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Two blacks may not make a white—but two mistakes may result in a remarkably good arrangement. Owing to a misunderstanding with our late host of Pollensa—who, it must be remembered, spoke nothing but Majorcan—a galaréta had been sent up from La Puebla for us, besides the one which we ourselves had ordered from Inca. Behold, then, a solution of the difficulty! We stowed ourselves into one carriage—our four enchanted fellow-visitors into the other—and away we bowled towards Inca, a two hours’ drive on a splendid road engineered in giddy spirals down the mountain side, with ever and again a peep of the plain and its white town far below us, seen through a break in the hills.
As we get down into the zone of olives again, a warmer air meets us—the rain has been left behind, and we are once more in sunshine; passing the picturesque village of Selva, with its church perched on the very top of a hill, we soon find ourselves at Inca—a large and prosperous-looking town of fine stone houses and shops.
Here we took the train for Palma, and packed ourselves and our valises into a little first-class compartment which we shared with an aristocratic-looking old gentleman travelling with a large wicker basket, apparently containing the week’s wash, and with a lady in a graceful black mantilla, who had a market basket, and a big bundle done up in a check tablecloth. She was evidently leaving home for a few days, and many and anxious were the parting messages given to the two honest servant-girls who stood at the carriage window and with a hearty embrace bade their mistress goodbye before the train started.
The terms upon which master and servant meet in Majorca—and I fancy all over Spain—are very much freer than with us.
Palma at the end of April is a very different town from the Palma of a few weeks ago; the trees along the Borne are greening fast, and the country is a mass of leafage. The swifts have arrived, and are wheeling and screaming over the town in thousands; the masses of dwarf blue iris by the seashore are over, but the waist-high corn is spangled with poppies and corn daisies, gladioli, and a handsome crimson and yellow scrophularia. The roads are deep in dust—the river dry as a bone. Our rooms maintain a steady temperature of 66° Fahrenheit, and the heat in the middle of the day is already sufficient to make us appreciate the draughtiness of the cool, narrow streets of the town.
Palm Sunday is celebrated by a palm service in the cathedral, and by a palm fair—the Fiesta de Rámos. At the palm service the bishop, mitred and coped, and accompanied by priests, choristers, mace-bearers, and all the dignitaries of the cathedral, processes around the outside of the building—and all carry consecrated palm branches in their hands. These palms are afterwards distributed amongst the townspeople, who fasten them to their house-fronts and balconies as a protection against lightning.
The Fiesta de Rámos takes place in the Rambla, where for three days the wide gravelled walk is occupied by a double row of wooden booths, between which a seething throng of townspeople streams up and down; there are toys and sweets and fruit stalls—dolls and dolls’ furniture, and charming baskets of all sizes, down to the familiar covered market basket made in smallest miniature by the neatest of fingers; there are merry-go-rounds and a Japanese giant, drums, trumpets, and squeaking whistles, and for three days there is a pandemonium of noisy instruments which to the children is the seventh heaven of delight.