfth century—with cockleshells and staff, and with his sandal shoon. He was posting along at five miles an hour with a dog at his heels.

“Whither away, O Father?” we asked with respectful salutation.

“Over the whole world, my children,” replied the old man, turning upon us a rugged face framed in long grey locks.

We learnt that he was a native of Spain, and had for years been on a pilgrimage to the most sacred shrines in all lands; he had been in the Holy Land and in Egypt—had visited St. James of Compostella, and Rome, and Lourdes—and now was on his way to the shrine of Our Lady of Lluch. His wallet contained his papers—viséd at his various halting places—together with a few treasured relics from the Holy Sepulchre; of money he 88had no need, since the faithful everywhere would give him food and a night’s lodging, for the labourer is worthy of his hire. But he dare not tarry, for he had yet far to go, and with a “Buen viaje!” we drove on and soon lost sight of the solitary pilgrim who in this strange fashion was working out his own salvation.

The town of Sollér lies almost at sea-level, in a spacious valley ringed round with mountains around whose grey peaks buzzards and ravens—dwarfed by distance to the size of midges—circle and slant for ever to and fro.

Warm and sheltered, rich with orange and lemon groves, date palms and loquats, and entirely enclosed with hills but for an opening down to the little port on the north, Sollér is Majorca’s garden of the Hesperides. Though it is only April 3rd, the roses are running riot in the gardens of Son Angelāts, a fine house on the outskirts of the town belonging to a Marchésa who only resides there in summer time; it has terraces overlooking Sollér, and large grounds laid out with orange groves, tall palms, and flowering shrubs; roses cover the terrace walls and climb up into the grey olive-trees from whence they fall back in festoons—and the gardener breaks off branch after branch for us as we go along, great yellow Marshal Niels, pink La France, crimson tea roses, butter-coloured Banksias, miniature roses de Meaux, and fragrant Madame Falcot; we have more roses than we can carry. The borders are full of pansies and polyanthus, Parma violets and carnations; we are given bouquets of spirea, freesias, 89peonies, and heliotrope, and we drive away with our little carreta decked out as if for the Carnival.

The Marchésa has beautiful grounds—carriages and horses, and many servants; and to these possessions she adds, with true Southern incongruity, a most remarkable approach to her entrance gate; several yards of decayed cobble paving—bestrewn with loose blocks of stone and full of deep holes—over which a small stream swirls rapidly, intervene between her carriage gate and the road outside. The bumps and crashes with which our cart forded the water nearly threw the pony down, and we feared at one time that a wheel was coming off, but we got through intact. That the marchioness should enjoy this episode as part of her daily drive strikes even the natives, I think, as a little strange.

The modest little hotel La Marina at Sollér is a great improvement on the ordinary village fonda; the cooking is good, the bedrooms plainly but suitably furnished, and the proprietor and his daughters spare no pains to make their guests happy. Mules can be procured in the town for mountain expeditions, a carriage and pair is kept for hire, and there is a toy carreton belonging to the hotel in which one may drive out alone—feeling somewhat like a coster going to the Derby; the minute white pony hurries one along at extraordinary speed and stops for nothing but the Majorcan word of command—Poke-a-parg!

The port of Sollér, about half an hour distant, is a little land-locked harbour with a fishing village of narrow 90streets and picturesque houses. Majorca’s northern coast is in general so precipitous and inhospitable that the safe anchorage offered by the Sollér harbour was a great attraction to the corsairs of the Middle Ages, and many and terrible were the struggles that took place in the sixteenth century between them and the inhabitants of Sollér; on one of these occasions they sacked and then burnt to the ground the great Oratory of Santa Catalina, which stands on a headland at the mouth of the harbour. After this a castle was built, whose guns commanded the entrance to the port; but of this nothing remains except part of a tower, now incorporated in a modern dwelling-house.

There are many expeditions to be made on foot and on muleback into the mountains that surround Sollér; stalwarts can make the ascent of the snow-crowned Puig Mayor—Majorca’s highest peak, five thousand feet above sea-level—or visit the Gorch Blau, a ten hours’ expedition, with several miles of rock steps to come down on the way back, but both of these require strength and endurance. Then there is the Barránco, a ravine, clean cut as with a knife, upon the summit of a grey mountain ridge from whence a splendid view is obtained; and there is the Torrent de Pareys on the north coast, to be reached by boat on a calm day in about two hours.

“The white town of Soller lying in the lap of the hills, framed by converging mountain slopes ...”

(page 92)

“Many of the houses at Fornalutx are extremely old, with quaint staircases and old stone archways.”

(page 91)

91Of the shorter excursions one well worth making is to the hill village of Fornalutx; the road runs up the valley of the Torriente, a bubbling hill stream with banks of blue and white periwinkle and a masonry bed overhung with thousands of orange and lemon trees, beneath which lie oranges in golden mounds, like cider apples in a Somerset orchard. In spite of the scale disease, which in latter years has wrought havoc in many groves—blackening the fruit and destroying the foliage—the oranges of Sollér are still famous, and fetch market prices ranging from a penny to fivepence a dozen, according to quality, while a dozen of the best lemons are here sold for twopence.

The streets of Fornalutx are principally flights of broad cobbled steps, and many of the houses are extremely ancient and fascinating, with quaint wooden balustrades, carved window frames, and old stone archways. One of those we visited had an oil mill on the premises, and we were shown the stone bins into which the panniers of olives are first emptied, and the great trough in which they are subsequently crushed with a millstone turned by a mule; the olive pulp is then placed in flat, circular baskets, and when these are piled up in layers to a considerable height, boiling water is poured over them and they are crushed flat by an immense baulk of timber that descends upon them from above. The exuding liquid flows into a tank below, where by the happy provision of Nature the oil is able to be drawn off by a surface pipe while the water is carried away by one at the bottom. The olive harvest takes place in October and November; the oil is much used in Majorcan cookery—though not to any unpleasant extent—and children are often seen eating slices of bread spread with oil in place of the jam 92or dripping with which it would be flavoured in our own country.

Our stay at Sollér was cut short by the unkindness of the weather. For two days the rain held off, grudgingly; but on the third we awoke to find the whole valley enveloped in a dense Scotch mist; our host looked up at the blurred outlines of the mountains, and he looked at the gusts of cloud that were blowing through the barranco, and he shook his head; he was honest, and he confessed that the prospect was not hopeful. A rain wind sobbed round the house as we sat over the wood fire that evening, and from an adjoining room came the singularly monotonous chant—high, nasal, and quavering—with which a Majorcan servant girl can accompany her sweeping for hours at a time. The effect was indescribably triste, and our thoughts turned to the flesh pots of Palma.

The following morning showed no improvement, so our host’s victoria was requisitioned and we set out on our return to the Grand Hotel. For an hour and a half our two sturdy horses toiled up out of the valley, the winding zigzags of the road affording us now and again a backward glance at the little white town lying in the lap of the hills, framed by converging mountain slopes. On reaching the top of the pass we met a fresher air, and we rattled merrily down the beautifully graded road towards 93the plain, drawing up presently at the wayside villa of Alfádia.

Alfádia is an ancient caravanserai that still bears traces of its Moorish origin; passing under the high entrance gateway, which has a Moorish ceiling of carved and painted wood, one enters a vast courtyard, surrounded by stables and containing a fountain and a pepper-tree of immense size and age. When first we entered the great quadrangle it was absolutely deserted, but no sooner did our camera mount its tripod than with the mysterious suddenness of Roderick Dhu’s men figures emerged from all sides, anxious to be included in the picture.

Hardly had we regained our carriage when the rain that had long been threatening began to come down—first gently, then harder, and finally with a terrific clap of thunder we were overtaken by a kind of cloudburst. Whipping up the horses our driver made a dash for a wayside inn on the Palma road, and driving in under the deep verandah-like porch running along the whole front of the building we drew up and were gradually joined by other refugees till every inch of standing room was taken up. Cheek by jowl with us were white-tilted orange carts from Sollér, a countryman and his cow, a post cart, sundry mules, and a number of pedestrians who arrived half drowned beneath their umbrellas; and in this most welcome shelter we all remained imprisoned while for the next half hour it rained as I have never seen it rain before. Cascades fell from the edge of the verandah roof, the road became a river, and from the olive grounds gory floods 94were descending and were struggling and leaping through the culverts like the legions of red rats charmed out of Hamelin by the pied piper.

It is with diffidence that I venture to observe that a very unusual amount of rain fell around Palma this spring—for there is a growing feeling of incredulity on the subject of unusual seasons. I have heard of a man who had lived for thirty years in Algiers, and who asserted that in that time he had experienced thirty unusual seasons. Few winter resorts perhaps could equal this record, but I fancy that in most places abnormal seasons of one kind or another are sufficiently common for the really normal one—when it does make its appearance—to be almost, if not quite, as unusual as the rest.

On April 16th we took the train for Alcúdia and set out on our fourth and final tour in Majorca. When I say that we took the train for Alcúdia I mean that we went as far in that direction as the train would carry us, for with a strange perversity the railway line, instead of running right across the island from Palma to Alcúdia and so connecting the latter and its Minorcan service of boats with the rest of the world, stops short some ten miles from the coast, perhaps with a view to annoying possible invaders.

“Alfadia is an old caravanserai.... In its great courtyard is a fountain and an enormous pepper tree....”

(page 93)

“We passed out of the town of Alcúdia by the Roman gate called the Puerta del Muelle.”

(page 95)

95Two hours after leaving Palma we descended at the terminus of La Puébla, where we and five other persons scrambled with difficulty into an immensely high two-wheeled carrier’s cart covered with a canvas tilt. For an hour and a half the stout horse jogged slowly along a flat road, and then we drove under the great fortified gateway of San Sebastian and entered Alcúdia, an ancient town of dingy-looking houses, with paved alleys so narrow that our horse had to put his head right in at people’s front doors in order to turn the sharp street corners.

Alcúdia is still surrounded by strong walls and a moat, fortifications dating partly from Roman and partly from Moorish days. During the great peasant revolt of the sixteenth century the Aragonese nobles came here for refuge; their yoke had been a heavy one, and since the annexation of the island by the crown of Aragon discontent and unrest had filled the population. Oppressed and heavily taxed, they at last rose in insurrection, and forming themselves into armed bands laid siege to Alcúdia till the arrival of a Spanish fleet turned the scales against them. Their leader, Colom, was beheaded, and his head sent to Palma, where for more than two hundred years it hung in an iron cage at the Puerta Margarita, near to which is a square that still bears his name.

We did not stop in Alcúdia, but passing out of the town by the fine Roman gate called the Puerta del Muelle we drove on to the harbour, about a mile distant.

The Fonda de la Marina on the seashore is a large and quite civilised inn, with whitewashed corridors and rows of numbered deal doors; it is a very marine fonda indeed, being situated actually on the water’s edge, so that our 96driver before putting us down takes a short turn in the sea to wash his cart wheels. Fishing-smacks lie under our windows, and Francisca the general servant—in whose absence everything is at a standstill and who is being perpetually screeched for from the front door—comes up hurriedly in a small boat from the mole where she has been buying fish for our dinner.

Our host informed us that two visitors were already installed in the house, but when we inquired their names and nationality he was hopelessly vague. To the Majorcan innkeeper foreigners are foreigners, and as such will naturally know all other foreigners; and he describes bygone guests by their appearance, age, and such traits as he has observed in them, confident that they will be at once recognised by the person to whom he speaks. To his disappointment, however, we entirely failed—in spite of his most graphic description—to identify our fellow guests, and it was not till we were sitting at table that evening, over our raisins and cabbages, our lobster salad and cutlets, that we saw two strangers enter whom we perceived to be English. They told us they had been here more than a week, and had thoroughly enjoyed their stay.

Very peaceful is the great bay of Alcúdia, with its sand dunes and pine woods, its reedy marshes, and its sickle-curve of dazzling white sand encircling the deep blue water. One may wander for miles along the lonely shore, watching the ways of the burying-beetles that live in large colonies among the bee orchises and cistus bushes above high-water mark, or searching for shells and fragments of coral among the seaweed rissoles of the Poseidonia oceanica that bestrew the beach in countless numbers.

“Very peaceful is the bay of Alcúdia with its sickle curve of snow-white sand encircling the turquoise-blue water.”

(page 96)

“... one of the norias introduced by the Moors, and still used in Majorca for raising water from wells.”

(page 99)

97There are many excursions in the neighbourhood that good walkers can easily accomplish on foot. Between the harbour and the town of Alcúdia are the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, supposed to mark the site of the old Pollentia—long disappeared; on a rocky slope, converted into a wild flower garden by a gorgeous tangle of yellow daisies, convolvulus, borage, asphodel and mallow, can be traced partial tiers of seats and flights of steps cut in the rock; and in a depression of the ground are seen the caves originally destined for wild beasts, but now inhabited by nothing more ferocious than a family of black pigs couched upon a bed of seaweed.

Here and there among the flowers one stumbles into a grave; there are rows upon rows of these Roman graves—narrow, shallow tombs cut in the surface of the rock and half filled with earth. Fragments of Roman pottery, broken lamps, skulls and bones are constantly picked up, and two years ago a grave was found intact by some men who were quarrying freestone. Like the rest, it was quite shallow, and in it was found a quantity of gold jewellery that had evidently belonged to a Roman lady. We were shown the ornaments, which comprised a brooch set with rubies, an oval locket—which at one time had apparently contained a portrait—a long chain necklace with clasps, set with small pearls and two emeralds; two 98handsome gold and pearl earrings, and a few smaller trinkets. In another tomb was found a gold bracelet, and a silver coin said to be of the reign of Tiberius. All these are now in the possession of the finder.

Close to the Roman cemetery are some other graves, half hidden by rough grass. As our guide turned over the earth with his foot he disclosed a jawbone furnished with a row of splendid molars; from the style of burial and other indications these graves have been decided to be Moorish, but as far as we could learn no systematic investigation of the ground has yet been attempted.

The following morning we drove to the Castillo de Moros, in one of the usual tilted carts, drawn by a big mule that for some time showed no sign of being able to go at any pace but a walk; our remark, however, that a horse would have been swifter, put the driver on his mettle, and, declaring that his mule had great velocity, he urged the animal into a fast trot which was kept up as long as the condition of the road rendered it in any degree possible.

Skirting the town by an arrow track cut in the bedrock, and dating probably from Roman times, we struck out across country to the Moorish fort that stands on a promontory overlooking the bay of Pollensa. In spite of its age the little Castillo is in good preservation; moat and bastions are almost intact, and a squat pylon of yellow freestone gives entrance to the building and to a broad, flagged terrace on the side towards the sea. Goats browse around the ramparts among palmetto and 99lentisk, cactus and asphodel; and framed in the embrasures of the masonry is the gorgeous blue of the bay, with the long serrated ranges of Cap Formentór visible in the far distance.

Below us, silhouetted against the distant headland of the Cap de Pinár, stood one of the nórias, or Persian wheels, introduced by the Moors and still used in the island for raising water from wells. Bushes of pink stock clambered into the ancient stone aqueduct, which led away from the nória across the bean fields; some sheep were grazing the stony ground, watched by a boy in an enormous straw hat, who stood in the shade of a clump of pines. It was a pretty pastoral scene, typical of the peaceful tide of life that flows on around the Moors’ old fort.

The southern shore of the Bay of Pollensa is very beautiful, and by an amazingly bad road it is possible to drive a considerable way along it, to the Cap de Pinar, a wild headland where we spent a delightful hour; at our feet—far, far below—lay the waters of the bay, and beyond it the trackless sierra of Cap Formentór stretches its arm northwards till it ends in a bold cliff that plunges sheer into the sea. Behind us is a mountain range, on the slopes of which is visible the pilgrimage church of Our Lady of Victory, and looking inland we can see the pale blue pyramid of the Puig Mayór.

It was a fête day, and crowds of holiday makers were returning from the Cap—whole family parties laden with palmetto roots slung over their shoulders; the heart of 100this dwarf palm is considered a delicacy by the Majorcans; the plant is chopped out of the ground with an axe, and the lower leaves trimmed off close, leaving only a tuft of young shoots at the top, which gives the root an almost precise resemblance to a pineapple. But it is a woody form of nourishment, and not a taste to be acquired after childhood I should imagine.

On April 18th we left Alcúdia for Pollensa. A gale had arisen in the night, and we awoke to find the bay flecked with foam caps and the white sand flying like smoke along the shore. The Barcelona boat was many hours overdue, and the fishing fleet could not put out to sea, so that the men, who had stocked their boats overnight with kegs of water and provisions, instead of being off at daybreak as was their wont, were reduced to mending their nets and splitting firewood while they waited, with all the philosophic patience of their kind, for the wind to abate.

Pollensa is about an hour and a half’s drive from Alcúdia. Surrounded by ancient olive groves and rockeries planted with patches of beans and wheat, the old town lies secluded among the hills, out of sight and out of sound of the sea—only three miles distant. On one side of the town rises the green Calvary hill, on the other the bare grey Puig de Pollensa, crowned by a pilgrimage church and hospedéria; this passion for building a church on the highest and most inaccessible spot attainable is a really curious phenomenon.

“Very picturesque is the little blue bay of San Vicente, with its cliff walls and jagged peaks.”

(page 103)

“The generation now dying out is the last that will be seen in the dress worn by their forefathers for a thousand years past.”

(page 101)

101An atmosphere of old-world tranquillity pervades the place; undisturbed by railways, approached by only one good road—that from La Puebla—and brought in touch hardly at all with the outside world, Pollensa is the most characteristically Majorcan town in the whole island. The older men still wear the wide Moorish breeches, the woollen stockings and strong leather shoes latched across with a bow, which the younger ones have forsaken in favour of the less picturesque modern garb. The generation now dying out is the last that will be seen in the dress worn by their forefathers for a thousand years past, and I am glad to have visited the island before the costume has become a mere tradition.

Castillian is little spoken in Pollensa, and our stay at the inn of Antonio de Sollér was complicated by the fact that our good host and his daughter knew rather less Spanish than we did ourselves. The old woman who swept the floors was, I think, a little touched in the head, and she annoyed us considerably for some time by pausing in front of us with uplifted broom—as we sat in our rocking chairs, peacefully reading—and haranguing us in Majorcan, of which she knew we did not understand a word.

“Les silents ont toujours tort”—and at last we turned the tables on her by suddenly bursting forth in emphatic English, which had the effect of silencing her completely, and she departed, muttering darkly, no doubt more convinced than ever that we were mad.

We found our inn to be comfortable, and, in spite of being in the middle of the town, exceedingly quiet. The Majorcan cookery is always good, and though liable to 102become monotonous, a certain variety of diet is obtained by moving from place to place. Chicken stewed with rice, or a ragout, supplemented by fish and an omelette, form the staple dishes of Majorcan fondas; and each inn has its own idea of what a sweet course should be, to which it rigorously adheres; at Felanitx we got into a stratum of enormous jam puffs—larger than I could have conceived possible; at Arta it was figs, stuffed with aniseed; at Alcúdia, slabs of quince jelly; at Pollensa heavy pastry starfish, which made their appearance twice a day with unfailing regularity.

For breakfast coffee can always be obtained—although it must be remembered that coffee does not necessarily imply milk, unless specially ordered; and with the coffee it is the custom to eat an ensaimáda—a kind of sweet sugar-besprinkled bun. Except at Palma and Sollér, butter is not to be had; we usually supplied its place with jam we carried with us, but at Pollensa we found ourselves reduced to our last pot, and that pot we decided to save up as emergency rations, for rumour had it that at Lluch, whither we were bound, we might be glad of anything at all.

The morning after our arrival at Pollensa we drove out to the Cala de San Vicente, a bay on the north coast of the island; after driving over a bad road for some miles we left the galaréta and walked down to the sea by a charming path leading through pine woods and a wild rock-garden of pink and white cistus and yellow broom, where for the first time we heard the nightingale. Near 103the shore are large freestone quarries—smooth-walled pits of cream-coloured stone—where men are employed in detaching great blocks with wedges, and shaping them with saw and axe; so plentiful is the freestone in many parts of the island that not only the houses, but the field-walls and even the pigstyes are built of it. It is extremely soft and easy to work when first quarried, and has the invaluable property of hardening more and more as time goes on, when exposed to the air. This causes many of the ancient buildings—such as the Lonja and others—to look quite disappointingly modern, owing to the smooth, unweathered surface of the walls and the sharp lines of all angles.

Exceedingly picturesque is the little blue bay of St. Vincent, with its enclosing cliff walls and jagged peaks; on a small headland stands a ruined ataláya of curious construction, the tower being rounded on the land side, but forming an acute angle towards the sea.

Amongst the prickly pear and boulders of this headland we noticed a large, almost circular, block of stone that attracted our attention from its bearing traces of a rude square cut in its upper surface. We asked the daughter of our fondista, who was with us, whether there was any legend attaching to the ancient stone, but she was interested not at all in pre-historic man:

“That mésa,” she explained—mésa means table, and is the term applied to all the megalithic altars in the Balearics—“that mésa is there for visitors to have their luncheon upon.”

104This lack of observation and of intelligent interest in their surroundings we found not uncommon among the people, who have an almost Oriental incuriosity with regard to things that do not practically concern them. Many a time did we draw the attention of a native to some conspicuous plant growing in profusion around his home, and ask him what kind of flower it bore when in bloom; whereupon he would reply without hesitation that that particular plant never flowered at all, and consider himself well out of the matter.

I remember being told by a traveller in Spain that once when in the very centre of the liquorice industry he inquired of his landlord what part of the plant was used, to which he replied that it was the root:

“And what kind of plant is it that supplies these roots?”

“Oh, there is no plant at all—nothing to be seen above ground.”

Pursuing his inquiries further, he found a man who admitted that there was certainly a plant, but he maintained that it never flowered. This was in the neighbourhood of acres of the plant, then in full flower!

In the afternoon our host drove us to Aubercuix in a tilted cart, with an old flea-bitten Rosinante in the shafts. Passing the quaint Fuente de Gallo—an urn-shaped stone fountain presided over by a spruce cock, where all day long the women fill their water jars—we had not proceeded more than half a mile on our way when the back bench of our conveyance, on which we both were sitting, broke down with a loud crack, and in the confusion our best umbrella fell out in front and got badly kicked by the horse. Our host was aghast; he jumped down and repaired the damage as quickly as possible—propped up the seat with some chunks of firewood that happened to be in the cart—disengaged the umbrella from the horse’s hind leg—and tried to assure us that all was well. But it was far from well. Our appearance had for some time past not been our strong point; repeated wettings and dryings had not improved our hats; our clothes were almost worn out—and now the best umbrella was just as baggy and bent and stained as the other, and, moreover, would only open in a lop-sided way.

“The Fuente de Gallo, an urn-shaped stone fountain, presided over by a spruce cock.”

(page 104)

“... the fine old Roman bridge at the entrance to Pollensa.”

(page 107)

105We were not a little annoyed at this mishap, but our annoyance was soon quenched in amusement, so curiously unconventional was our host’s style of driving; hollerin’ and bellerin’ like Prince Giglio of immortal fame, as though driving half a dozen plough teams at once, our good host urged the old horse to speed with a running accompaniment of vituperation and ceaseless objurgations, ranging from threats to cajolements, thence to sarcasm, and occasionally rising to heights of scathing laughter, which startled the old horse more than anything else. It must not be imagined, however, that our progress was rapid; the noise served to clear the road for half a mile ahead of us, it is true, but the old horse had to be allowed to walk down every descent, while on the flat he was not expected to exceed a gentle trot; he understood his master perfectly, and feared him not at all. Never did we see an animal ill-treated in Majorca.

106The road to Aubercuix takes one down to the port of Pollensa, and thence round the bay as far as the little lighthouse on the opposite point; beyond this one can only penetrate into the Cap de Formentór by a bad mule track, or by taking a sailing boat and landing in some little cove along the coast.

Wonderful was the view, glorified by the golden evening light, that we obtained as we wound along the water’s edge and followed the gravelled causeway leading to the Fáro; across the bay shone the white town of Alcúdia, seemingly built on the seashore, though in reality far inland; looking back towards Pollensa the scene was of marvellous beauty—in the foreground the curve of the shore, broken by black clumps of rushes, a few stunted trees, and an upturned boat lying on the sand; beyond, some fishermen’s huts, with here and there a dark pine-tree, sharp-cut against the dim distance of the sierra. Rank behind rank, their planes parted by the evening mist, veiled in shimmering tints of pink and violet, dove colour and indigo, and melting away into the sunset sky itself, stretched the mountain chains behind Pollensa. Their peaks were tinged with flame, and the rays of the setting sun descended like fire-escapes of golden web into the azure mist that filled the valleys.

For a few minutes the unearthly light lingered, and then the sun sank out of sight; a chill sea-breeze sprang up as we set our faces homeward, and the stars were shining serenely before we regained our fonda.

107The following morning we rode to the Castillo del Rey, the route taking us, soon after starting, over the fine old Roman bridge at the entrance of the town. For an hour and a half we pursued a good mule-track up the gorge of the Ternallas, a mountain stream dashing down through woods of ilex and pine, with bare grey peaks towering overhead; leaving the forest we came out into a grassy and boulder-strewn trough among the hills, and presently arrived at the foot of the crag on which the castle stands. So inaccessible does the rock look, crowned by the skeleton ribs of the old banqueting hall—yellow rock and yellow masonry welded in one—that at first sight one wonders how the ascent is to be even attempted. Up a steep hillside, covered with rocks, loose stones, and prickly shrubs, we scrambled and toiled on foot for nearly half an hour; more and more desperate grew the path as we advanced, larger and larger the rocks to be surmounted; but at last, with a final effort, we scaled a boulder over six feet in height and were hauled up by our muleteers into the arched doorway of the old fortress.

The origin of the castle is lost in the mists of antiquity; it is supposed to have existed in the time of the Romans, and under the Moors it formed an important stronghold to which they retreated after evacuating Palma. Later on the flag of Jaime III. still waved over the Castillo del Rey after the whole of the rest of the island had gone over to Pedro of Aragon, but in the year 1343 the loyal garrison was forced to surrender after a siege of more than two months.

108Not much of the fortress survives at the present time; three pointed freestone arches belonging to the central hall form the most conspicuous feature of the ruins. Beyond this there is little except some subterranean chambers, and a few fragments of rock-like wall and pointed battlement, still untouched by time, that survive amidst a chaos of masonry. From the northern edge of the cliff—an appalling precipice descending sheer to the sea—a magnificent view over the coast and the surrounding mountains is to be had on a clear day, but on the occasion of our own visit ominous stormclouds were closing in around us, and the horizon was a blank pall of rain.

Hardly had we sat down to luncheon when heavy drops began to fall; seizing our cutlets and oranges we fled to the rock tunnel leading from the entrance to the interior of the castle, and in that narrow and draughty passage continued our interrupted meal; but to our dismay rivulets soon began to invade our retreat, the heavens poured down water through a machicolation overhead, and before long we were sitting, like the Blessed Catalina, on stones in the middle of a river bed, while a growing torrent flowed beneath our feet. Our men wrapped their blankets around them and squatted patiently in the doorway. Presently footsteps were heard, and a wet stranger scrambled breathlessly in at the tunnel’s mouth, accompanied by a guide in wide indigo breeches soaked to the consistency of jelly bags, while rivulets ran from the brim of his felt hat.

“Presently we came in sight of the Castillo del Rey ... built upon a crag crowned by the skeleton ribs of the ancient banqueting hall—yellow rock and yellow masonry welded in one.”

(page 108)

“We found the Gorch Blau filled with a rushing whirl of foaming, emerald-green water....”

(page 115)

109Still it poured—steadily—without intermission; the landscape below us was blotted out by a veil of driving rain; banks of cloud were sweeping in from the sea and settling in woolly folds upon the hills, which appeared and disappeared as one storm after another broke over them and passed on. For two hours we waited, and then there came a lull; sallying out in desperation we slid and scrambled down the slippery rocks and soaking vegetation of the steep hillside, and rejoining our equally wet mules set out for home. The red path was now a quagmire under foot, and the little watercourses were leaping and chasing down the hills to join the river; but the rain held off and we got back in safety, being met at the inn door by a chorus of inquiries as to how we had fared, laments over our wetting, and an optimistic assurance that on the morrow the weather would be very bonito indeed.

But when morning dawned it was far from being bonito—it could hardly look worse. Nevertheless we determined on making the march to Lluch—a ride of about four hours across the mountains. The charge for a mule with its attendant muleteer is six pesetas for this journey if they return the same day; but if, as in our case, they are retained at Lluch for further expeditions, an additional five pesetas is asked for the return trip to Pollensa. One of our mules was a very smart-looking beast, ridden with the iron noseband which in Majorca usually takes the place of a bit, and carrying the English side-saddle we had brought with us, covered with a sheepskin to lessen 110the slipperiness so fatiguing to the rider when going up or down a steep mountain path for hours at a time. The other one was a sturdy pack animal, bridled in inferior manner with a hemp halter and furnished with pack saddle and panniers.

These pack saddles are extremely comfortable to ride on if they are well balanced; one sits as on a broad, soft platform between the panniers, dangling a foot on either side of the mule’s neck, the idea being that if the beast falls you will alight on your feet and get clear of him whichever way he rolls. As a matter of fact you find it impossible to move at all, partly owing to the adhesive nature of the sheepskin on which you are seated, and partly to a heterogeneous mass of luggage—rugs, valises, and fodder bags—piled high on either hand, while umbrellas and tripod-legs close your last avenue of escape.

The mounting of a laden pack-saddle is a problem in itself, and to the last I could discover no system upon which the feat is accomplished; a wild, spasmodic leap, taken from some wall near the animal, usually—but not always—lands one in the saddle, and once in position a fatalistic calm is the best attitude with which to confront the perils of the ensuing ride. The most well-meaning of mules has habits which do not conduce to the happiness of his rider upon a mountain track; he will pause on a hogsback ridge of slippery cobbles in the middle of a swift stream, to gaze entranced, with pricked ears, at the distant landscape; with an absolutely expressionless 111countenance he carries one under a low bough—or anchors himself in front by fixing his teeth firmly in a tough shrub as he strides by, and then falls over himself as his stern overtakes him. In short he awakens in his rider a lively sympathy with Dr. Johnson, who was carried as uncontrollably on a horse as in a balloon.

The paths were in an unusually bad state that day owing to the recent heavy rain; great parts of the track were under water; every torrent was swelled to twice its normal size, and miniature Lauterbrunnen falls were leaping down the faces of the cliffs. We forded several streams, slithered down causeways of loose sliding blocks, and scrambled up slippery rock steps where it was all the mules could do to keep their feet and avoid falling backwards.

For the first hour we rode in drenching rain through dark ilex woods and fine mountain scenery; but as we got higher the weather improved—the sun came out, the birds began to sing, the scent of wet cistus bushes filled the air, and emerging on to a grassy plateau we presently came in sight of the monastery of Lluch, lying in a level valley high up among the hills—a great pile of yellow buildings backed by grey rocks and ilex-trees.

Crossing the wide green, with its long range of stabling, its poplar-trees and fountain, we dismount—wet and tired—under the entrance archway, and pass into a large quadrangle formed by the college, the hospedéria, the priests’ house, and the oratory, an ornate chapel hung with embroidered banners presented to Our Lady of Lluch.

112The history of this oratory goes back to a date shortly after the conquest in the thirteenth century, when a herd-boy named Lluch—or Lucas—while driving his flock home one night, noticed a strange light upon the mountain side; on relating this to a priest, the latter went to examine the spot whence the light proceeded, and there discovered a stone statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child, which was installed forthwith in a little chapel built for the purpose; and this Virgin of Lluch—the Máre de Deu as she is called—became in course of time the patroness of the Majorcans, and a great power in the land. Bequests of money and land were made to her, and in the fifteenth century the Oratory was founded, together with a college for the instruction of twelve poor children. The original college now forms the hospedéria for visitors, having been superseded by a newer building where to this day twelve boys receive education and instruction in church singing from the four priests who inhabit the rectoria.

The wants of visitors are attended to by six lay brothers, and at times the resources of the establishment are strained to their utmost. We were told that at Easter no fewer than six hundred people had made the pilgrimage hither, coming from all parts of the island and staying two or even three nights; those for whom there was no room in the hospedéria were bedded in the corridors and stables, while the rest slept in their carts and carriages outside.

Until recently all comers had to bring their own food, 113but some few years ago a kind of restaurant—independent of the monastery—was established, where visitors can get simple meals at a very moderate charge. The wife of the fondista cooks well, and though neither meat, milk, nor butter are to be had, the staple provisions of sausage, sardines, cheese, bread, coffee, and condensed milk—with the addition of a fowl or an omelette—constitute a diet with which any traveller may be content. After supper one crosses the great quadrangle to the hospedéria, which contains some fifty beds, placed two, three, and even four in a room.

In answer to the bell at the iron grille a lay brother made his appearance and took us upstairs and down a long, spacious, echoing corridor to one of the whitewashed cells, where he presented us with a key and a pair of damp sheets and left us to our own devices. The room was sparsely furnished, and contained two beds, with a pile of mattresses and blankets, a small table, a chair, a diminutive tripod supporting a basin, an equally diminutive towel, and an earthenware jar with some water.

For the moment it did not strike us that we were expected to make our own beds, and after waiting some time we sent an urgent message to our friar by a young man we met on the stairs and who seemed faintly amused at the errand. No one came, however—and neither on that nor on any subsequent occasion did Brother Bartholomew condescend to attend to us in any way whatever, or even supply us with more water, so that on 114the second morning we were reduced to a kind of nettoyage à sec. The only thing he did for us was to come and rattle our door loudly at five o’clock in the morning to make us get up—and failing in his attempt, to go away, having either by accident or with malice aforethought turned the key in the door and locked us in.

It was not till breakfast time that we discovered our plight, and we should have been constrained ignominiously to call for help from the window had we not succeeded in picking the lock with a buttonhook and so regained our freedom.

At nine o’clock we set out on our mules for the Gorch Blau, a two hours’ ride from the monastery. It is hopeless to ascertain beforehand from one’s muleteers the nature of the road that lies before one, for they admit no difference between one mountain path and another, and assure one invariably that the road will be good the whole way; nor are they in any way abashed when presently you come to a slippery rock staircase, so impossible that they advise you—in your own interest—to dismount and proceed on foot. The ride to the Gorge includes, as far as I can remember, only one really mauvais quart d’heure—but the rain had converted the paths into sloughs, and our poor men soon had their shoes soaked through and through, in spite of making détours wherever possible to avoid the floods through which our mules splashed recklessly.

But if all this water increased the difficulties of the march it also added immensely to the beauty of the 115landscape. As we wound along the heights we could hear the Torrent de Pareys in its deep cañon bed, thundering down in flood to the sea, and we found the Gorch Blau filled with a rushing whirl of foaming emerald-green water instead of containing—as it often does—a supply so scanty as hardly to deserve the name of torrent at all.

Towering fern-clad cliffs close in upon a ravine a few yards only in width, through which the water dashes at racing speed with a noise that prevents one from hearing oneself speak. An ancient pack-bridge spans the stream, and a path cut in the side of the water-worn cliff leads through the gorge into a broad open valley—a valley of desolation, ringed round with walls of bare grey rock, and strewn with innumerable stones, amongst which sheep and goats pick up a scanty living. For another hour we followed the course of the stream, now flowing tranquilly over a pebbly bed, and then reached a spot known as the Pla de Cuba—a higher valley among the hills, through which runs the path to Sollér, five hours distant. Here we made a two hours’ halt, and while the mules ate carob beans and cropped the coarse carritx grass covering the hillside, we explored the rocky slopes in search of the pink orchises and white cyclamen that grow here in profusion.

These high regions have a far larger annual rainfall than the rest of the island, and the comparative dampness of the atmosphere is seen in the mossy trunks and fern-clad limbs of the ilex woods, as also in the unusual 116girth of the trees—one grand old ilex, said to be the largest tree in Majorca, having a diameter of fully eight feet.

Clouds gather every evening upon the mountain tops around Lluch, and the plateau itself, sixteen hundred feet above sea-level, is often shrouded in fog for days together. In bad weather a stay at the monastery is by no means enjoyable, and when we woke on the second morning and found the rain falling fast, we were not sorry to think that the galaréta we had ordered from Inca to fetch us would arrive in an hour or so. Our shoes and skirts had never dried thoroughly since the soaking they got on our ride from Pollensa, and the unwarmed rooms felt miserably chilly.

Going across to the restaurant, where we breakfasted at an icy marble-topped table, we found four young Frenchmen, who had arrived overnight, stamping their feet on the cold stone floor and bitterly bewailing their fate; they had come with the sole object of seeing the Gorch Blau—and now, not only was the expedition out of the question, but they were imprisoned in this dismal place—for voila! by this frightful weather it was impossible even to depart. What to do! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!

We could offer little comfort beyond suggesting that some misguided visitor might turn up during the morning, in whose conveyance they could make their escape—a contingency which both they and we felt to be very unlikely ... but even as we spoke, we saw to our surprise two empty carriages cross the green and draw up before the monastery.

“The Pla de Cuba is a high valley through which runs the mule path to Soller, five hours distant.”

(page 115)

“Now and again we got a peep of the plain and its white town far below....”

(page 117)

117Two blacks may not make a white—but two mistakes may result in a remarkably good arrangement. Owing to a misunderstanding with our late host of Pollensa—who, it must be remembered, spoke nothing but Majorcan—a galaréta had been sent up from La Puebla for us, besides the one which we ourselves had ordered from Inca. Behold, then, a solution of the difficulty! We stowed ourselves into one carriage—our four enchanted fellow-visitors into the other—and away we bowled towards Inca, a two hours’ drive on a splendid road engineered in giddy spirals down the mountain side, with ever and again a peep of the plain and its white town far below us, seen through a break in the hills.

As we get down into the zone of olives again, a warmer air meets us—the rain has been left behind, and we are once more in sunshine; passing the picturesque village of Selva, with its church perched on the very top of a hill, we soon find ourselves at Inca—a large and prosperous-looking town of fine stone houses and shops.

Here we took the train for Palma, and packed ourselves and our valises into a little first-class compartment which we shared with an aristocratic-looking old gentleman travelling with a large wicker basket, apparently containing the week’s wash, and with a lady in a graceful black mantilla, who had a market basket, and a big bundle done up in a check tablecloth. She was evidently leaving home for a few days, and many and anxious were 118the parting messages given to the two honest servant-girls who stood at the carriage window and with a hearty embrace bade their mistress goodbye before the train started.

The terms upon which master and servant meet in Majorca—and I fancy all over Spain—are very much freer than with us.

Palma at the end of April is a very different town from the Palma of a few weeks ago; the trees along the Borne are greening fast, and the country is a mass of leafage. The swifts have arrived, and are wheeling and screaming over the town in thousands; the masses of dwarf blue iris by the seashore are over, but the waist-high corn is spangled with poppies and corn daisies, gladioli, and a handsome crimson and yellow scrophularia. The roads are deep in dust—the river dry as a bone. Our rooms maintain a steady temperature of 66° Fahrenheit, and the heat in the middle of the day is already sufficient to make us appreciate the draughtiness of the cool, narrow streets of the town.

Palm Sunday is celebrated by a palm service in the cathedral, and by a palm fair—the Fiesta de Rámos. At the palm service the bishop, mitred and coped, and accompanied by priests, choristers, mace-bearers, and all the dignitaries of the cathedral, processes around the outside of the building—and all carry consecrated palm branches in their hands. These palms are afterwards 119distributed amongst the townspeople, who fasten them to their house-fronts and balconies as a protection against lightning.

The Fiesta de Rámos takes place in the Rambla, where for three days the wide gravelled walk is occupied by a double row of wooden booths, between which a seething throng of townspeople streams up and down; there are toys and sweets and fruit stalls—dolls and dolls’ furniture, and charming baskets of all sizes, down to the familiar covered market basket made in smallest miniature by the neatest of fingers; there are merry-go-rounds and a Japanese giant, drums, trumpets, and squeaking whistles, and for three days there is a pandemonium of noisy instruments which to the children is the seventh heaven of delight.

In the spring, too, the annual swearing-in of the new recruits takes place, and is a picturesque sight; all the troops in the town—cavalry, infantry, and artillery—are assembled on the great Plaza Santa Catalina outside the walls, where is erected a large red and yellow marquee surmounted by a royal crown and flanked by cannon, stacked rifles, and warlike trophies of swords and bayonets. Inside the tent is an altar with lighted candles, and when all the high civil and military officials of the town have arrived, mass is celebrated—the elevation of the Host being marked by three shrill bugle calls, at which the whole body of troops and spectators fall on one knee and uncover—the cavalry lowering their swords.

120After this, a priest walks round the lines, and halting opposite each regiment reads a short address, at the close of which a simultaneous assent bursts forth from the ranks of the new conscripts. When all have been sworn in, the recruits—who on this occasion numbered three or four hundred—defile in front of the colours, kissing the flag and uncovering as they go by.

And with this the ceremony is over for the year.

The small steamer that plies three times a week—weather permitting—between Palma and the island of Iviza does so wholly in vain as far as foreign visitors are concerned. I think if the whole annals of the Grand Hotel were searched they would hardly produce a single record of a stranger having gone to Iviza, or, if he did, of having ever come back to tell the tale.

It was obvious that the only way of finding out anything about the island and its inhabitants was to go there ourselves, and, prompted by curiosity, we one fine day boarded the noonday boat and set forth on our voyage of exploration, our only life-line a letter of introduction to one Sebastian Roig, keeper of the Fonda de la Marina at Iviza—a letter full of greeting and amiability, with a civil postscript to the effect that our blood would be required at his hands if evil befell us during our stay in the island.

Away we went. Once outside the bay the little Isleño rolled horribly, and we ourselves remained prostrate 122below, till at eight o’clock in the evening we felt the boat come to a standstill and heard the anchor being let down; whereupon we arose and came on deck, thinking that the worst was over and that we could now step on shore.

Bitterly were we disappointed!

Neither quay nor shore was in sight, for owing to the rough sea we had not been able to enter the harbour at all, but were tossing up and down half a mile from the pier. It was pitch dark and raining hard. Some fishermen in glistening oilskins were unloading tunny from a bobbing, lateen-sailed felucca alongside, and we could hear the thuds of the stiff, heavy fish being thrown on board. The dim light of a lantern fell upon a party of broad-hatted peasants collected on the wet deck, who one by one were vanishing over the ship’s side and dropping into a cockleshell of a boat that pranced about below. Presently it was full, and backing away from the steamer it disappeared, with a steady splash of oars, into the darkness.

Such, then, was to be our landing at Iviza! For three-quarters of an hour we waited, looking out at the slashing rain and feeling so unutterably miserable that, had it been possible—even at this eleventh hour—to turn back to Palma, we should assuredly have turned. But it was not possible, as the Isleño was bound for Valencia, and when the boat came back for the third time to fetch us and one native gentleman—the only passengers left on board—there was nothing for it but to grope our way to 123the wet, slippery ladder and from thence to drop either into the tossing boat, or, as seemed far more probable, into the sea.

And now, in this blackest moment of our whole journey, appeared a deus ex machina in the shape of the aforementioned señor; prompted by the kindness of his heart, and perhaps not unmoved by the sight of two very forlorn strangers, he took us in charge and reassured us; there would be no danger at all, he said, if we would cling firmly to the chain at the foot of the steps and wait for the boatmen to catch us; he would tell them to be careful, and as for our valises, a boy would come up and fetch them when we were safely in the boat. He helped us down the swaying ladder, and unseen arms clutched us and dropped us on to a seat, where we sat down in two large puddles. Our unknown friend jumped in after us, and the silent oarsmen pulled away from the black hull looming overhead, and rowed us across the inky, swirling water to the quay, where a row of twinkling lights along the harbour’s edge heralded the town.

Landing at a flight of steps, we paid the boatmen their fee of two and a half pesetas, and then splashed away in mud and darkness to the inn, where our new acquaintance left us after promising to look us up on the morrow. Dinner was going on in the big comedór on the ground floor—the company consisting of a number of Ivizan residents and some officers in uniform, with all of whom we exchanged salutations as we took our seats 124at the long table d’hôte. Never was food more welcome than that set before us. Half an hour later—wet and tired, but no longer hungry—we went upstairs, and were shown into a large red-tiled room, arranged in the Spanish fashion with two alcoves, shut off by glass doors, containing each an excellent bed. Unpacking our valises, we were soon fast asleep, fully prepared to take a more cheerful view of things on the morrow.

But, alas and alas! when we woke and went to the window the prospect was as dispiriting as ever. The fonda stood on the very edge of the water, and we looked out upon a landlocked port shrouded in fog. It was still raining, and the leaden sky was merged into a leaden sea spattered with raindrops. A few seagulls drifted past the window, uttering melancholy cries, and the only sign of human life was a solitary old woman who was fishing patiently from her front doorstep, seated under a large umbrella.

At this juncture a voice at the keyhole announced breakfast, and going out on to the landing we found tea and hot buttered toast laid for us on a little table. The tea possessed in a high degree the primary essential of good drinking-water—absolute tastelessness; but the buttered toast was comforting, and as we ate it we discussed the situation seriously.

“Iviza is massed high above the harbour, the lower town separated by a sharply-marked line of fortification from the upper town—the old Jevitzah of the Moors.”

(page 125)

“... a good view is obtained over the bay to where the pale grey silhouette of the distant lighthouse divides sea and sky.”

(page 125)

125Here we were in Iviza, with no possibility of getting away for the next thirty-six hours, when the Isleño would call on her return from Valencia. The weather looked hopeless, but if we were going to allow ourselves to be influenced by it we should in all probability end by seeing nothing at all, and our eight hours’ crossing would have been in vain; our clothes were already so wet that they need not be taken into account; and after considering all these points we decided to sally forth and look about us.

Hardly had we defied the Fates when they relented. The sky became lighter, the clouds began to clear away, and as we left our inn a welcome gleam of sunshine broke out, at sight of which all the ships lying at anchor in the harbour with one accord spread out their wet sails to dry.

At the end of the mole a man was fishing in the shelter of the great breakwater some twenty feet in height, and thinking that from the summit we might obtain a good view of the town we asked him if there was any means of scaling it. Courteously raising his hat, he replied that the señoras would find no other escalera than the broken end of the breakwater itself—a nearly vertical face of stone blocks, each the size of a grand piano—which he immediately proceeded to climb, carrying our camera and tripod in one hand. With his help I also reached the top, from whence a good general view of the town is obtained, as well as over the bay to where the pale-grey silhouette of the distant lighthouse divides sea and sky.

Very picturesque is Iviza, massed high above the harbour—the lower town, chiefly inhabited by fishing folk, separated by a sharply marked line of fortification 126from the upper town, the old Jevitzah of the Moors. Crowning the highest point stands the fortified cathedral, built almost immediately after the expulsion of the infidels, and adjoining it is the citadel, enclosing within its walls the governor’s residence, and barracks for a hundred men.

To the upper town we presently ascended, escorted by our waiter, who had been sent by our host—mindful, probably, of the postscript to our letter of introduction—to attend us. Inquisitive faces appeared at balconies and doorways as we picked our way through the narrow, muddy streets of the lower town. Purveyors of drinking water were going from house to house with donkey-carts laden with earthenware jars; scores of cats feasted on remnants of fish in the gutter, and the melancholy Ivizan hound roamed his native alleys like some canine shade in search of the happy hunting grounds. Crossing a drawbridge we pass under the fortified gateway built in the reign of Philip II.—“Catholic and most invincible king of Spain and the East and West Indies”—and ascend by a steep cobbled path to the summit of the town. Many of the houses are extremely ancient looking, and have carved lintels and mullions, or the arms of Aragon cut in stone upon their walls. Passing the prison, where a bored official was leaning out of the window and yawning heavily, we entered the courtyard of the citadel—after giving up our camera to the sentry on guard—and sat down on a low bastion carpeted with sweet alyssum to enjoy the panorama around us.

“Purveyors of drinking-water were going from house to house with donkey carts laden with jars of porous earthenware....”

(page 126)

“... Flat-roofed, oriental-looking houses that resemble great cubes of chalk—a form of architecture which is a legacy from the Moors.”

(page 127)

127From this height Formentara and all the lesser rocky islets that compose the Pityusæ group are clearly discerned out at sea. The general aspect of Iviza itself is that of low, wooded hills. Cutting straight across the island is the long white road leading to St. Antonio on the western coast, twelve miles distant, and some six miles to the south of us glisten the great salt works, the famous salinas of Iviza.

To St. Antonio we drove in the afternoon. It was Holy Week, during which no carriage is allowed to enter the town, and we had to walk out to the end of the street where a little carréta awaited us; it was driven by a comic looking countryman, and drawn by a spirited little grey horse, a caballo de carréra, one of the racing trotters for which the islanders have a great partiality. Packed into this small and fragile conveyance, the driver and our invaluable waiter in front, ourselves squeezed into the little side-seats behind, with every symptom of approaching cramp, we announced ourselves ready to start.

Skirting the town we struck inland along a broad and splendid road, which for the first few miles is comparatively flat and then rises to a kind of table-land in the centre of the island, to fall away again towards the further coast. The plain is thick with olive groves, date palms, fig and almond orchards. Snow-white houses nestle amongst dark clumps of pines—flat-roofed, oriental-looking houses that resemble great cubes of chalk, with an arcade of roundheaded arches opening into 128a court on the ground floor, and above this a broad, open gallery where the inhabitants can sit during the noonday heat. This windowless form of architecture is a legacy of the Moors, and the Ivizan peasants are said to have preserved the characteristics of their Moorish predecessors to a higher degree than the inhabitants of either of the sister isles have done. The town-dweller or fisherman of Iviza—generally of Spanish extraction—is said to draw a sharp distinction between himself and the peasants of the interior, whom he looks upon as semi-barbarians. Their boats are a subject of great merriment to him, and he makes a point of laughing heartily if he meets a party of country-folk afloat.

“At sea,” says the fisherman, “I have no fear of the peasants—but ashore! they are worse than the Moors!”

With a character for being turbulent, hot-tempered, and ill-educated, the Ivizans present a great contrast to the mild Majorcans. Murders are not infrequent among them, the almost invariable cause being a quarrel over cards or the jealousy of rival suitors.

Poor and proud, the peasants look with scant favour on any member of their community who may have grown rich and who sets up to be a person of consequence on that account. “Heaven preserve us,” says the Ivizan, “from the shoe that has become a boot!” There are no really wealthy families in the island, and outside the capital we saw no good houses. The ground is far less highly cultivated than the Majorcan plains, and Dame Nature asserts herself in a wealth of wild flowers; the 129fields are red with poppies and blue with grape-hyacinths, and on either side of the road runs a brilliant border composed of pink tufts of allium swaying on slender stalks, pale dandelions, dwarf iris, charlock, red dwarf ranunculus, small yellow cistus and a bright blue borage. As the road rises we drive through undulating slopes where the juniper and various conifers grow. The hillsides are covered with the maritime pine—whence the islands derived their old name of Pine islands—and large open stretches of uncultivated ground, intersected by rough walls of reddish stone, are given up to the great fennel, seen here for the first time, heath, asphodel, pink and white cistus, and many other shrubs.

All this is very unlike a Majorcan landscape, but still more striking are the parties of country folk that we meet upon the road. It is a fête day, and every one is in grande tenue; whole families are coming to the town or walking back to their villages—bouquets of bright colour, purple, blue, yellow, pink, green, and red—quaint figures, such as one dimly remembers having met with in bygone days on nursery plates, and having accepted as truthful representations of that romantic race—the foreign peasant. Here they all were as large as life.

The women wear a dark bodice with long sleeves, over which is folded a shawl with a border of gay-coloured embroidery worked on black silk. The skirt is immensely full, and often accordion-pleated, and it is worn over half a dozen petticoats which distend it to the dimensions of a crinoline, and make the wearer look high waisted and 130very stout. It is cut short in front, to display six inches of red or pink underskirt ornamented with scrolls of black braid, and on top of all comes a very short bright-coloured apron, which gives the women a three-decker appearance. The hair is worn in a plait down the back and smoothly parted on the forehead, the headkerchief being often embroidered with gay silk flowers. A heavy gold chain is sometimes worn round the neck, and the shoes are of white canvas and resemble Moorish slippers, being turned up in a point at the toe.

The men are hardly less picturesque. Their velveteen trousers of peacock-blue, brown, or purple are cut tight at the knee and spreading at the foot, like those of our costers or sailors. The coat of dark-blue cotton is very short and shaped something like a blouse, being gathered into pleats at the collar and hanging loose and full all round. They wear a white shirt with a vivid pink or blue sash, a broad-brimmed felt hat with ribbons hanging down behind, and their costume is completed by a fringed shawl in red and green plaid which they hang round their neck.

The little girls are precise replicas of their mothers—long skirt, apron, headkerchief and all—so that at a distance it is impossible to say whether it is a party of children or of women coming towards one, and it was often a surprise to see a small matronly figure skip suddenly across a ditch with an agility beyond her apparent years.

“It is a fête-day, and the Ivizan peasants are all en grande tenue....”

(page 130)

“Very Corot-like is the landscape, with Santa Eulália crowning a small eminence by the seashore.”

(page 134)

131When we reached St. Antonio, a village of clean whitewashed houses, with reefs of bedrock cropping up in the streets, we got out our camera, and were soon surrounded by a friendly group of peasants fully as much interested in our appearance as we were in theirs. Yet in no way did their curiosity get the better of their manners. We found them quite willing to be photographed if we wished it, but the posing of a group was unaccompanied by any of the bashful giggling with which our own yokels would meet such a request coming from a foreigner. Earnest and dignified, quite devoid of self-consciousness, and not easily moved to mirth, the Ivizans struck us as the most perfect-mannered people we had yet met.

The mere fact of our being English was a great recommendation in the eyes of the natives, for the forthcoming marriage of King Alfonso with an English princess was of course the topic of the day, and all classes were equally delighted with the match. As compatriots of their future Queen we therefore met with an unusually favourable reception, and though I am sure none of the peasants had the remotest idea where England was situated we found a great bond of union to consist in the fact that both we and they lived on an island.

Many were the questions we had to answer—Did one reach England before getting to America? Was England far from London?

One man left his plough to come and tell us that he liked the English very much, which was a little surprising when one considered that till that moment he had probably 132never set eyes on any one of our nationality. We heard subsequently, however, that some years ago an Englishman hailing from Birmingham had stayed in the island, and though, to our host’s surprise, we could not supply the unknown traveller’s name, we were shown an unmistakable proof of his visit in the form of an English book—the only existing specimen in Iviza.

We got back to our inn in time for dinner, and found the same company again assembled at table. The Fonda de la Marina is the fashionable restaurant of the town, and it caters for a considerable clientèle among the residents in addition to its own guests. The cookery was doubtless excellent, but the dishes were so wholly native in character that we perhaps failed to appreciate them as fully as did our fellow convives. During Holy Week the fare is maigre, and our menu that night was the following:—

A tureen-full of shellfish, stewed—shells and all—with rice and fragments of lobster.

A mess of pottage, very thick, containing white beans and cabbage.

Another mess—chunks of salt cod, with eggs, potatoes and peas.

Whole fishes, boiled, with yellow sauce.

A sweet cake.

Cheese, raisins, and oranges.

133The following morning we drove to Santa Eulália. There are only two really firstrate roads in Iviza—one to Sant Antonio, the twelve-mile drive we had already taken, the other—slightly longer—to San Juan, at the northeastern extremity of the island; it was in this direction that we set off at eight o’clock.

The view of the town as we skirted the harbour was extremely striking. The great sails of the merchantmen lying at anchor in the bay shone white against the deep blue sea beyond, and the low sun was catching the angles of the fortifications and casting cobalt shadows upon the snowy, irregular houses clustering upon the hill crowned by the campanile of the cathedral. Market folk were coming into town—countrywomen in broad be-ribboned hats of palmito plait, mounted on mules and donkeys with laden panniers—a sight never seen in Majorca. Innumerable frogs croaked with jangling grotesque jollity from hidden reservoirs in the rich huerta, or garden, of vines and almonds, beans and wheat, through which we were driving. Presently the road rises, and winds through pretty wooded slopes and copses of conifers. Here and there are stacked great heaps of pine bark, used for tanning the fishing nets. Sheep seek invisible sustenance upon stony red ground, and young pigs sport in the shade of budding fig-trees, the prevailing principle seeming to be to turn beasts out to graze wherever they will do the least harm.

Turning aside from the main road we take a rough track leading down to the coast. Very Corot-like is the 134landscape before us, framed by the stems of gnarled olive or dark knotted carob. On a small eminence by the seashore stands Santa Eulália—a frankly oriental-looking village of blank white walls and blue shadows, ringed round with a fence of prickly pear. By a steep zigzag path one climbs to the old fortress-church upon the summit, and enters the building through an immense vaulted and enclosed crypt-like porch, supported on massive pillars and capable of holding a couple of hundred people. In the Middle Ages this church, like most of those in the island, formed the stronghold of the villagers during the frequent piratical raids, and inside the porch is the well from which the besieged drew their water supply.

Stepping through a side door one enters the cemetery—a tiny enclosure upon the hillside, with nameless wooden crosses half buried in grass and a tangle of yellow daisies. Here the dead lie, under sunshine and sea-breezes—and from here the eye ranges far over land and sea, over wooded hills, undulating red plains, palm-trees and rocky islets. Commenting upon the beauty of the scene to our faithful waiter, he admitted that it was indeed a precious one—a complimentary term which he applied indiscriminately to views, roads, the weather, or the condition of the sea—but far more precious, he hastened to assure us, would be the sight of the river which we should presently be vouchsafed.

“The old fortress-church of S. Eulália has a vaulted porch capable of holding a couple of hundred people.”

(page 134)

“These Phœnician tombs have a shaft cut in the live rock to a depth of some six feet, whence a low sloping gallery leads to the subterranean burial chamber.”

(page 137)

135The river was unfortunately not looking its best, being very nearly dry; but we duly inspected its rocky bed, fringed with oleander and dotted with water pools, and expressed our admiration of the fine stone bridge that spans it. The pride with which the natives regard their Rio de Santa Eulália is due to the fact that it is the only river in the island.

We went back to Iviza at racing speed, the little horse trotting fifteen miles an hour on the flat, and straining every nerve to raise his average. We feared that it would over tire him to take us to the Salt Works in the afternoon, but his owner laughed at the idea, and assured us that the good little beast would be quite ready to start again after a two hours’ rest. We were somewhat amused when, at the end of our stay, we received the bill for our three long drives—a bill for fifteen pesetas, exactly the sum that we should have paid for a half-day’s excursion at Palma, where carriage hire is by no means cheap.

“The donkey makes out a different bill from the driver,” says a Minorcan proverb, and whether our little horse considered his three silver douros an adequate compensation for the work he had done I cannot say—but his owner was completely satisfied. The Ivizans are as yet—and long may they remain so!—too unsophisticated to charge special prices to a foreigner. A striking instance of their natural honesty occurred on the night of our arrival. I had given a peseta to the sailor lad who had brought down our luggage from the deck of the Isleño and put it into the boat, and to my surprise he handed me back the coin at once. Thinking that it was either a bad one, or that he expected more, I asked our friend who 136was with us in the boat, what I ought to give; but he replied that the boy had already received threepence from himself for carrying the luggage, that nothing further was expected, and that the peseta had been returned because it was considered too much.

Our third and last expedition in Iviza was destined to be the most enjoyable of all. Our kind friend—whom we found to be one of the municipal officials of the town—volunteered to accompany us to the Salt Works, and en passant to show us the recently-discovered Phœnician necropolis, in the excavation of which he was deeply interested. Although it had long been known that the Phœnicians colonised the Balearics—the very name of the islands being derived, as some think, from their god Baal—it is only of late years that actual proofs of their occupation have been obtained. Iviza was said to have remained under their sway for a thousand years, and to have had a capital with a population of a hundred thousand souls, and the Phœnician cemetery which three years ago was discovered just outside the town goes far to substantiate this theory.

Alighting from our carréta at the foot of a rocky reef immediately to the south of the town, we climbed the hillside and reached a grove of ancient olive-trees growing in the crevices of a great granite outcrop. The whole hillside is honeycombed with rock tombs—they are everywhere, on the hill, and on the lower ground—filled in with earth, built over, planted over; it is the burial ground of a nation. More than a thousand tombs have 137already been located, and of these some sixty have been investigated at the cost of two or three Ivizan gentlemen who are interested in the subject.

The general type of tomb is an oblong hole or shaft, cut in the live rock and descending to a depth of six to eight feet, whence a low sloping gallery leads to the subterranean burial chamber. Each chamber contains one, two, or even three massive stone sarcophagi, made from a kind of white limestone found on the neighbouring island of Formentara. Not a tomb has yet been opened but what it has already been violated—it is presumed by the Vandals. The heavy sarcophagus lids have been pushed aside or broken, and any contents of value—if such there were—long ago abstracted. But of what the Vandals overlooked or despised, there yet remains enough to rejoice the heart of an archæologist, and a small museum has already been created in Iviza for the reception of the finds as the work of excavation goes on. Bones and skulls, once clothed in Tyrian purple and fine linen, are collected and ranged neatly upon shelves. Hundreds of amphoræ are found, each sarcophagus containing two, placed in a depression at the feet of the dead, while others seem to have served as cinerary urns for the remains of children.

There is a large collection of red pottery—busts, statuettes, and masks—some of the latter with an Egyptian cast of countenance, others of a comic type with glass or metal rings in the nose. There are some beautiful tear-bottles of iridescent glass, coloured with 138metallic oxides, and delicate pottery jars for ointment. There are shallow open oil lamps, shaped like a shell, and bronze rings and seals. That very day the workmen had unearthed a pretty ram’s head with curling horns, of fragile white earthenware, which our friend showed us. He also had in his possession what I should suppose to be the most valuable find yet made—an engraved scarab of dark green hæmatite, comprising on its tiny surface the figure of a man on horseback, with a spear in his hand and a dog by his side, the whole cut with the delicacy of the finest intaglio.

No inscriptions have as yet come to light, but as each tomb is opened the hope revives that it may prove to be in an unrifled condition and contain something that may throw a fresh light upon the burial customs of a long-vanished people. An illustrated pamphlet dealing with the Ivizan discoveries up to the present was in process of preparation at the time of our visit, and I much regret not having received a copy in time to acquaint my reader with fuller details regarding this necropolis than we were able to gather during our very brief stay.

Continuing our drive to the Salt Works, we pass the old fortified church of San Jorge, standing alone amongst the fields, its battlemented walls glistening snow-white against the distant hills. This church was built in the fourteenth century, and has withstood many an assault by the Moors.

“The old fortified church of San Jorge was built in the 14th century, and has withstood many an assault by the Moors.”

(page 138)

“The salt pans cover an area of six square miles, ... and the shining islands of salt are stacked upon stone platforms in the water.”

(page 139)

139Another hour, over a ludicrously bad road, brings us to the low-lying Salinas near the coast; one might almost fancy oneself in a miniature Switzerland, for these salt-pans—which are said to have been known to the Phœnicians—cover an area of six square miles, and resemble inland lakes in whose unruffled surface the surrounding hills are mirrored. There are thirteen great estancos or shallow basins, fringed with glittering salt-crystals and intersected by sea-water canals, and causeways along which a little train puffs breathlessly towards the shining islands of salt stacked on stone platforms in the water; filling its trucks—each of which contains a ton—it hurries back to the embarking station, and pulling up on a staging running out into the sea, tips its load down a wooden shoot into a barge below, where bare-legged men—half salted up—are busy levelling the white mound, and presently convey it to a big Norwegian steamer lying in the harbour. Other salt boats are bound for Russia, or for America. One would think there was enough salt to supply the whole world; it lies in deep snowdrifts on the quay and is piled up into mountains by men who look like black flies beside it. The busiest time is during the summer, when the water in the shallow basins evaporates and the deposited salt is collected, but at that season the locality is considered unhealthy—the combined heat and moisture breeding malaria and a plague of mosquitoes.

By evening light the Salinas are very beautiful. The colours of the sunset are repeated in the water, and the dark banks and rushes stand out in sharp-cut silhouette against the soft purple of the hills around. Out at sea 140rises the double fang of the island rock Détra—an inaccessible pinnacle, in the summit of which the wild bees have nested from time immemorial; the whole rock is said to be sticky with honey, which at times descends in rivulets even to the water’s edge.

It was dusk when we regained our inn, and at ten o’clock that same night the red lights of the Isleño were seen gliding into the bay, and we were summoned to go on board. Taking leave of our most kind friend—who, not content with having done the honours of his native island, insisted upon our accepting some charming Phœnician relics as souvenirs of our stay—we went down to the quay and were seen off by our host and the faithful waiter, the latter remarking, as he shook hands with us, that we might safely rely upon the night being a precious one.

The sea was indeed like glass. The little steamer lay within fifty yards of the shore, and not a ripple stirred as we were rowed across in company with a tunny boat just in from Formentara—the fish standing on their heads in baskets on the deck, their big tails sticking up like ammunition for some torpedo boat. On an even keel we glided out into the night, and awoke at five the next morning to see the red watch tower of Porto Pi slip past the port hole. A fiery dawn was breaking over Palma as we went on shore; half a silver moon hung in the sky, and the masts and rigging of the shipping in the harbour were cut like a fine etching against the colourless mass of the town.

141Even at this early hour the day’s work had begun; scavengers’ carts were going their rounds; yawning octroi men were astir; women were already fetching water from the tortoise-fountain on the Borne, and as we reached the hotel a belated watchman was making off with lantern and staff, to hide in some quiet retreat till dusk again brought him out to his bat-like life.

Our visit to Iviza was already a thing of the past, but the little island that had before been only a name to us was now a very definite memory of pleasant days spent in the open air, of friendly and picturesque natives, of sunshine and charming scenery—while even our unpropitious landing had turned out to be a blessing in disguise, in acquainting us with the resident whose kindness contributed so largely to the pleasant recollections which we shall always retain of our stay in Iviza.

April was now nearly over and our holiday in the Balearics was drawing to its close. We had seen Majorca pretty thoroughly, we had had a charming glimpse of Iviza, and it only remained to spend a few days in Minorca to complete our tour of the islands. For fifty pesetas two first-class passages were secured for us on the Isla de Menorca, leaving Palma on April 26th, and at half-past six that evening we went on board, prepared to endure the eleven hours’ crossing to Port Mahon.

To the last it was doubtful whether the boat would start that night; a high west wind was blowing, the bay was flecked with white horses, and the clothes hung out on the housetops were clapping wildly, as if in exultation. But start we eventually did—perhaps owing to the fact that the Governor of the Balearics was on board, a personage of sufficient importance to allay any apprehension on our part as to the voyage, and indeed to act as a practical guarantee of safety, since, though the wind and the waves may be no 143respecters of persons, it remains an undoubted fact that governors of provinces get drowned far less frequently than do obscure individuals.

At half-past five the following morning we entered the famous Minorcan port, and steamed up it for three miles before sighting Mahon, which occupies a commanding position on the edge of the precipitous rock walls of the harbour. Disembarking at a little quay below the town, we confided our valises to a porter and followed him up a steep, cobbled street to the Hotel Bustamante, a very respectable inn in the higher quarter, where we were promptly accommodated with rooms and board at a pension of six pesetas a day.

Seen at close quarters, Mahon is singularly uninteresting and commonplace. If the architecture of Palma is essentially Spanish, and that of Iviza Moorish, Mahon must be put down as painfully and typically English. The long, straight streets of ugly houses, without balconies or outside shutters, the dreary vistas of grey cobbles and foot pavements recall the outskirts of one of our own manufacturing towns; there are the same mean-looking painted street doors, the same sash windows, even the same lace curtains inside. We were shown the exercise ground, with its row of British-built barracks, the hideous Paséo, or Promenade, which resembles a cinder track, and the favourite drive along the harbour, a dismally unattractive road. The sole trace of the picturesque that the town can lay claim to consists of one small fragment of the old fortifications 144that spans a modern street—a turreted archway known as Barbarossa’s Gate, in memory of the corsair who sacked the city in the sixteenth century.

The inhabitants of Mahon share the general commonplaceness of their surroundings. They have neither the dignified bearing of the Majorcans nor their good looks; the men are not clean shaven like those of the other islands, but wear beards, and sometimes whiskers. The style of dress is also very inferior, and here and there we met with signs of actual untidiness among the women—frowsy heads and ill-fitting blouses, such as we had not set eyes on since landing in the Balearics.

Something of this lack of personal neatness may perhaps be set down to the tempestuous winds from which Mahon suffers almost perpetually, and which nearly tore our hats from our heads and our clothes from our backs as we drove out towards the mouth of the harbour to visit the ruined fortress of San Felípe. San Felípe is a strong position commanding the approach to Port Mahon upon the southern side, and it played an important part in the English occupation of Minorca. Twice captured by the British and twice retaken, it fell for the second time in the year 1782, when General Murray was forced to capitulate to a combined French and Spanish force under De Crillon, after a long and tedious siege which the allies had hoped to avoid by the offer of a bribe of £100,000 to the English general.

It was during this siege that the cook of the Duc de Crillon earned for himself undying fame by inventing as 145an adjunct to his master’s salads the sauce termed Mahonnaise—the familiar mayonnaise of all cookery books to come.

We had hoped to find objects of pictorial as well as sentimental value among the ruined fortifications, rock galleries, and nameless British graves at San Felípe, of which the guide book speaks, but our hopes were destined to be rudely dashed, for after a most uninteresting drive of a couple of miles between untidy stone walls we were unceremoniously stopped by a sentry, who informed us that no one was allowed to approach the fort without a permit from the commandant of Mahon. For our consolation he added that in any case there was nothing to be seen, as the ruins of the old fort had been replaced by modern defence works. A more unpicturesque scene could indeed hardly be imagined than the site of San Felípe now presents—a bleak headland traversed by long lines of masonry and intersecting trenches, with grass-grown embankments sloping down to the old sea wall on the side of the harbour, from whence one looks across to the new fortress built on the opposite peninsula.

Disappointed, we retraced our steps. It was now evident that neither Mahon nor its immediate surroundings would produce anything that need detain us in the town, and we decided to set out without further delay in search of those relics of a far older occupation than that of the British—the menhirs and dolmens of a pre-historic race.

146These megalithic remains—of which there are said to be some two hundred groups in all—are found scattered over the whole of the southern half of the island; but the average traveller will be wise to confine himself to those specimens only which present most perfectly the different types of monument erected, i.e., the tumulus or talayót, the altar, the enclosure of monoliths, and the megalithic dwelling. Some of the finest specimens of all occur in the neighbourhood of Mahon itself, and can be visited in the course of a drive extending over some four hours. Acting on the recommendation of our very friendly host we chartered a galaréta driven by a swarthy native who knew the country thoroughly. Our host, to our great surprise, spoke very fair English, and even our driver could say “Yes,” which was a great advance upon anything we had yet met with.

It is singular that although so many English customs and traditions have survived amongst the Mahonese—who are dubbed Inglesos by the rest of the island—yet the only island to agree with ourselves in its rule of the road should be Majorca, both Minorca and Iviza following the opposite and continental fashion.

Mounting our galaréta we bumped and crashed away over the worn paving of the town and emerged by the Barbarossa gate into the open country. The surroundings of Mahon are not beautiful; flat, windswept, and practically treeless, save where a stunted olive-tree hunches its back to the blast, the most conspicuous feature of the 147landscape is its countless miles of stone walls. If we had thought Majorca stony, it was only because we had not seen Minorca. Majorca is a land of fields intersected by walls—Minorca a land of walls interspersed with fields. Once off the high road one becomes involved in a labyrinth of narrow lanes bordered by stone walls four or five feet thick, and varying in height from six to ten feet, between which one wanders as in an overgrown aqueduct. Every field, however small—and some of them are patches but a few yards square—is enclosed by a prodigious rampart of loose stones, within which cows and donkeys graze as though at the bottom of a quarry. These walls serve a double purpose in sheltering the crops and the animals from the wind, and in relieving the land of a certain proportion of superabundant stone.

As may be imagined, a cross-country tramp in Minorca is attended with considerable difficulty, and in visiting the talayóts it is essential to have a guide who knows his way about and who can direct one through the maze of obstacles that has to be threaded in attaining some tumulus that rises like a landmark half a mile away. Much of the land is under wheat—the crop much behind that of Majorca—and this has to be carefully skirted, or waded through with an eye to the barest patches of ground; other fields are devoted to pasture, where handsome mauve thistles flourish abundantly in the rocky soil, in company with periwinkles, borage, yellow daisies, white clover, and sweet alyssum. As a rule the enclosures can be entered and quitted by the barréras—light wooden 148barriers kept in place by blocks of stone and removed for the passage of cattle; but occasionally we were obliged to scale the walls by means of projecting footholds built into their sides, whereat spotted cows ceased grazing, to gaze with mild surprise at the unusual spectacle of two ladies performing gymnastic feats in company with a camera and tripod.

A quarter of an hour’s arduous progression brought us to the talayót of Trepúco, said to be one of the largest in the island, but by no means that in the best preservation. The Minorcan talayóts—a word akin to atalaya, a watch-tower—consist of solid cone-shaped cairns built of roughly dressed stone blocks, often of gigantic size. These cairns range from thirty to sixty feet in diameter, and from twenty to thirty feet in height; but at close quarters they are far less conspicuous objects than might be supposed, partly owing to their general resemblance to the stone walls surrounding them, and partly to the enveloping scrub of lentiscus and oleaster which conceals their outline and lends them the appearance of a natural mound. Some of them are in an extremely dilapidated condition—others again, like the talayót of Toréllo of which a picture is given, are in almost perfect preservation. It is supposed that they are the burial cairns of chieftains, but though cinerary urns are said to have been found inside them in one or two instances, this theory alone does not satisfactorily account for other features of these curious monuments. In some of them traces of interior chambers have been discovered, others have a sloping ramp running round the outside as a means of ascent, and the talayót of Toréllo has an aperture like a window, on a level with the summit of the mound, the reason of which it is impossible to guess.

“The talayot of Torello is in almost perfect preservation ... it is supposed that they are the burial cairns of chieftains.”

(page 148)

“The upright slab of the Talato-de-Dalt must be nearly twelve feet in height ... and surrounding it are traces of a circle of monoliths of about the same height.”

(page 149)

149Not one of these tumuli has, I believe, yet been properly examined, and their purpose—whether sepulchre, watch-tower, refuge, or accessory to some strange religious rite—is still a secret, though the latter supposition finds support in the fact that where there is a talayót there is in many cases an altar in its immediate vicinity. These altars or mésas—tables, as the natives call them—are composed of two gigantic slabs of dressed stone, the one imbedded in an upright position in the ground, the other balanced horizontally upon it. The altar of Trepúco consists of two fine monoliths, the lower one measuring nearly nine feet in width and standing over seven feet out of the ground; but that of the Taláto-de-Dalt far exceeds these measurements, the upright slab being nearer twelve feet in height and proportionately wide. When the upper stone had been laid in its horizontal position it was apparently considered ill-balanced, and a prop has been added in the shape of a leaning slab surmounted by a wedge. The group of monuments at this spot is the most complete that will be found in Minorca; the tumulus itself is in a chaotic state, but the altar is of unusual size, and surrounding it are seen traces of a circle of monoliths of nearly the same height as the pedestal. Just outside this enclosure is a so-called megalithic dwelling into which one can creep on hands 150and knees; the walls are of rough stone, and two short, thick pillars, about three feet high, uphold the large slabs that form the roof. The members of the priesthood—if such they were who tenanted these modest habitations—certainly did not err on the side of luxury in their homes.

In few countries perhaps would the splendid monoliths of these altars and the tempting quarries of building material provided by these talayóts have survived destruction as they have in Minorca. The very profusion of stone, constituting not merely a drug but a curse throughout the island, has safeguarded these old monuments more effectually than any protection founded on sentiment could have done, for it has simply never been worth anybody’s while to utilise them.

All the Minorcan country-folk live in excellent stone houses, as might be supposed, and before leaving the island we had the opportunity of visiting a solitary outlying homestead tenanted by a peasant family of a superior class. Although we were fully prepared to find signs of homely comfort in the dwellings of so industrious a people as the Minorcans, yet it was a surprise to see how excellent—not to say luxurious—were the appointments of this house. Not a room but was better furnished than those of any fonda at which we had stayed. The spacious bedrooms had handsome bedsteads, large wardrobes—an article of furniture never seen in Majorca—and one of them actually contained a fine toilet-table à l’Anglaise, with a marble top and sets of small drawers. The daughter of the house 151showed us the kitchen, the dairy—with its big white cheeses destined for the Mahon market—and then she took us upstairs to the attics, where hanks of homespun yarn hung from the ceiling in company with hundreds of dried sausages and home-cured hams. In one small and otherwise empty room were half a dozen faggots carefully propped together in the centre of the floor within a ring of sheeps’ wool—a scene so suggestive of sorcery that our thoughts involuntarily turned to some magic rite connected with the mysterious cromlechs of the land. But the girl informed us that this was a depôt for live stock destined for the table—and pointing out myriads of snails adhering to the sticks she assured us that they were very excellent eating when fried.

The neatness and spotlessness of the whole place it would be impossible to exaggerate. The Minorcan housewife is popularly supposed to live with a broom in one hand and a pail of whitewash in the other, and the industry and morality of the islanders make them valued colonists in any land to which they may emigrate. Early trained to habits of thrift and diligent labour in a hard school, the peasants have no sympathy with those who think to sit under the mañana tree and yet to prosper, and the tragic fate awaiting them is thus recorded in an ancient Minorcan verse:

On April 28th we left Mahon and went to Ciudadéla on the west coast, the town which formed the capital of Minorca up to the time of the English occupation. The two towns are connected by a splendid road that runs through the very centre of the island; and as the distance is little more than thirty miles the journey can easily be accomplished by carriage in a day. We started at nine o’clock in our galaréta of the previous day; our valises were bestowed upon the front seat beside the driver, and we ourselves climbed into the closed part of the vehicle at the back, not sorry to be sheltered from the wind. We had an excellent mule, both strong and active, who trotted briskly on the flat and pegged away up the hills as though walking for a wager—a characteristic which we observed most of the mules to share.

Leaving the town we bowled away along the great main road of the island. Seen in the brilliant sunshine of an April morning, with a blue sky overhead, green crops in the fields and wild flowers spangling the wayside, even the country around Mahon becomes invested with a kind of fictitious beauty; but what the hideous desolation must be of these endless stone walls seen on a grey winter’s day or under the parching drought of summer it is hardly possible to conceive.

“Our valises were on the front seat beside the driver, and we ourselves climbed into the closed part of the galareta at the back....”

(page 152)

“The prevailing tree of Minorca is the wild olive, which turns its back to the north ... and assumes the appearance of a crumb-brush.”

(page 153)

153“When the North wind goes down the West wind is already knocking at the door,” says a Minorcan proverb, and the few trees that grow in these exposed regions are driven to the most ridiculous subterfuges in their endeavours to protect their foliage from the blasts that sweep for ever across the island. The prevailing tree is the oleaster, or wild olive, which turns its back to the north, and with bent stem and long hair all blown in one direction assumes as nearly as possible the appearance of an attenuated crumb-brush. Some of the trees are absolutely ludicrous in their contortions, and we could not help laughing at the sight of a whole row of them growing beside a low stone wall, over which they had flung themselves in their attempts to escape; falling on their hands and knees, so to speak, in the next field, they had picked themselves up again and gone on running, leaving their roots and trunks on the farther side of the wall—quite content so long as the very tips of their branches remained alive and out of reach of the dreaded north wind.

At the seventh kilometre stone out of Mahon our driver pulled up, and tying the mule to a gate, he led us across a field to show us what he called a bonito casito—a good little house—built by megalithic man.

At the base of a ruined talayót constructed of enormous stones and overgrown with ivy, we saw a small opening, about a yard in height, leading into a low passage some 154eight feet long, at the further end of which is a still smaller doorway, measuring only two feet six inches by two feet. Once through this, however, one enters a palatial abode not less than twenty feet long, seven wide, and nine high—which, although it will hardly bear comparison in point of grandeur with the stone dwellings built by the Minorcans nowadays for their pigs, was yet so immeasurably superior to the modest priestly dwelling of Taláto-de-Dalt that we concluded that we were looking upon the residence of none other than the arch-druid or high-priest himself—and that it was through this very doorway that the venerable personage used to emerge on all fours, robed in full canonicals.

Of all the talayóts that we examined this is the only one that contained an inner chamber of any size, most of the so-called megalithic dwellings consisting of small cavities or recesses that can only by a stretch of imagination be supposed to have served as human habitations.

As one approaches the centre of the island the most conspicuous object in the level landscape is the conical outline of Monte Toro, a mere molehill less than twelve hundred feet in height, but raised to the dignity of a mountain from the accident of having no rival in Minorca. Upon its summit is seen the large convent and church of the Augustines, a place of pilgrimage for the islanders. At noon we arrived at Mercadél, a tidy and commonplace little village forming a half-way house between Mahon and Ciudadéla, and here we put up for a couple of hours to rest and have luncheon. The Governor of the Balearics 155who was making the tour of Minorca in a steam diligence, arrived almost immediately after ourselves, and from our window we could watch him being received in the street by the local officials, between whom and the governor’s suite there was much hat raising and clapping on the back—the latter form of greeting being carried out mutually and simultaneously by both persons concerned, with a peculiarly genial and happy effect. The governor’s steam diligence overtook us again before we reached Ciudadéla, and our mule, taking its snorting and rattling as a challenge, responded by racing it frantically along the high road for more than a mile before he would admit himself beaten.

On leaving Mercadél we made a détour to the south by way of San Cristobal, an hour distant, where Murray’s guide-book asserts that certain “fine and curious talayóts” are to be found. Our search for these, however, proved a wildgoose chase, for all our questioning of the villagers produced nothing beyond four quite unimportant tumuli, difficult of access and in no way worth visiting—our driver remarking severely that he knew all along it would be so, since if he had not heard of the monuments we were in quest of it was quite certain they did not exist. In spite of this crushing observation we were not altogether sorry to have come to San Cristobal, for the road passes through the prettiest country we had yet seen in Minorca, undulating hills wooded with pine and ilex, and ditches full of a handsome flowering reed not unlike a small Pampas grass.

156At Ferrerías, where we rejoined the high road, the whole soil is so impregnated with iron that at a little distance one might have imagined the landscape to be tinted by a Swiss Alpenglūth—the ruddy hillsides and the dark red of the stone walls harmonising strikingly with the crimson flower of a sheet of sainfoin in the foreground. The western side of the island is in general more hilly and more timbered than the eastern coast, some clumps of tall Aleppo pines forming picturesque features in the scene.

When within a couple of miles of Ciudadéla our driver drew up, and pointed out to us a large grey mass lying in a field some little distance from the road. This was the Nau de Tudons, one of the most remarkable monuments in the island, which our guide was particularly anxious to show us; but after getting down and wrestling for a few moments with a high field-gate he returned crestfallen to the carriage to say that the gate was locked, and that it would, unfortunately, not be possible for the señoras to visit the Nau, as there was no other way of approach. Assuring him loftily that locked gates were as nothing in our eyes we got over it, to his great astonishment, and made our way across the fields towards a strange erection unlike any other we had hitherto seen.

“The Nau de Tudons is one of the most remarkable of the monuments in Minorca.”

(page 156)

“A short walk brought us to the altar of Torre Trencado....”

(page 159)

157The Nau de Tudons—nau is the patois for boat—is composed of enormous blocks of stone and built in the form of an upturned boat about thirty feet in length and twelve in height. The rounded bow points to the north, and at the base of the square stern is a so-called dwelling—a retreat barely large enough to accommodate a human being. It is supposed that the interior of the Nau itself served originally as a habitation, for the centre is partially hollow and is roofed over with gigantic slabs, most of which have now fallen in. There is something strangely pathetic about this old monument raised by a long vanished race that has left memorials of imperishable stone without a sign or a word to record who the builders were or whence they came. Mysterious and lonely the Nau stands out against the sunset sky; a couple of donkeys graze amongst clumps of spurge and asphodel, and a stonechat chacks sharply from the topmost slab of the roof; but the tide of human life has long receded from the spot—never to return.

At seven o’clock we reached Ciudadéla and drew up at the Fonda Feliciano in the Plaza Alfonso III. The sunset had cast such a glamour of crimson and gold over the white city on the seashore that we were a little disappointed to find it so essentially unromantic-looking at close quarters, but any haven was welcome after seven hours’ shaking in a galaréta. We found the inn to be chiefly frequented by persons of the class—as far as we could judge—of commercial travellers, several of whom dined at the table d’hôte that evening. The fare was ample, but the cookery far more greasy and less refined than in Majorca; the strangest medley of eatables made its appearance on the dish sometimes—the beef being garnished with potatoes, fat bacon, hunks of stewed cabbage, garbanzos—enormous white beans—aniseed cake, and goodness knows what besides, so that during 158one course we had nine different things on our plate at once, to only five of which could we put a name. Being very tired we went to bed early, our host informing us in bad English as he lighted us upstairs that as the inn was very full he could not give us a second bedroom till the following day. The fact that the house was being rebuilt, and that we should be waked at five o’clock by workmen pulling down a floor overhead, he prudently left us to find out for ourselves.

There are several excursions to be made from Ciudadéla, and the two days we spent there were amply occupied in visiting the principal megalithic remains in the neighbourhood. The talayóts of Hostal which Murray’s guide-book mentions, we found uninteresting, besides being troublesome to get to—much traversing of rocky wheatfields and stone walls being necessary before reaching them. But the drive to Torre Trencáda is well worth taking, and can be combined with a visit to Llafúda.

Starting at nine o’clock, we retraced our steps along the high road for a few miles and then turned off sharply by a cart track leading across the fields. The pastures were studded with outcrops of live rock turned to gold by a brilliant orange-coloured lichen, and innumerable tiny field flowers, red and blue pimpernels, vetches, and a minute orange marigold, spread a gay little carpet under foot. The common daisy of the Balearics is not the crimson-tipped flower of our lawns, though quite as wee and modest; it is a more fragile plant, and its flower has a faint mauve tinge which on being dried becomes a bright blue. A friend of ours at Kew told us it was the Bellium bellidioides of Linnæus.

“Acting as a kind of pylon to the pigs’ palace at Son Saura is a megalithic monument, unlike any other we saw....”

(page 163)

“In the immense stone wall at Llafuda are built two or three small megalithic dwellings....”

(page 159)

159A short walk brought us to the altar of Torre Trencádo, which is a very fine one. The horizontal stone has in its lower surface a clean cut socket which receives the head of the upright slab, but in spite of this it has needed additional support in the shape of a pillar and wedge like the mésa at Taláto-de-Dalt. One would give much to penetrate the secret of this old-world altar standing in its great solitude, wrapped in the silence of the ages. For what strange worship of sun or moon was it erected? What implacable deity demanded a human sacrifice? Does the spirit of priest or victim ever haunt the lonely monument at twilight and hovering around the symbol of an out-worn faith realise that the gods themselves have passed away in the Götterdämmerung that has descended upon the land?

The monuments at Llafúda, although exceedingly extensive, are in a state of chaotic ruin, the monoliths lying in confusion as though flung to the ground by an earthquake. The position is partially encircled by an immense stone wall, ten feet in height, in which are built two or three small megalithic dwellings. This wall is absolutely typical of those built at the present day by the Minorcans, barring the fact that its thickness is in places not less than fifteen feet.

From the neighbouring talayót a fine view over the surrounding country is obtained—even the faint blue 160mountains of Majorca being visible across the water. I had a somewhat ludicrous rencontre upon the summit of the cairn, for just as I reached the top I came face to face with a big brown and white buzzard who was skimming over it from the opposite side. It would be hard to say which of us was the most startled; we both stepped back hurriedly, but the great bird was so close that I felt the wind of his wings in my face and could see his magnificent golden eyes dilate as for one moment he hung motionless, with yellow claws upturned, before he swung round and with one convulsive flap was gone.

One of the pleasantest drives in the neighbourhood of Ciudadéla is to Son Saura, an estate about six miles distant belonging to a Minorcan nobleman. On this occasion we drove out en famille, for being Sunday afternoon not only was the waiter sent with us to enjoy an outing, but we were begged by our hostess to allow little José, aged six, to be of the party. Little José was weeping dismally on the doorstep at the moment, but as soon as our consent was given his tears stopped instantaneously, and he was hoisted on to the box seat next the waiter, under whose charge he was put. His mother assured us that he would be good—but we had already seen quite enough of Master José to discount this statement. Our hostess appeared to have no sort of authority over her children; she would rave and shriek at them, 161and occasionally reduce them to tears, but in the end they invariably got their own way, and their attitude towards her was entirely that of the little girl in an old Minorcan nursery couplet which for simplicity and impertinence it would be hard to surpass:

I may add at once that little José did not belie his character. He snatched flowers from the flower beds, trampled mercilessly on precious young tobacco plants in crossing the fields, nearly fell into a large reservoir, was hauled hurriedly over two walls at the imminent risk of overthrowing a whole row of his elders and betters, perilously balanced on the top—and in fact acted as a complete antidote to any pleasure which the poor harassed waiter might otherwise have derived from the expedition. We, not being responsible for the child, took his misdoings less to heart, and when he temporarily disappeared in the vicinity of an open reservoir we were able to search the surface of the water for bubbles with comparative calm—confident that Master José’s career had not been such as to arouse the jealousy of the gods.

Son Saura is a pleasant-looking house surrounded by a large garden of geraniums and verbenas, roses and lilacs, all in bloom at the time of our visit. The estate 162is laid out with orange groves, olive and vine yards, corn and tobacco plantations, the whole admirably irrigated from two immense central reservoirs. In summer water has to be sought at a great depth in Minorca, and the wells being too deep for the employment of the Persian wheel, the usual method of raising the water is by means of a large windlass turned by a donkey—one bucket being let down as the other is wound up to the top. The drinking troughs for beasts which stand beside these wells partake of the archaic simplicity and durability of the dolmens, being formed of ponderous stone blocks hollowed out to the required depth.

The modern Minorcan has indeed sundry habits not unworthy of the megalithic monuments of his predecessors. The stones which he builds into his field walls are hardly less vast than theirs, and the palaces he erects for his pigs bear a strong family likeness to the prehistoric talayót; composed entirely of loose stones, with a cleverly domed roof, these buildings form quite a feature of the landscape in many parts of the island. The smaller ones are often plain huts, but the larger ones almost always have tastefully ornamented roofs—some resembling the step pyramids of Sakkára, others being built in round tiers like a gigantic wedding-cake. One—by no means the largest—which we entered at Son Saura, and of which a picture is given, measured not less than twenty feet across, inside, and twelve or fifteen feet in height; spacious, clean, and delightfully 163cool in hot weather, these houses are used by the pigs of Minorca as sleeping quarters at night and lounges at midday. Any attempt to photograph the occupants we found, however, to be out of the question: the very sight of a camera filled them with suspicion, and when this was followed by a strategic advance their worst fears were confirmed—with volleys of shrieks they broke up in panic, and, with ears flapping wildly, went off helter skelter with all the abandon of their Gadarene ancestors.

Acting as a kind of pylon to the above-mentioned palace at Son Saura is a curious old mésa, unlike any other we saw in the island—the horizontal slab being supported on two upright pillars, each of which has a rude capital formed by a separate stone. This monument is possibly of a different date from the other altars, and is said to be of a pattern of which—as far as is known—only one other specimen exists, in the island of Malta.

The last expedition we made at Ciudadéla was to visit the rock dwellings at Son Moréll—a large property about an hour distant from the town. There are three farmhouses upon the estate, at the first of which one naturally draws up to inquire the way, and unless the traveller is very careful he will here be taken to see two wholly unimportant tumuli lying at some distance away amongst stone walls and a waste of asphodel—the peasants being convinced that to lead a foreigner to the nearest talayót is the surest way of making him happy. In all good faith we followed an ancient man across the fields, and 164in due course reached the talayóts; it was quite useless to explain to our guide that it was not such as these we were in search of, since besides being very deaf he understood no word of Castillian, and when we remarked that the wind was very high he replied by telling us that he was seventy-eight in January.

After much useless tramping and waste of time we at last discovered that it was Son Morell de Barránco to which we ought to have driven—the Barranco being the ravine containing the rock dwellings—and continuing our route across the fields we presently came to the second farm, lying within a few minutes’ walk of the coast. Leaving the carriage here, we descended on foot towards the sea, and soon came upon a row of curious dwellings excavated in the rock walls of a narrow valley. Three of the caves are of considerable size, and in the one of which we took a photograph a pillar of live rock is left in the centre to support the roof. All have neatly cut doorways and windows, and one of the house fronts, as will be seen, shows traces of decoration—a cornice and a couple of fluted pilasters having been rudely chiselled in the face of the rock. Sheep and goats now inhabit the caves; of the people who with patient labour constructed their dwellings in this wild and lonely ravine by the sea no memory remains.

On the 1st of May we left Ciudadéla and returned to Mahon, stopping for luncheon at the little town of Alayór, just off the main road. Seen from a distance Alayór is a veritable fairy city set upon a hill—glistening snow white in the sunshine—and though at close quarters it is no longer beautiful, the whiteness of the houses is so dazzling that it is like passing through snow-cuttings to drive through the streets, and we were glad of the green glass panes of our galaréta to protect our eyes from the blinding glare. Whitewash is indeed a mania among the Minorcans, who, not content with applying it to the outer and inner walls of their houses, extend it to the tiles on the roof, the gutters, chimneys, outhouses, and even neighbouring rocks. Where the field walls are coped with freestone this also is whitened for miles, which gives the landscape the curious and misleading effect of being traversed in every direction by high roads.

“The rock caves at Son Morell are of considerable size, and one of the house fronts shows traces of decoration, a cornice and a couple of fluted pilasters having been rudely chiselled in the face of the rock.”

(page 164)

“The rock caves have neatly cut doorways and windows, and one of them has a central pillar supporting the roof.”

(page 164)

165Within half an hour’s drive of Alayór is the mésa of Torralba—one of the largest in the island, though it loses in effect by being encumbered about the base by bushes and débris. The horizontal stone is said to have a square cavity in its upper surface, as though to contain the blood of a victim; but as our outfit did not include a ladder we were obliged to take this statement on trust.

One of the sudden storms, for which Minorca is noted, overtook us while we were engaged in photographing the altar. The sky darkened, and without a moment’s warning such a deluge of rain descended that we were quite unable to regain our carriage, not twenty yards 166distant. The ground was swimming, the bushes and long grass were drenched, and when ten minutes later the sun came out again and all was smiles, the only dry member of the party was the camera—who with his usual foresight had enveloped himself in the one waterproof cape at the very beginning of the rain.

A couple of hours later we were again in Mahon, and at five o’clock that same afternoon we had boarded the Palma boat and were taking our last look at the town as we glided out of the bay—past the flat green tray of Hospital Island, past the little rocky hump of Rat Island, where some fishermen wave to us as their boat rocks on our swell—past the ruined pepper-pot tower on the Philipet promontory—past the old sea walls of San Felipe and the bristling defences of the Isabella fortress opposite—and as we enter the open sea a chill wind springs up.

At daybreak we land once more—and for the last time—at the now familiar quay at Palma, and are rattled through the streets that three short months ago were new and strange of aspect in our eyes.

Our holiday in the south is over. It is the first week of May: strawberries and cherries are in the market, and the voice of the cuckoo is heard in the land. The pigeons are wheeling in flocks around the sunlit tower of San Nicolas, and myriads of swifts still weave their tireless flight over the town. But the swallows have gone northwards, and we must follow them. Two busy days are spent in packing and in final arrangements for the 167return home; and on the 5th of May we board the Miramar for Barcelona.

It is a marvellously lovely evening. The wide plain is wrapped in shimmering shades of pink and violet, and brilliant against the deep cobalt of the Sierra stand out the white houses of the town. Cutting the western horizon in dark silhouette are the wooded slopes of Bellver—the castle arch spanning a glowing fragment of the sunset where the gules and or of Aragon are once more blazoned in the sky. The harbour is a sheet of gold, and across the ever widening stretch of water Palma has already dwindled to a doll’s city, where the great cathedral is the last object on which our eyes linger. A spark breaks out on the old Moorish tower as we glide past Porto Pi, some soldiers wave a last goodbye from the earthworks of San Carlos, the darkening mountain slopes recede as we reach the portal of Cala Figuéra—and at last we are clear of the bay of Palma.

A golden moon hangs in the indigo vault above us, and our wake cleaves a shining path straight up to the old white city that is vanishing from our sight. And passing out into the night on a sea of glass we half expect to hear once more the solemn midnight cry—

“Observant, animated and agreeably sensitive of the charm of the restful island it describes, it will be read with advantage and interest by every one who fosters ideas of some day going there.”—Scotsman.

“The book has a delightful touch of feminine vivacity, and the camera is almost as important in the production of it as the pen.”—Observer.

“Miss d’Este gives a very attractive account of Ajaccio.”—Spectator.

“Margaret d’Este gives a picturesque account of her wanderings all over the island, in and out of the beaten track, and tells us that she found its principal charm in its wild freedom, magnificent scenery and delightful climate.”—Daily Graphic.

“The reviewer is tempted at almost every page to quote, so full of description is this charming book, but space forbids.... We cannot remember enjoying any book so much since the days when William Blake told the tale of his journeyings.”—Daily Chronicle.

“A facile, charming style of writing; a quick, accurate observation of men, beasts, flowers, and things.”—Photographic Monthly.

“There are no fewer than seventy-eight photographs by Mrs. R. M. King and the author in this charming book of travel far from the madding crowd.... An unusually well-written and well-illustrated book.”—Northern Whig.

“The authoress has given us some delightful pen sketches of the scenery, delicate little vignettes of local colour, and strongly sketched-in characters of the natives, and the illustrations are decidedly enticing.”—Photographic News.

“The book is one of the brightest of recent travel volumes. Mrs. King’s photography is a worthy contribution to the work, and is worth studying by would-be picture makers, for its good placing of masses within the space, and for the strong yet not harsh way in which bold patches of deep shadow are placed against broad expanses of light.”—Photogram.

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