“A short walk brought us to the altar of Torre Trencado....”
(page [159])
The Nau de Tudons—nau is the patois for boat—is composed of enormous blocks of stone and built in the form of an upturned boat about thirty feet in length and twelve in height. The rounded bow points to the north, and at the base of the square stern is a so-called dwelling—a retreat barely large enough to accommodate a human being. It is supposed that the interior of the Nau itself served originally as a habitation, for the centre is partially hollow and is roofed over with gigantic slabs, most of which have now fallen in. There is something strangely pathetic about this old monument raised by a long vanished race that has left memorials of imperishable stone without a sign or a word to record who the builders were or whence they came. Mysterious and lonely the Nau stands out against the sunset sky; a couple of donkeys graze amongst clumps of spurge and asphodel, and a stonechat chacks sharply from the topmost slab of the roof; but the tide of human life has long receded from the spot—never to return.
At seven o’clock we reached Ciudadéla and drew up at the Fonda Feliciano in the Plaza Alfonso III. The sunset had cast such a glamour of crimson and gold over the white city on the seashore that we were a little disappointed to find it so essentially unromantic-looking at close quarters, but any haven was welcome after seven hours’ shaking in a galaréta. We found the inn to be chiefly frequented by persons of the class—as far as we could judge—of commercial travellers, several of whom dined at the table d’hôte that evening. The fare was ample, but the cookery far more greasy and less refined than in Majorca; the strangest medley of eatables made its appearance on the dish sometimes—the beef being garnished with potatoes, fat bacon, hunks of stewed cabbage, garbanzos—enormous white beans—aniseed cake, and goodness knows what besides, so that during one course we had nine different things on our plate at once, to only five of which could we put a name. Being very tired we went to bed early, our host informing us in bad English as he lighted us upstairs that as the inn was very full he could not give us a second bedroom till the following day. The fact that the house was being rebuilt, and that we should be waked at five o’clock by workmen pulling down a floor overhead, he prudently left us to find out for ourselves.
There are several excursions to be made from Ciudadéla, and the two days we spent there were amply occupied in visiting the principal megalithic remains in the neighbourhood. The talayóts of Hostal which Murray’s guide-book mentions, we found uninteresting, besides being troublesome to get to—much traversing of rocky wheatfields and stone walls being necessary before reaching them. But the drive to Torre Trencáda is well worth taking, and can be combined with a visit to Llafúda.
Starting at nine o’clock, we retraced our steps along the high road for a few miles and then turned off sharply by a cart track leading across the fields. The pastures were studded with outcrops of live rock turned to gold by a brilliant orange-coloured lichen, and innumerable tiny field flowers, red and blue pimpernels, vetches, and a minute orange marigold, spread a gay little carpet under foot. The common daisy of the Balearics is not the crimson-tipped flower of our lawns, though quite as wee and modest; it is a more fragile plant, and its flower has a faint mauve tinge which on being dried becomes a bright blue. A friend of ours at Kew told us it was the Bellium bellidioides of Linnæus.
