We had felt so much at home at the Hospederia and so enthralled with this new world of steeps and silences that, when the last of our three days had come, we felt sincerely sorry to leave it.
In torrid summer weather, when the southern plains of the island lie baking in the sun, it would be impossible to imagine a more charming way of escape from the heat than to rest under the shades of leafy Miramar, or to sit at ease in one of the cunningly placed miradors "looking lazy at the sea" and the everlasting hills.
But the law is inexorable. When his three days' free lodging has come to an end each guest must move on to make room for others. A wise provision; for, had it not been so ruled, the first travellers who filled these beds and ate at these tables would never have left the Hospederia—they would have been there yet!
Our next stopping-place was to be Sóller, a town that is envalleyed amid the highest mountains in the island. Sóller is ten miles distant from Miramar, and the question was how we were to get transported thither. At the Hospederia we were quite out of the way of traffic. Not even a diligence lumbered by.
Fernando, coming to our rescue, offered to negotiate with a farmer for the use of a cart. It was the ploughing season, the busiest time of the year for both men and mules, but he succeeded in arranging that we could have the loan of a conveyance of some kind at two o'clock that afternoon for ten pesetas.
The morning had been wet. Happily not with the drenching, torrential rain of these latitudes, but with an insinuating moisture reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands. Disregarding it, we made the most of the few hours at our disposal, seeking, and finding, fresh walks and wonders in our surroundings.
One thing I remember that specially interested us in the terraced olive plantations of Miramar, was the method of throwing a little stone bridge from one walled terrace to another across the bed of the river. There was no water in the channel, the bed was dry and mossy. As we looked up at the succession of bridgelets, each flanked on either side by short flights of stone steps, it seemed to typify the extreme of the elaborate and painstaking system of culture that prevails all over the island.
With appetites sharpened by the famed air of Miramar we had lunched off goats' milk, the toasted remains of our half cartwheel of rye bread, and something I had confidently expected would prove to be an omelet, but which turned out to be something entirely different. It was eatable, however, even delectable, and we devoured it to the last yellow fragment, then waited the arrival of our carriage.
It came at last. And as it drew up in front of the Hospederia we looked first at it, then at each other, in silent dismay.
In place of the roomy farm cart drawn by mules that we had expected to see, the conveyance was one of the gaily painted, two-wheeled cockleshells in which Majorcan farmers go a-junketing. It would have been an admirable vehicle for two people. Viewed as a means of carrying four with luggage, it at first sight seemed absolutely impracticable.