An atmosphere of old-world tranquillity pervades the place; undisturbed by railways, approached by only one good road—that from La Puebla—and brought in touch hardly at all with the outside world, Pollensa is the most characteristically Majorcan town in the whole island. The older men still wear the wide Moorish breeches, the woollen stockings and strong leather shoes latched across with a bow, which the younger ones have forsaken in favour of the less picturesque modern garb. The generation now dying out is the last that will be seen in the dress worn by their forefathers for a thousand years past, and I am glad to have visited the island before the costume has become a mere tradition.
Castillian is little spoken in Pollensa, and our stay at the inn of Antonio de Sollér was complicated by the fact that our good host and his daughter knew rather less Spanish than we did ourselves. The old woman who swept the floors was, I think, a little touched in the head, and she annoyed us considerably for some time by pausing in front of us with uplifted broom—as we sat in our rocking chairs, peacefully reading—and haranguing us in Majorcan, of which she knew we did not understand a word.
“Les silents ont toujours tort”—and at last we turned the tables on her by suddenly bursting forth in emphatic English, which had the effect of silencing her completely, and she departed, muttering darkly, no doubt more convinced than ever that we were mad.
We found our inn to be comfortable, and, in spite of being in the middle of the town, exceedingly quiet. The Majorcan cookery is always good, and though liable to become monotonous, a certain variety of diet is obtained by moving from place to place. Chicken stewed with rice, or a ragout, supplemented by fish and an omelette, form the staple dishes of Majorcan fondas; and each inn has its own idea of what a sweet course should be, to which it rigorously adheres; at Felanitx we got into a stratum of enormous jam puffs—larger than I could have conceived possible; at Arta it was figs, stuffed with aniseed; at Alcúdia, slabs of quince jelly; at Pollensa heavy pastry starfish, which made their appearance twice a day with unfailing regularity.
For breakfast coffee can always be obtained—although it must be remembered that coffee does not necessarily imply milk, unless specially ordered; and with the coffee it is the custom to eat an ensaimáda—a kind of sweet sugar-besprinkled bun. Except at Palma and Sollér, butter is not to be had; we usually supplied its place with jam we carried with us, but at Pollensa we found ourselves reduced to our last pot, and that pot we decided to save up as emergency rations, for rumour had it that at Lluch, whither we were bound, we might be glad of anything at all.
The morning after our arrival at Pollensa we drove out to the Cala de San Vicente, a bay on the north coast of the island; after driving over a bad road for some miles we left the galaréta and walked down to the sea by a charming path leading through pine woods and a wild rock-garden of pink and white cistus and yellow broom, where for the first time we heard the nightingale. Near the shore are large freestone quarries—smooth-walled pits of cream-coloured stone—where men are employed in detaching great blocks with wedges, and shaping them with saw and axe; so plentiful is the freestone in many parts of the island that not only the houses, but the field-walls and even the pigstyes are built of it. It is extremely soft and easy to work when first quarried, and has the invaluable property of hardening more and more as time goes on, when exposed to the air. This causes many of the ancient buildings—such as the Lonja and others—to look quite disappointingly modern, owing to the smooth, unweathered surface of the walls and the sharp lines of all angles.
Exceedingly picturesque is the little blue bay of St. Vincent, with its enclosing cliff walls and jagged peaks; on a small headland stands a ruined ataláya of curious construction, the tower being rounded on the land side, but forming an acute angle towards the sea.
Amongst the prickly pear and boulders of this headland we noticed a large, almost circular, block of stone that attracted our attention from its bearing traces of a rude square cut in its upper surface. We asked the daughter of our fondista, who was with us, whether there was any legend attaching to the ancient stone, but she was interested not at all in pre-historic man:
“That mésa,” she explained—mésa means table, and is the term applied to all the megalithic altars in the Balearics—“that mésa is there for visitors to have their luncheon upon.”