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])