The view of the town as we skirted the harbour was extremely striking. The great sails of the merchantmen lying at anchor in the bay shone white against the deep blue sea beyond, and the low sun was catching the angles of the fortifications and casting cobalt shadows upon the snowy, irregular houses clustering upon the hill crowned by the campanile of the cathedral. Market folk were coming into town—countrywomen in broad be-ribboned hats of palmito plait, mounted on mules and donkeys with laden panniers—a sight never seen in Majorca. Innumerable frogs croaked with jangling grotesque jollity from hidden reservoirs in the rich huerta, or garden, of vines and almonds, beans and wheat, through which we were driving. Presently the road rises, and winds through pretty wooded slopes and copses of conifers. Here and there are stacked great heaps of pine bark, used for tanning the fishing nets. Sheep seek invisible sustenance upon stony red ground, and young pigs sport in the shade of budding fig-trees, the prevailing principle seeming to be to turn beasts out to graze wherever they will do the least harm.
Turning aside from the main road we take a rough track leading down to the coast. Very Corot-like is the landscape before us, framed by the stems of gnarled olive or dark knotted carob. On a small eminence by the seashore stands Santa Eulália—a frankly oriental-looking village of blank white walls and blue shadows, ringed round with a fence of prickly pear. By a steep zigzag path one climbs to the old fortress-church upon the summit, and enters the building through an immense vaulted and enclosed crypt-like porch, supported on massive pillars and capable of holding a couple of hundred people. In the Middle Ages this church, like most of those in the island, formed the stronghold of the villagers during the frequent piratical raids, and inside the porch is the well from which the besieged drew their water supply.
Stepping through a side door one enters the cemetery—a tiny enclosure upon the hillside, with nameless wooden crosses half buried in grass and a tangle of yellow daisies. Here the dead lie, under sunshine and sea-breezes—and from here the eye ranges far over land and sea, over wooded hills, undulating red plains, palm-trees and rocky islets. Commenting upon the beauty of the scene to our faithful waiter, he admitted that it was indeed a precious one—a complimentary term which he applied indiscriminately to views, roads, the weather, or the condition of the sea—but far more precious, he hastened to assure us, would be the sight of the river which we should presently be vouchsafed.
“The old fortress-church of S. Eulália has a vaulted porch capable of holding a couple of hundred people.”
(page [134])
“These Phœnician tombs have a shaft cut in the live rock to a depth of some six feet, whence a low sloping gallery leads to the subterranean burial chamber.”