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The river was unfortunately not looking its best, being very nearly dry; but we duly inspected its rocky bed, fringed with oleander and dotted with water pools, and expressed our admiration of the fine stone bridge that spans it. The pride with which the natives regard their Rio de Santa Eulália is due to the fact that it is the only river in the island.
We went back to Iviza at racing speed, the little horse trotting fifteen miles an hour on the flat, and straining every nerve to raise his average. We feared that it would over tire him to take us to the Salt Works in the afternoon, but his owner laughed at the idea, and assured us that the good little beast would be quite ready to start again after a two hours’ rest. We were somewhat amused when, at the end of our stay, we received the bill for our three long drives—a bill for fifteen pesetas, exactly the sum that we should have paid for a half-day’s excursion at Palma, where carriage hire is by no means cheap.
“The donkey makes out a different bill from the driver,” says a Minorcan proverb, and whether our little horse considered his three silver douros an adequate compensation for the work he had done I cannot say—but his owner was completely satisfied. The Ivizans are as yet—and long may they remain so!—too unsophisticated to charge special prices to a foreigner. A striking instance of their natural honesty occurred on the night of our arrival. I had given a peseta to the sailor lad who had brought down our luggage from the deck of the Isleño and put it into the boat, and to my surprise he handed me back the coin at once. Thinking that it was either a bad one, or that he expected more, I asked our friend who was with us in the boat, what I ought to give; but he replied that the boy had already received threepence from himself for carrying the luggage, that nothing further was expected, and that the peseta had been returned because it was considered too much.
Our third and last expedition in Iviza was destined to be the most enjoyable of all. Our kind friend—whom we found to be one of the municipal officials of the town—volunteered to accompany us to the Salt Works, and en passant to show us the recently-discovered Phœnician necropolis, in the excavation of which he was deeply interested. Although it had long been known that the Phœnicians colonised the Balearics—the very name of the islands being derived, as some think, from their god Baal—it is only of late years that actual proofs of their occupation have been obtained. Iviza was said to have remained under their sway for a thousand years, and to have had a capital with a population of a hundred thousand souls, and the Phœnician cemetery which three years ago was discovered just outside the town goes far to substantiate this theory.
Alighting from our carréta at the foot of a rocky reef immediately to the south of the town, we climbed the hillside and reached a grove of ancient olive-trees growing in the crevices of a great granite outcrop. The whole hillside is honeycombed with rock tombs—they are everywhere, on the hill, and on the lower ground—filled in with earth, built over, planted over; it is the burial ground of a nation. More than a thousand tombs have already been located, and of these some sixty have been investigated at the cost of two or three Ivizan gentlemen who are interested in the subject.
The general type of tomb is an oblong hole or shaft, cut in the live rock and descending to a depth of six to eight feet, whence a low sloping gallery leads to the subterranean burial chamber. Each chamber contains one, two, or even three massive stone sarcophagi, made from a kind of white limestone found on the neighbouring island of Formentara. Not a tomb has yet been opened but what it has already been violated—it is presumed by the Vandals. The heavy sarcophagus lids have been pushed aside or broken, and any contents of value—if such there were—long ago abstracted. But of what the Vandals overlooked or despised, there yet remains enough to rejoice the heart of an archæologist, and a small museum has already been created in Iviza for the reception of the finds as the work of excavation goes on. Bones and skulls, once clothed in Tyrian purple and fine linen, are collected and ranged neatly upon shelves. Hundreds of amphoræ are found, each sarcophagus containing two, placed in a depression at the feet of the dead, while others seem to have served as cinerary urns for the remains of children.
There is a large collection of red pottery—busts, statuettes, and masks—some of the latter with an Egyptian cast of countenance, others of a comic type with glass or metal rings in the nose. There are some beautiful tear-bottles of iridescent glass, coloured with metallic oxides, and delicate pottery jars for ointment. There are shallow open oil lamps, shaped like a shell, and bronze rings and seals. That very day the workmen had unearthed a pretty ram’s head with curling horns, of fragile white earthenware, which our friend showed us. He also had in his possession what I should suppose to be the most valuable find yet made—an engraved scarab of dark green hæmatite, comprising on its tiny surface the figure of a man on horseback, with a spear in his hand and a dog by his side, the whole cut with the delicacy of the finest intaglio.
No inscriptions have as yet come to light, but as each tomb is opened the hope revives that it may prove to be in an unrifled condition and contain something that may throw a fresh light upon the burial customs of a long-vanished people. An illustrated pamphlet dealing with the Ivizan discoveries up to the present was in process of preparation at the time of our visit, and I much regret not having received a copy in time to acquaint my reader with fuller details regarding this necropolis than we were able to gather during our very brief stay.