IX
SÓLLER
Though a longer acquaintance reveals many charming and wholly Majorcan characteristics, at first sight Sóller resembles a Swiss town, so closely do the high mountains encircle it. The likeness is emphasized when, as occasionally happens in winter, the double crest of the Puig Major is tipped with snow.
With the exception of Palma, Sóller was the only Balearic town in which we had slept. Half unconsciously we found ourselves putting them in comparison, to discover that while each is, after its own fashion, delightful, they are entirely dissimilar.
Palma, "compactly built together," stands, crowded a little, within its city walls, its feet lapped by the sea, a fertile plain behind it, while Sóller stretches itself at ease among its hills, with abundant elbow-room, in a fruitful orange grove. Water is a precious thing in Palma, where drinking-water in quaint Moorish stone jars is hawked through the streets, while a striking and refreshing feature of Sóller is the abundance of running water. It flowed—a little sluggishly perhaps, for the rains had not yet come—over the stony bed of the torrente; it gushed unchecked from the street fountains; it ran along cunningly contrived stone conduits and turned mills.
There are no rivers in Majorca. The beds of the torrentes that ought to be rivers are often so dry that they resemble rough sun-baked roads. It was so many weeks since we had seen even a thread of running water that the sound of its flow was music in our ears. As a full and free supply of pure water is essential to the well-being of a town, one easily understands how Sóller has the advantage of Palma in health conditions. The absorbent soil of Sóller ensures freedom from rheumatism, and the old people remain hale and hearty to the close of lives that in many cases come within nodding distance of a century.
Perhaps it was owing to the absence of the military, or the want of a railway—though Sóller has one in the making—or of the close vicinity of a port, but to our cursory view Sóller appeared less gay, and its people seemed to lack the irresponsible smiling light-heartedness of Palma folks.
There were architectural differences also. To enter one of the better-class houses in the larger city one crosses a patio, or open courtyard, and having ascended a stair, knocks at a door; while in Sóller one steps directly from the street into a large hall, on either side of which, close to the wall, are set a long row of chairs all of similar design. Here visitors are received, and, as far as we could judge, penetrate no further.