The road, which led between green fields, had been lovely. An occasional girl perched on a donkey comprised almost the entire traffic. We reached the Salinas to find a scene of great brilliancy. All along the sides of the pools rose pyramids of salt, their glistening sides clearly reflected in the still water with something of the effect of carefully moulded icebergs. And along the portable line of rails strings of trucks laden with the sharp-faceted crystals of the rough salt were moving towards the wharf.
Down by the wharf everything was white—the roads, the few houses, the great stores of salt that lay awaiting shipment, the shoes of the men that stood in the flat-bottomed barges beneath with long rakes, packing away the salt as it streamed down in a sparkling white torrent from the pulverizing machine on the staging of the quay above.
From Iviza salt is shipped in great quantities to many distant countries. It was interesting to hear that even in salt the taste of the nations varies—Russia liking hers large in crystal, America preferring that supplied her to be as fine as possible.
We stood on the pier that jutted out over the clear green waters of the islet-studded bay, watching the men at work filling the barges with the salt that was to be transhipped to the Italian barque that lay in the bay of Iviza. A fine, robust, brown-faced smiling lot of men they were. And the work on which they were at the moment engaged seemed mechanical and easy. Hanging on the railing close by were fishing nets, and they told us they caught many fish in the bay.
On that bright airy morning the work seemed pleasant and not over-arduous: different from what it must be when the fierce southern heat has dried up the sea-water and the labour consists of standing under the burning sun, beset by mosquitoes, scooping up the salt from the floor of the lagoons and building it up into pyramids. If ever there was specially thirsty work it must be salt salving.
There seemed to be surprisingly little accommodation for the labourers near the Salinas. In summer, when close upon a thousand labourers are employed, a large proportion of them are forced to live in the town of Iviza and add a walk of many miles to the exertion of the day.
At the hotel at luncheon the newly installed Governor with all his family (except the baby) and the colonel sat by us at table. The elder men were still in uniform, but the habitués of the board had been quick to return to mufti.
Our walk that afternoon was in the care of Don Narciso, and under his guidance we walked through pleasant country byways towards the few clustered houses that comprise the little village of Jesus, to see a notable picture in the church there.
It was through a fair green world that Narciso led us that radiant afternoon—under trees heavy with great green velvet almonds, and through fields deep in full-bearded grain and rich in blood-red poppies and crimson gladioli, among which wide-hatted women, the upper of their many skirts tucked up pannier fashion, were busy working.
Just outside the Church of Jesus, at a noria in the shade of a tall palm, trellised vines, and budding pomegranate-trees, a sun-browned man, his little brown son, and an old brown mule were working in happy unison. The church itself belonged to that informal type of architecture in which Iviza abounds. The roof was red-tiled, and without and within the building was severely whitewashed. The special panel which formed the centre of the great altar-piece was the work of an unknown painter of the early Valencian school.