Majorca

“ Its white houses looked like a brood of white sea-birds sitting on the waters, while away in the distance beyond, cutting soft and clear against the sunny air, were the high jagged mountain range and highlands of Majorca.
As we gradually neared the land, we saw some beautiful villages nestling amidst green plantations, and villas crowning the heights of verdant slopes. On we glided, past the ruined walls of the ancient Roman, where, from tower to tower, great chains were fixed to protect the mouth of the harbour, and past crumbling forts, built by the warlike Moor. ”

“ It has often struck me as very surprising that, seeing there is so much throughout this lovely Mediterranean isle to interest the mind in a hundred various ways, so much to ravish the eye, and such a climate for the ailing and the sick, not to speak of the attractions of its chief city, no mention has hitherto been made of Majorca in the guide-books of the day. ”

“ One can, in fact, lie on his back, with face upturned to the soft blue skies and almost go to sleep. Indeed, the astonishing thing seems to be how anyone can sink in this heavy medium. It is so transparent at the entrance of the Bay of Palma, that, during a calm, weeds can be distinctly seen at the depth of forty fathoms, waving at the bottom among the stones and shells.
In the Middle Ages, Majorca suffered much from the inroads of the Barbary pirates. Even now the old custom is kept up of lighting beacons every night all round the island. ”

“ The whole vast plain lay before us. Towns and villages unveiled themselves by magic. Across the plains the Pyrenees rose in flowing undulations, their snow-caps standing out against the blue sky. The winding river might be traced in its course by the thin line of vapour that hung over it like a white shroud. The whole Catalonian world, all the sea coast from Gerona to Tarragona, came into view, with the blue waters of the Mediterranean sleeping in the sunshine. In the far distance we thought we discerned our lovely and beloved Majorca, and were afterwards told this was possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is one of those landscapes which oppress you because they leave nothing to be desired, nothing to be imagined. Nature has here created that which the poet and the painter behold in their dreams. An immense ensemble, infinite details, inexhaustible variety, blended forms, sharp contours, dim, vanishing depths,—all are present, and art can suggest nothing further. Majorca is one of the most beautiful countries of the world for the painter, and one of the least known. ”

“ In no part of the world can one behold a more complete picture-gallery of all the varieties of natural scenery than in the Isle of Majorca. The day following our arrival at Soller was warm and radiant, as, indeed, every day appears to be in this favoured spot. After a breakfast of fresh figs, new milk, and a stew of pigeons and rice, we started through the orange-gardens to the mountains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The seamen of Majorca were as energetic and expert as those of the mainland, and Palma had a great dockyard and arsenal where galleys of 171 thirty benches were built. But the success of the Catalans depended more on their skill and superior knowledge of navigation than on the size and number of their ships. ”

“ The youngsters had never been in Majorca; in the entire parish of San José, in which he lived, there were not a dozen persons who had seen the capital. Many of them had visited America; one had been to Australia; some neighbor women talked of their trips to Algeria with smugglers in their feluccas; but no one ever came to Majorca, and with good reason! "They don't like us here, Don Jaime; they stare at us as if we were strange animals; they think we are savages, as if we are not all the children of God." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its endless orchards made a dim horizon-line, over which rose the solitary double-headed mountain of Felaniche, and the tops of some peaks near Arta. The city wall was visible on my right, and beyond it a bright arc of the Mediterranean. The features of the landscape, in fact, were so simple, that I fear I cannot make its charm evident to the reader. Looking over the nearer fields, I observed two peculiarities of Majorca, upon which depends much of the prosperity of the island. The wheat is certainly, as it is claimed to be, the finest of any Mediterranean land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are many factories in the island; and while one member of a family works on a farm, others at trades, the rest can get employment in factories. All help, and the cottage in which the family lives generally has a small garden of flowers and vegetables. All the people are decently dressed and shod and have sufficient food. The Majorcans are certainly a handsome race, the men strongly built and well set up, the young women comely and graceful. ”

“ The extinction of their reigning dynasty was a great calamity to the people of Majorca, especially during the prolonged life of the Ceremonious one. At last he died in 1387. His sons were very different in all respects. Juan I., surnamed the Huntsman, succeeded as King of Aragon, and he was also the legitimate heir to the Balearic Islands. A pestilence in Catalonia led him to visit Majorca. He and his Queen were in different galleys, and were separated during bad weather. Juan landed at Soller on July 16, 1394, and proceeded to the castle of Valdemosa. The Queen, reached Palma safely. ”

“ In the middle of the fourteenth century the marine service of Majorca consisted of 30,600 sailors, manning 460 vessels, of which twenty-four were of the largest size, and the others were used for carrying merchandise.19 Palma could fit out a contingent of large ships as part of the armed fleet of Aragon, and the safety of trade was provided for both by the Government and by private enterprise. Salvador de Sureda was not the only Majorcan notable who fitted out a ship at his own expense to resist the incursions of Barbary pirates. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But their practical information about the island proved lamentably insufficient. With the scenery, indeed, they were enraptured. "We found," says Madame Sand in her little volume, Un Hiver à Majorque, published the following year, "a green Switzerland, under a Calabrian sky, with all the solemnity and stillness of the East." But though a painter's Elysium, Majorca was wanting in the commonest comforts of civilised life. Inns were nonexistent, foreigners viewed and treated with suspicion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He had been recruiting for him in Valencia and was in Majorca, preparing to join him, when the sad news of his death arrived. The kind old grandmother, En Fernando’s mother, Esclaramunda de Foix, died in the sane year. Alas! the good Muntaner had preserved a life destined in the years to come to more than the usual share of sorrow, misfortune, and disaster. The child became the unhappy Jayme III., last reigning King of Majorca, Count of Roussillon, Cerdaña, and Conflent, and Lord of Montpellier. He was also Lord of Clarencia in the Morea and of Matagrifon. ”

“ Captains-general were substituted for the Viceroys, and the present fortifications of Palma were constructed in the reign of Philip V. Majorca suffered from the misgovernment of Bourbon rule with the rest of Spain. From that time the people have had to rely upon their own virility, energy, and skill for any advance in civilisation and well-being, and not in vain. The Majorcans steadily progressed, while their old families, claiming descent from the soldiers of King Jayme, became distinguished in arms and letters and were ennobled, several as early as the times of the Austrian kings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the caves of Artá, however, burst upon our vision, their grandeur and novelty were so startling that we were overwhelmed with astonishment and awe. When there are so many people eager after new sensations, we would ask, why, in the name of all that is beautiful, pure, and majestic, do they not go to Majorca as well as to Homburg? Access to the island is easy enough. There are two lines of steamboats to and fro—one from Valencia, [Pg 266] the other from Barcelona. The inhabitants are civil and hospitable to a degree. ”

“ On a small island the population, under circumstances like the conquest of Mallorca, is soon changed. A great number of the Moors perished, many escaped to Muhammadan Spain or Africa, many were taken away by their new masters. There is certainly no trace of Moorish blood among the present inhabitants.
The government of Majorca, according to the Fueros of King Jayme I., granted in 1240, consisted of six persons, elected annually, called Jurados, who formed the municipal authority. The president, called Jurado en cap, belonged to the class of nobles ”

“ Bradshaw and Murray ought, without delay, to make reparations for their past neglect; for truly there are no parts of the coast of the Mediterranean Sea—no isles on its bosom—more attractive to the tourist than these Spanish dependencies. Irrespective of the beauties and interest of Majorca, one would think the fact that the island of Minorca had for a certain period been connected with the history of [Pg 247] England would be sufficient to warrant the bestowal of more attention on the Balearic Isles. Port Mahon, too, one of the finest harbours in the world, is situated in Minorca. ”