The glories fade away."
But a truce to moralising, or we shall never get on with the journey.
We pass over the rocky plateau, and everything behind us, as we begin our descent, is totally eclipsed. In advance, deep and far below, resting in the very lap of one vast chaos of wild and lofty mountains, lies the white little town of Soller. Its scattered groups of toy-like houses are gleaming from out the dark-green of orange groves and bowers of citron. The long declines of the yellow road appear, from our elevated position, to wind away into the distant foliage like golden serpents. All around rise giant rocks, and enormous blocks, reft by the lightning from their parent walls, hang threatening on the very verge of lofty cliffs high above us; while the great azure circle cut out of heaven by the vast coronet of peaks which, at a great altitude aloft, sweeps round the scene, is clear and spotless, save where an eagle poised on level wing is bathing in the balmy air. Down rattles the calèche, and the four black mules jingle merrily on. Turn after turn is made in the road, and rock and gorge assume wilder proportions, until on a sudden the enormous peak of the Puig Mayor, the loftiest mountain in Majorca, is seen towering upwards in gloomy majesty over the fair scene below.
As we descended we breathed a warmer atmosphere, and at last found ourselves in the fragrant valley of Soller, in the very heart of its green and fruitful bosom, where the air was heavy with the odour of the orange-flower, and the fig in profusion purpled on the tree. We threaded lane after lane, shaded over with the deep green branches which met overhead, the golden fruit hanging from them in festoons, and temptingly inviting us to pluck them. The whole country around seemed like a wide garden, in the midst of which waved palms and pampas-grass. There was everywhere a richness of verdure, a profusion of life, which showed the fecundity of nature in these Southern climes. The charm of the scenery was much increased by the contrast between the savage mountains, so bare and rocky, and the perfect paradise which nature in her benigner moments had created in every valley. [29]
The village of Soller is a credit to the Spanish nation and to itself. Spain and its towns are dirty and malodorous, sanitary laws being generally neglected; but here, in this remote corner of her dominions, lying unknown and buried in a deep mountain basin, and secluded from the rest of the world, she possesses a beautiful little village, remarkable for the cleanliness of its houses and people. At Soller, as everywhere throughout the island, there is a decency of deportment, a respect for law, a modesty and urbanity of demeanor which it is really delightful to witness.
The interior of the little inn, or posada—which means literally a place of repose—is washed and whitewashed, scrubbed and polished, until it is as free from speck or stain as the far-famed Dutch villages which are held up to the Great Unwashed at large as sanitary and salutary examples. The little trestle bedsteads of white wood, with their snowy sheets, in the little whitewashed bedrooms, seem in their happy ignorance of the flea to put completely to the blush those foul and noisome beds in Spanish inns in which the wearied traveller lies down, not to find repose, but to offer himself a helpless victim to myriads of enemies, who from every nook and cranny come forth, thirsting for his blood.
The valley of Soller, only six miles in circumference, realizes £25,000 per annum by the sale of its oranges and lemons, and £30,000 by its oil. The olive trees grow luxuriantly everywhere, and on terraces cut out of the slopes of the mountains are nursed into the highest perfection. The roads are in excellent condition, and so much engineering skill has been displayed in their construction that the transit of fruit over the mountains to the port of embarkation is a comparatively easy matter. All the roads, the mountain passes, and the island generally, are protected, although from the character of the Majorcans the precaution is scarcely necessary, by a fine body of police, called the Guardia Civil. They are a manly, robust body of men, numbering eleven thousand, including those who are employed on the entire eastern coast of the mainland, a comparatively small number being required in the islands. In many parts of Spain proper, brigandage exists to a considerable extent, and the whole force is therefore ordered to parade their allotted districts with loaded carbines. In Majorca their offices, as we have said, are little needed, but on the mainland their interference is often requisite, and they perform their arduous duties with all the rigour necessary for the maintenance of law amongst the daring races who inhabit the mountains and sea-coasts of Spain. If anyone who is discovered in the act of setting the law at defiance refuses to surrender, he is shot down without mercy. These intrepid men have often to maintain most unequal struggles, and are, of course, held in great detestation amongst the criminal classes, by whom they are frequently made victims to their thirst for vengeance. Their uniform is picturesque, yet workmanlike, consisting precisely of the costume of the popular Italian brigand without his tawdry finery.
The great charm of the Majorcan population is that they are a distinct island race, with a language almost of their own; and having lived for centuries happily and contentedly as one family, they are docile and orderly, and courteous to a degree to strangers. Steam has only been introduced of late years, and up to the first arrival of El Vapor they were comparatively cut off from all the world, its plots and passions, and engrossed in their own quiet industrious pursuits.
Majorca is at present free from the plague of tourists. Scarcely a stranger intrudes, beyond the city of Palma, into the recesses of its woods, mountains, and villages. Consequently the charge for everything is remarkably moderate, and on the occasion of our excursion to Soller we had a capital dinner for five people, [30] including a sack of four hundred oranges fresh from the boughs, for ten shillings, besides a deal of stroking, and patting, and shaking of hands on the part of the "fair, fat, and forty" landlady, her daughter, and mine host of the Fonda de la Paz, upon our departure for the mountain pass of El Barranco. The good landlady, who is also cook, we understood danced a characteristic dance some twelve years ago before Lord L——e, on his visit to Soller, like the daughter of Herodias before Herod. Being at the time of our visit of sufficient dimensions to put up in the middle of a room for an invalid to walk ten times round in the course of a day, as a measurement for a term of gentle exercise, that lady very properly abstained from repeating her Terpsichorean experiments upon this occasion. Had she given way to her love of the graceful exercise, she would have borne no very distant resemblance to a frisky elephant, and might probably have broken through the floor of the apartment.