On April 18th we left Alcúdia for Pollensa. A gale had arisen in the night, and we awoke to find the bay flecked with foam caps and the white sand flying like smoke along the shore. The Barcelona boat was many hours overdue, and the fishing fleet could not put out to sea, so that the men, who had stocked their boats overnight with kegs of water and provisions, instead of being off at daybreak as was their wont, were reduced to mending their nets and splitting firewood while they waited, with all the philosophic patience of their kind, for the wind to abate.
Pollensa is about an hour and a half’s drive from Alcúdia. Surrounded by ancient olive groves and rockeries planted with patches of beans and wheat, the old town lies secluded among the hills, out of sight and out of sound of the sea—only three miles distant. On one side of the town rises the green Calvary hill, on the other the bare grey Puig de Pollensa, crowned by a pilgrimage church and hospedéria; this passion for building a church on the highest and most inaccessible spot attainable is a really curious phenomenon.
“Very picturesque is the little blue bay of San Vicente, with its cliff walls and jagged peaks.”
(page [103])
“The generation now dying out is the last that will be seen in the dress worn by their forefathers for a thousand years past.”
(page [101])