The sun had set when we reached Fornalutx. Looking up from the crooked street towards the hills we saw the peak of the Puig Mayor stand out against the darkening eastern sky, sublime, magnificent, bathed in a flood of roseate light. It was a fitting climax to a day of quiet delights.
We had entered Sóller wet and weary on Saturday night, knowing no one within many miles. When, on Wednesday afternoon, the diligence bound for Palma called at the Marina to pick us up, people of four different nationalities assembled round the coach door to bid us "God-speed."
We would fain have lingered amid the oranges and palms of Sóller, but time was flying and we had much to see elsewhere.
The diligence was full—so full that there would hardly have been space for an added thimble. It was our first experience of a Majorcan diligence, and we were interested to see how pleasantly the already closely packed passengers squeezed together to make room for new-comers, and to note how quietly they all sat, without fidgeting, with scarcely a change of position, during a drive that lasted over four hours.
The window in front and those at the sides were shut, and remained so throughout the journey. Fortunately our seats were by the door, and through its big window, which we kept open, we had a splendid view.
The highroad from Sóller to Palma is, I verily believe, one of the most curious ever made. Immediately after leaving the town it has to ascend 1,500 feet, which exploit it accomplishes by zigzagging at acute angles to the summit. That done, it zigzags down the other side.
The progress uphill was necessarily slow, so slow indeed, that the driver, who had traversed that road daily for thirty years, left his sure-footed mules to guide themselves, and trotted along behind the coach smoking the eternal cigarette. And, while we revelled in the ever-varying views afforded by the constant change of direction, our fellow travellers gently dozed, with the exception of a round-eyed little girl, who, oppressed by the glory of her first hat and the excitement of her first journey, kept wide-awake.
Up we went, every moment revealing some fresh effect of light and shadow in the enchanting mountains, past where the embryonic workings of the new light railway scarred the hillside. Up we went and up, catching little glimpses of the town nestling far beneath in its cradle of mountains, and seeing the last flash of sunset illumine their crests. As we mounted slowly the somnolence of our fellow passengers became more profound, and a portly father who was seated beside the little girl, to her evident alarm, lurched farther and farther in her direction, threatening altogether to efface her. The Man was on the point of going to the rescue, but the coach having reached the old carven cross that marks the summit, a sudden and vivifying change came over our manner of progress. The driver remounted the box beside the two motionless old women, whose black-shrouded figures we had seen silhouetted against the light, and off we set, at a pace that atoned for our crawl uphill.
The more rapid motion wrought a transformation on our companions. All the slumberers awoke. The portly gentleman, simultaneously opening eyes and mouth, gazed down in astonishment at the child, as though during his doze she had materialized out of nothing. Lively expressions lit up the blank faces. The little old man in the corner began softly chanting one of the quaint native songs, that to me always sound like improvisations.