On March 15th we left Felanitx and continued our journey across the great southern plain. The road to Manacór runs along a low ridge and commands extensive views on either hand; asphodels fringed the wayside, and every patch of waste ground displayed the Spanish colours in gay yellow daisies and a tiny scarlet ranunculus, the Adonis vernalis. The weather was glorious; a shower during the night had laid the dust and cleared the air, and blue cloud-shadows chased merrily across the landscape.
“Bon dia tengan!” comes in cheerful greeting from the fields where groups of peasant women, in big straw hats, ply their hoes among the wheat. When they found we wished to take a photograph of them their amusement was unbounded, and their merry laughter was quite infectious.
Unceasing is the care of the crops, and unremitting is the labour bestowed upon the land before it assumes that market-garden-like neatness that is the ideal of the Majorcan peasant. Centuries of cultivation have converted much of the land into rich, productive soil, but a glance at a recently reclaimed field shows one the difficulties with which the original cultivator has to contend, difficulties that would surely daunt a less stout-hearted race. Slabs of bed-rock and countless myriads of loose stones cover the surface of the ground: by blasting and patient excavation a certain proportion of these are removed, and the intervening patches of earth are dug by hand, the first harvest being represented by a scanty crop of wheat sprouting in the interstices of the rock paving. The second or third year it will perhaps be possible to drive a narrow sharp-pointed ploughshare between the stones, lifting it briskly out of the ground when the shaft mule is brought up with a jerk by a more than usually stubborn boulder. Each year hundreds of tons of loose stone are collected and disposed of in one way or another; some are stacked in cairns among the crops and go by the name of clápers; others are carried with infinite toil to the boundaries of the field and built into a dry wall a yard or more thick—coped with the masses of rock that work up through the soil almost as quickly as they are removed from the surface; others again are thrown into great stone reservoirs built for the purpose and filled to the brim with blocks big and little. Gradually the plague of stones begins to abate. What one generation has begun, a future one will accomplish, and eventually the land will assume the appearance of a rich alluvial plain, and Dame Nature will put on as benevolent a smile as though she had proposed from the very first to bountifully reward the industrious peasant.
But always there will be miles upon miles of beautifully built stone walls to tell a different tale. Truly may it be said of the Majorcans, as of their Catalonian forefathers—that from stones they produce bread.
All the morning we drove, and by noon we had passed the town of Manacór and were descending towards the sea through a silent, sun-steeped land of rock and asphodel. Asphodels surrounded us for miles, their starry sceptres swaying in the wind and shining like silver where the sunlight struck through them. It is strange that no southern artist has painted us a Madonna of the Asphodels.
Down by the seashore stands a small group of freestone houses called the Port of Manacór, and after lunching at the fonda we set off on foot to visit the famous stalactite caves close by. There is nothing in the surface of the surrounding country to suggest the existence of vast subterranean caverns; the guide simply leads the way across the wide moor to a walled enclosure, where, half concealed by boulders and scrub, a flight of rock steps leads down to the Cuevas del Drach—the Dragon Caves of Manacór.
Armed with acetylene lanterns we descend, and plunge into a perfect labyrinth of halls and passages; some of the scenes are very beautiful; there are “cascades of diamonds”—frozen falls that sparkle like hoar frost in the sun—and wonderful statuesque formations under fretted canopies fringed with glittering icicles; there are myriads of stalactites hanging from the roof, some snow-white and thorny, others like pink glass, that ring musically when struck with a stone. There is an immense cavern where one sits down to rest; weird shadows cast by the lamps dance upon the walls, and falling drops of water tinkle loudly in the silence. There are precipices and bottomless pits—into which the guide tosses stones—and atmospheric lakes, into which one is liable to walk unawares—the surface of the water being invisible to the sharpest scrutiny. There are bright blue pools, crystal clear, in the depths of which stalagmites appear like white sea-anemones and seem to mirror back the pendant bosses of the roof. One may walk for miles and not have seen all, but the heat in these caves is trying to many people, and one is not sorry to come out into the cold upper air after spending an hour or two in a temperature of nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Many years ago some Spaniards were lost for days in the Drach caves, and the spot is still shown where in their despair they scratched upon the walls: No hay esperanza—There is no hope!
In the caves of Arta, people are said to have entered who have never been seen again, alive or dead.