With a Camera in Majorca

by Margaret D'Este

The history of this oratory goes back to a date shortly after the conquest in the thirteenth century, when a herd-boy named Lluch—or Lucas—while driving his flock home one night, noticed a strange light upon the mountain side; on relating this to a priest, the latter went to examine the spot whence the light proceeded, and there discovered a stone statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child, which was installed forthwith in a little chapel built for the purpose; and this Virgin of Lluch—the Máre de Deu as she is called—became in course of time the patroness of the Majorcans, and a great power in the land. Bequests of money and land were made to her, and in the fifteenth century the Oratory was founded, together with a college for the instruction of twelve poor children. The original college now forms the hospedéria for visitors, having been superseded by a newer building where to this day twelve boys receive education and instruction in church singing from the four priests who inhabit the rectoria.

The wants of visitors are attended to by six lay brothers, and at times the resources of the establishment are strained to their utmost. We were told that at Easter no fewer than six hundred people had made the pilgrimage hither, coming from all parts of the island and staying two or even three nights; those for whom there was no room in the hospedéria were bedded in the corridors and stables, while the rest slept in their carts and carriages outside.

Until recently all comers had to bring their own food, but some few years ago a kind of restaurant—independent of the monastery—was established, where visitors can get simple meals at a very moderate charge. The wife of the fondista cooks well, and though neither meat, milk, nor butter are to be had, the staple provisions of sausage, sardines, cheese, bread, coffee, and condensed milk—with the addition of a fowl or an omelette—constitute a diet with which any traveller may be content. After supper one crosses the great quadrangle to the hospedéria, which contains some fifty beds, placed two, three, and even four in a room.

In answer to the bell at the iron grille a lay brother made his appearance and took us upstairs and down a long, spacious, echoing corridor to one of the whitewashed cells, where he presented us with a key and a pair of damp sheets and left us to our own devices. The room was sparsely furnished, and contained two beds, with a pile of mattresses and blankets, a small table, a chair, a diminutive tripod supporting a basin, an equally diminutive towel, and an earthenware jar with some water.

For the moment it did not strike us that we were expected to make our own beds, and after waiting some time we sent an urgent message to our friar by a young man we met on the stairs and who seemed faintly amused at the errand. No one came, however—and neither on that nor on any subsequent occasion did Brother Bartholomew condescend to attend to us in any way whatever, or even supply us with more water, so that on the second morning we were reduced to a kind of nettoyage à sec. The only thing he did for us was to come and rattle our door loudly at five o’clock in the morning to make us get up—and failing in his attempt, to go away, having either by accident or with malice aforethought turned the key in the door and locked us in.

It was not till breakfast time that we discovered our plight, and we should have been constrained ignominiously to call for help from the window had we not succeeded in picking the lock with a buttonhook and so regained our freedom.

At nine o’clock we set out on our mules for the Gorch Blau, a two hours’ ride from the monastery. It is hopeless to ascertain beforehand from one’s muleteers the nature of the road that lies before one, for they admit no difference between one mountain path and another, and assure one invariably that the road will be good the whole way; nor are they in any way abashed when presently you come to a slippery rock staircase, so impossible that they advise you—in your own interest—to dismount and proceed on foot. The ride to the Gorge includes, as far as I can remember, only one really mauvais quart d’heure—but the rain had converted the paths into sloughs, and our poor men soon had their shoes soaked through and through, in spite of making détours wherever possible to avoid the floods through which our mules splashed recklessly.

But if all this water increased the difficulties of the march it also added immensely to the beauty of the landscape. As we wound along the heights we could hear the Torrent de Pareys in its deep cañon bed, thundering down in flood to the sea, and we found the Gorch Blau filled with a rushing whirl of foaming emerald-green water instead of containing—as it often does—a supply so scanty as hardly to deserve the name of torrent at all.

Towering fern-clad cliffs close in upon a ravine a few yards only in width, through which the water dashes at racing speed with a noise that prevents one from hearing oneself speak. An ancient pack-bridge spans the stream, and a path cut in the side of the water-worn cliff leads through the gorge into a broad open valley—a valley of desolation, ringed round with walls of bare grey rock, and strewn with innumerable stones, amongst which sheep and goats pick up a scanty living. For another hour we followed the course of the stream, now flowing tranquilly over a pebbly bed, and then reached a spot known as the Pla de Cuba—a higher valley among the hills, through which runs the path to Sollér, five hours distant. Here we made a two hours’ halt, and while the mules ate carob beans and cropped the coarse carritx grass covering the hillside, we explored the rocky slopes in search of the pink orchises and white cyclamen that grow here in profusion.

These high regions have a far larger annual rainfall than the rest of the island, and the comparative dampness of the atmosphere is seen in the mossy trunks and fern-clad limbs of the ilex woods, as also in the unusual girth of the trees—one grand old ilex, said to be the largest tree in Majorca, having a diameter of fully eight feet.