By the time we had finished breakfast the sun was shining hotly once more, and we were able to start for San Telmo. Seated in a small carreta—a very light skeleton cart on two wheels, with rush mats spread over the bars of the bottom and sides—we set out at a foot’s pace to visit the old castle on the coast, an hour and a half distant. For a mile or so one ascends by a very steep mountain road, but after crossing the col this road deteriorates into the roughest of cart tracks, winding down to the sea through a valley of pine-trees, olives, and carobs.
A country road in Majorca may mean anything—from a tract of bedrock scattered with loose stones of any size, to a soft, uneven hill-path, barely wide enough for a wheeled vehicle to pass. Short of coming to actual steps, a carreta is expected to follow anywhere where a pony can obtain a footing, and many a time did the bumps and lurches to which we were subjected recall George Sand’s driving experiences in the year 1838.
Speaking of what is now one of the finest roads in the island she narrates in lively French how in her day the journey was perilously accomplished—“with one wheel on the mountain and one in the ravine.... The jolting is indescribable ... yet however frightful a concussion the driver receives, he sings all the time in a loud voice—only breaking off to bestow curses upon his horse if the animal hesitates for an instant before plunging down some precipice or climbing some rock wall.... For it is thus one proceeds—ravines, torrents, quagmires, ditches, hedges, all present themselves in vain—one does not stop for so little. Besides, it is all part of the road; at first you think you must be steeplechasing for a wager, and you ask your driver what possesses him. This is the road, he replies. But that river? It is the road. And this deep pit? The road. And that bush also? Always the road.... A la bonne heure! And all that remains for you to do is to commend your soul to God and to contemplate the landscape, while awaiting death or a miracle.”
Descending from the carreta shortly after starting, to lighten the load of the floundering pony, I had at first persuaded the stout proprietor to follow my example; but within a very short time he had climbed in again, observing with a loud gasp that the way was long. It was not the first time he had been to San Telmo; only a year ago he had driven two English ladies there, and they too had had a camera, and on the way it fell out of the cart and was lost. To this day he could remember their lamentable cries of “La máquina, la máquina!” But five days later it was picked up by an old man, who thought it was a bomb and carried it home very cautiously. The ladies were very pleased—oh yes, they gave him more than a day’s wages for it.
The little castle of San Telmo was built in the sixteenth century for the protection of Andraitx. It stands on a rocky prominence by the seashore, and is in good preservation, its barrel-vaulted dining hall serving as a workshop for the old man who lives there. From the flat roof of the tower, where rusty cannon still occupy the embrasures, one looks down upon a pretty beach, where long green waves, lit up by the sun, break gently upon the sand, and great conch shells are sometimes found amongst the foam fringes of the surf. Some three hundred yards out from the shore is the low turtle-backed rock Pentaleu, where the Conqueror first set foot on quitting his storm-tossed galley; and screening the northern side of the little bay are the bare grey flanks—dreaded by sailors—of the Dragonéra, Majorca’s westernmost outpost. A lighthouse occupies the knife-like ridge of the summit, and cutting along through the Freu—the narrow strait between the island rock and the mainland—comes a little white steamer, the Barcelona boat, bringing a welcome cargo of mails after a silence that has lasted more than a week.
The following morning, March 29th, we set out for Estallenchs, our cavalcade consisting of one riding mule and a sturdy donkey to carry the luggage. No expedition could have offered a greater contrast to our tour of the preceding week than did this journey across the mountains. On the southern plain a whole day’s march of thirty miles is accomplished in a morning’s drive; in the Sierra we take four hours to cover a distance of twelve miles. Up and down among the hills winds the mule track; now we are high above the lapis lazuli sea, on a mountain path knee deep in palmetto fans and the red-velvet flower of lentiscus bushes; now we descend to a torrent bed hemmed in by great grey cliffs scarred with red scarps where part of the hillside has broken off and poured like an avalanche into the bed of the valley. Now we enter the pine woods where the white allium and many orchises grow, and the air is fragrant with rosemary and gorse. Further on we come to a winding rock staircase cut in the face of the cliff, down which, our guide tells us, it is not safe to ride; the only surprising thing is that any animal except a goat should be expected to descend it; and here our baggage donkey distinguished himself by slipping down and lying motionless, but quite unhurt, till he was unloaded and dragged on to his legs again.
A rough cart track winds for some way into these lonely hills, and we meet timber carts descending with loads of fir-trees, the mules stumbling and sliding on their haunches down the steep hillside—the heavy two-wheeled carts, with powerful brakes on, crashing and jolting behind them over boulders and tree-stumps.
As we approach human habitations again, traces of cultivation once more appear; small terraces are levelled on the mountain side and planted with almond-trees, from which our men snatch handfuls of young milky nuts in passing—a universal habit that has given rise to the sarcastic proverb, “The laden almond-tree by the wayside is sure to be bitter.” At last, after a long and fatiguing descent by shallow paved steps, we come in sight of Estallenchs—a pretty village nestling in a fold of the hills, backed by cliffs, grey peaks of sun and shadow; in front a valley opening down to the sea, with hill slopes clothed in almond, olive, and fir.
The inn is a very humble building, and does not even entitle itself a fonda. The master of the house was absent, and the old woman left in charge spoke no Spanish; we spoke no Majorcan, and by way of facilitating conversation she suddenly sent an urgent message to the village doctor, who arrived post haste, thinking that some accident had befallen the English señoras. Somewhat dashed at finding us both uninjured and in good health, he yet conversed with us very pleasantly in our attic chamber, offered to show us the place, translated various requests for us, and before leaving ordered our dinner. Thanks to his ministrations we lacked for nothing that night, the only hitch occurring at bedtime, when our best efforts to obtain candles resulted in a dish of olives being set before us.