One of the pleasantest drives in the neighbourhood of Ciudadéla is to Son Saura, an estate about six miles distant belonging to a Minorcan nobleman. On this occasion we drove out en famille, for being Sunday afternoon not only was the waiter sent with us to enjoy an outing, but we were begged by our hostess to allow little José, aged six, to be of the party. Little José was weeping dismally on the doorstep at the moment, but as soon as our consent was given his tears stopped instantaneously, and he was hoisted on to the box seat next the waiter, under whose charge he was put. His mother assured us that he would be good—but we had already seen quite enough of Master José to discount this statement. Our hostess appeared to have no sort of authority over her children; she would rave and shriek at them, and occasionally reduce them to tears, but in the end they invariably got their own way, and their attitude towards her was entirely that of the little girl in an old Minorcan nursery couplet which for simplicity and impertinence it would be hard to surpass:
The Mother says to her:
Dirty one! Badly brought-up one!
And she answers:
You! You were the same!
I may add at once that little José did not belie his character. He snatched flowers from the flower beds, trampled mercilessly on precious young tobacco plants in crossing the fields, nearly fell into a large reservoir, was hauled hurriedly over two walls at the imminent risk of overthrowing a whole row of his elders and betters, perilously balanced on the top—and in fact acted as a complete antidote to any pleasure which the poor harassed waiter might otherwise have derived from the expedition. We, not being responsible for the child, took his misdoings less to heart, and when he temporarily disappeared in the vicinity of an open reservoir we were able to search the surface of the water for bubbles with comparative calm—confident that Master José’s career had not been such as to arouse the jealousy of the gods.
Son Saura is a pleasant-looking house surrounded by a large garden of geraniums and verbenas, roses and lilacs, all in bloom at the time of our visit. The estate is laid out with orange groves, olive and vine yards, corn and tobacco plantations, the whole admirably irrigated from two immense central reservoirs. In summer water has to be sought at a great depth in Minorca, and the wells being too deep for the employment of the Persian wheel, the usual method of raising the water is by means of a large windlass turned by a donkey—one bucket being let down as the other is wound up to the top. The drinking troughs for beasts which stand beside these wells partake of the archaic simplicity and durability of the dolmens, being formed of ponderous stone blocks hollowed out to the required depth.
The modern Minorcan has indeed sundry habits not unworthy of the megalithic monuments of his predecessors. The stones which he builds into his field walls are hardly less vast than theirs, and the palaces he erects for his pigs bear a strong family likeness to the prehistoric talayót; composed entirely of loose stones, with a cleverly domed roof, these buildings form quite a feature of the landscape in many parts of the island. The smaller ones are often plain huts, but the larger ones almost always have tastefully ornamented roofs—some resembling the step pyramids of Sakkára, others being built in round tiers like a gigantic wedding-cake. One—by no means the largest—which we entered at Son Saura, and of which a picture is given, measured not less than twenty feet across, inside, and twelve or fifteen feet in height; spacious, clean, and delightfully cool in hot weather, these houses are used by the pigs of Minorca as sleeping quarters at night and lounges at midday. Any attempt to photograph the occupants we found, however, to be out of the question: the very sight of a camera filled them with suspicion, and when this was followed by a strategic advance their worst fears were confirmed—with volleys of shrieks they broke up in panic, and, with ears flapping wildly, went off helter skelter with all the abandon of their Gadarene ancestors.
Acting as a kind of pylon to the above-mentioned palace at Son Saura is a curious old mésa, unlike any other we saw in the island—the horizontal slab being supported on two upright pillars, each of which has a rude capital formed by a separate stone. This monument is possibly of a different date from the other altars, and is said to be of a pattern of which—as far as is known—only one other specimen exists, in the island of Malta.