Margaret D'Este

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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—
“Alobado sea el Señor! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”