CHAPTER XIII.
THE PORT OF SOLLER.—CONVENT OF LLUCH.—A LEGEND OF THE MONASTERY.—CATHEDRAL OF PALMA.—REMAINS OF KING JAYME II.—ATTRACTIONS OF THE BALEARIC ISLES.—MINORCA.—ITS CONNECTION WITH ENGLISH HISTORY.
THE walks around Soller are varied and beautiful, presenting to the delighted eye a charming blending of savage wildness and fertile cultivation. 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 morning air was so warm and fragrant that, as it gently fanned us, we felt as if we were in a perfumed bath, until we stepped upon the first incline of the rocky slopes, where, as we were under the shade of immense rocks, the atmosphere was colder. Sometimes we found ourselves in great chasms where the mountain appeared to have been rent asunder by some violent explosion of the forces of nature; and when, occasionally alarmed by a sharp and piercing cry, we looked upwards, we saw the lordly eagle with outstretched wings hovering over the abyss.
After ascending a steep path winding between perpendicular walls of rock, we came suddenly upon a scene of great grandeur, lonely, dark, and gloomy. Away in our front a mighty ravine, cleft by some great throe of nature, yawned to such an enormous depth that it seemed to disclose the very core of the mountain. While standing on the verge of a narrow pathway, the eye, as it looked over it, plunged down into a great abyss of darkness, from which, far below, arose black towers of rock and broken pinnacles looming in the rising mists. It made the senses reel to fancy, if the foot slipped, or the edge of the pathway gave way, to what unknown recesses of the earth we should descend! High above were tossed, like the giant waves of a granite sea, a wild chaos of dark and lofty peaks, while, over all, stern in its grand and gloomy majesty, frowned against the bright blue sky the vast black head of the Puig Mayor. [32]
This splendid gorge, which, as a specimen of the grandeur of mountain solitudes must be one of the most characteristic in Europe, is called El Barranco. [33] When one stands alone in such a scene—far removed from all familiar associations—it is almost impossible to describe in any language that would not be deemed extravagant, the sensation by which he is overpowered. From the summit of the Puig, the magnificence of the prospect will repay a good walker for the trouble of the ascent. Raised high above a region of mountain peaks, black stupendous gorges, and a wild chaos of riven rocks, shot up from the bowels of the globe in some primeval convulsion, soars the massive summit. While we were standing on it we watched the afternoon sun slow wheeling down to the westward seas. Immediately beneath, fantastic clouds and long weird streaks of vapour curled and eddied like strange aërial phantoms amongst the solemn recesses of the lonely mountains, sinking into the darkness of the vast depths below.
Over the wide plains of the island stretched like a giant's chart at our feet, green savannahs, broad dusky tracts of olive, and expanses of yellow sand, sparkling here and there in all directions, were exhibited to our delighted gaze. Towns surrounded by glittering white walls, and scattered hamlets peeping from out the deep recesses of spreading woods and groves of orange, greeted the wondering eye; while away towards the horizon, encircling the magnificent prospect, was the sea, flecked in all directions with tiny sunlit sails.