As may be imagined, a cross-country tramp in Minorca is attended with considerable difficulty, and in visiting the talayóts it is essential to have a guide who knows his way about and who can direct one through the maze of obstacles that has to be threaded in attaining some tumulus that rises like a landmark half a mile away. Much of the land is under wheat—the crop much behind that of Majorca—and this has to be carefully skirted, or waded through with an eye to the barest patches of ground; other fields are devoted to pasture, where handsome mauve thistles flourish abundantly in the rocky soil, in company with periwinkles, borage, yellow daisies, white clover, and sweet alyssum. As a rule the enclosures can be entered and quitted by the barréras—light wooden barriers kept in place by blocks of stone and removed for the passage of cattle; but occasionally we were obliged to scale the walls by means of projecting footholds built into their sides, whereat spotted cows ceased grazing, to gaze with mild surprise at the unusual spectacle of two ladies performing gymnastic feats in company with a camera and tripod.
A quarter of an hour’s arduous progression brought us to the talayót of Trepúco, said to be one of the largest in the island, but by no means that in the best preservation. The Minorcan talayóts—a word akin to atalaya, a watch-tower—consist of solid cone-shaped cairns built of roughly dressed stone blocks, often of gigantic size. These cairns range from thirty to sixty feet in diameter, and from twenty to thirty feet in height; but at close quarters they are far less conspicuous objects than might be supposed, partly owing to their general resemblance to the stone walls surrounding them, and partly to the enveloping scrub of lentiscus and oleaster which conceals their outline and lends them the appearance of a natural mound. Some of them are in an extremely dilapidated condition—others again, like the talayót of Toréllo of which a picture is given, are in almost perfect preservation. It is supposed that they are the burial cairns of chieftains, but though cinerary urns are said to have been found inside them in one or two instances, this theory alone does not satisfactorily account for other features of these curious monuments. In some of them traces of interior chambers have been discovered, others have a sloping ramp running round the outside as a means of ascent, and the talayót of Toréllo has an aperture like a window, on a level with the summit of the mound, the reason of which it is impossible to guess.
“The talayot of Torello is in almost perfect preservation ... it is supposed that they are the burial cairns of chieftains.”
(page [148])
“The upright slab of the Talato-de-Dalt must be nearly twelve feet in height ... and surrounding it are traces of a circle of monoliths of about the same height.”
(page [149])