And at midnight the stars look down upon a sleeping city, whose stillness is only broken by the sonorous chant of the watchmen going their rounds with lantern and staff. The familiar cry—so associated with Palma—again rings out beneath our windows:—
“Alobado sea el Señor! Las doce—y sereno!”
(Praised be the Lord! Midnight, and a clear sky!)
PART II
Although it falls to the lot of few of us to remain as sublimely unconscious of geography as was Charles Lamb—who asserts that though he held a correspondence with a very dear friend in New South Wales he was unable to form the remotest conjecture as to the position of that Terra Incognita—yet I think I may safely assume that not many of my readers are familiar with the geography of Majorca, and a glance at the [sketch-map] given in this volume may be of service in acquainting them with the principal places of interest in the island.
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. There are half a dozen excursions which visitors to the island rarely fail to make; one is to Sollér, only a day’s expedition by carriage from Palma—though, as it possesses a comfortable little hotel and is in the midst of beautiful scenery, it is a favourite place for a lengthened stay. The old towns of Pollensa and Alcúdia upon the east coast attract a certain number of foreigners every season; and the fame of Arta’s stalactite caves draws thither a large number of sightseers, being easy of reach from the railhead at Manacór.
But with these exceptions the interior of Majorca enjoys an almost perpetual immunity from tourists, most of whom are far from enterprising.
It was to Arta that we ourselves were bound when we quitted Palma on March 12th, but having plenty of time before us, and being fond of driving tours, open air, and scenery, we decided to do the whole journey by road, and to spend as many nights en route as we found desirable. Our carriage was one of the hotel victorias, drawn by an excellent pair of little grey horses; our luggage was of the most modest description, consisting of two of those feather-weight valises, made of brown cardboard, that can be bought for a few shillings in most Continental towns, and that belie their frail appearance by resisting ill-usage to an almost incredible degree. Our driver was a friendly and reliable native, who in all the years he had driven hotel carriages had never been asked to conduct anybody across the island. It was indeed an unheard-of thing to do. Was not the railway there to take people to Arta? and was it not well known that the southern districts of the island contained nothing that could be of any possible interest to any one? However, it was no affair of his if English ladies were eccentric; his not to question why. Their motives might be inscrutable, but he was there to carry out their wishes, whether wise or foolish.
No June morning could have been more glorious than the one on which we left the Grand Hotel, and, rattling over the cobbles down to the harbour, struck out southwards towards Lluchmayór. For a couple of hours we crossed a great plain, carefully tilled and tended. 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.