In due time my team made its appearance,—an omnibus of basket-work, with a canvas cover, drawn by two horses. It had space enough for twelve persons, yet was the smallest vehicle I could discover. There appears to be nothing between it and the two-wheeled cart of the peasant, which, on a pinch, carries six or eight. For an hour and a half we traversed the teeming plain, between stacks of wheat worthy to be laid on the altar at Eleusis, carob-trees with their dark, varnished foliage, almond-orchards bending under the weight of their green nuts, and the country-houses with their garden clumps of orange, cactus, and palm. As we drew near the base of the mountains, olive-trees of great size and luxuriance covered the earth with a fine sprinkle of shade. Their gnarled and knotted trunks, a thousand years old, were frequently split into three or four distinct and separate trees, which in the process assumed forms so marvellously human in their distortion, that I could scarcely believe them to be accidental. Doré never drew anything so weird and grotesque. Here were two club-headed individuals righting, with interlocked knees, convulsed shoulders, and fists full of each other's hair; yonder a bully was threatening attack, and three cowards appeared to be running away from him with such speed that they were tumbling over one another's heels. In one place a horrible dragon was devouring a squirming, shapeless animal; in another, a drunken man, with whirling arms and tangled feet, was pitching forward upon his face. The living wood in Dante was tame beside these astonishing trees.
We now entered a wild ravine, where, nevertheless, the mountain-sides, sheer and savage as they were, had succumbed to the rule of man, and nourished an olive or a carob tree on every corner of earth between the rocks. The road was built along the edge of the deep, dry bed of a winter stream, so narrow that a single arch carried it from side to side, as the windings of the glen compelled. After climbing thus for a mile in the shadows of threatening masses of rock, an amphitheatre of gardens, enframed by the spurs of two grand, arid mountains, opened before us. The bed of the valley was filled with vines and orchards, beyond which rose long terraces, dark with orange and citron trees, obelisks of cypress and magnificent groups of palm, with the long white front and shaded balconies of a hacienda between. Far up, on a higher plateau between the peaks, I saw the church-tower of Valdemosa. The sides of the mountains were terraced with almost incredible labor, walls massive as the rock itself being raised to a height of thirty feet, to gain a shelf of soil two or three yards in breadth. Where the olive and the carob ceased, box and ilex took possession of the inaccessible points, carrying up the long waves of vegetation until their foam-sprinkles of silver-gray faded out among the highest clefts. The natural channels of the rock were straightened and made to converge at the base, so that not a wandering cloud could bathe the wild growths of the summit without being caught and hurried into some tank below. The wilderness was forced, by pure toil, to become a Paradise; and each stubborn feature, which toil could not subdue, now takes its place as a contrast and an ornament in the picture. Verily, there is nothing in all Italy so beautiful as Valdemosa!
Lest I should be thought extravagant in my delight, let me give you some words of George Sand, which I have since read. "I have never seen," she says, "anything so bright, and at the same time so melancholy, as these perspectives where the ilex, the carob, pine, olive, poplar, and cypress mingle their various hues in the hollows of the mountain,—abysses of verdure, where the torrent precipitates its course under mounds of sumptuous richness and an inimitable grace.... While you hear the sound of the sea on the northern coast, you perceive it only as a faint shining line beyond the sinking mountains and the great plain which is unrolled to the southward;—a sublime picture, framed in the foreground by dark rocks covered with pines; in the middle distance by mountains of boldest outline, fringed with superb trees; and beyond these by rounded hills which the setting sun gilds with burning colors, where the eye distinguishes, a league away, the microscopic profile of trees, fine as the antennæ of butterflies, black and clear as pen-drawings of India-ink on a ground of sparkling gold. It is one of those landscapes which oppress you because they leave nothing to be desired, nothing to be imagined. Nature has here created that which the poet and the painter behold in their dreams. An immense ensemble, infinite details, inexhaustible variety, blended forms, sharp contours, dim, vanishing depths,—all are present, and art can suggest nothing further. Majorca is one of the most beautiful countries of the world for the painter, and one of the least known. It is a green Helvetia under the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the Orient."
The village of Valdemosa is a picturesque, rambling place, brown with age, and buried in the foliage of fig and orange trees. The highest part of the narrow plateau where it stands is crowned by the church and monastery of the Trappists (Cartusa), now deserted. My coachman drove under the open roof of a venta, and began to unharness his horses. The family, who were dining at a table so low that they appeared to be sitting on the floor, gave me the customary invitation to join them, and when I asked for a glass of wine brought me one which held nearly a quart. I could not long turn my back on the bright, wonderful landscape without; so, taking books and colors, I entered the lonely cloisters of the monastery. Followed first by one small boy, I had a retinue of at least fifteen children before I had completed the tour of the church, court-yard, and the long-drawn, shady corridors of the silent monks; and when I took my seat on the stones at the foot of the towers, with the very scene described by George Sand before my eyes, a number of older persons added themselves to the group. A woman brought me a chair, and the children then planted themselves in a dense row before me, while I attempted to sketch under such difficulties as I had never known before. Precisely because I am no artist, it makes me nervous to be watched while drawing; and the remarks of the young men on this occasion were not calculated to give me courage.
When I had roughly mapped out the sky with its few floating clouds, some one exclaimed, "He has finished the mountains, there they are!" and they all crowded around me, saying, "Yes, there are the mountains!" While I was really engaged upon the mountains, there was a violent discussion as to what they might be; and I don't know how long it would have lasted, had I not turned to some cypresses nearer the foreground. Then a young man cried out: "O, that's a cypress! I wonder if he will make them all,—how many are there? One, two, three, four, five,—yes, he makes five!" There was an immediate rush, shutting out earth and heaven from my sight, and they all cried in chorus, "One, two, three, four, five,—yes, he has made five!" "Cavaliers and ladies," I said, with solemn politeness, "have the goodness not to stand before me." "To be sure! Santa Maria! How do you think he can see?" yelled an old woman, and the children were hustled away. But I thereby won the ill-will of those garlic-breathing and scratching imps, for very soon a shower of water-drops fell upon my paper. Next a stick, thrown from an upper window, dropped on my head, and more than once my elbow was intentionally jogged from behind. The older people scolded and threatened, but young Majorca was evidently against me. I therefore made haste to finish my impotent mimicry of air and light, and get away from the curious crowd.
Behind the village there is a gleam of the sea, near, yet at an unknown depth. As I threaded the walled lanes, seeking some point of view, a number of lusty young fellows, mounted on unsaddled mules, passed me with a courteous greeting. On one side rose a grand pile of rock, covered with ilex-trees,—a bit of scenery so admirable, that I fell into a new temptation. I climbed a little knoll and looked around me. Far and near no children were to be seen; the portico of an unfinished house offered both shade and seclusion. I concealed myself behind a pillar, and went to work. For half an hour I was happy; then around black head popped up over a garden-wall, a small brown form crept towards me, beckoned, and presently a new multitude had assembled. The noise they made provoked a sound of cursing from the interior of a stable adjoining the house. They only made a louder tumult in answer; the voice became more threatening, and at the end of five minutes the door burst open. An old man, with wrath flashing from his eyes, came forth. The children took to their heels; I greeted the new-comer politely, but he hardly returned the salutation. He was a very fountain of curses, and now hurled stones with them after the fugitives. When they had all disappeared behind the walls, he went back to his den, grumbling and muttering. It was not five minutes, however, before the children were back again, as noisy as before; so, at the first thunder from the stable, I shut up my book, and returned to the inn.
While the horses were being harnessed, I tried to talk with an old native, who wore the island costume, and was as grim and grizzly as Ossawatomie Brown. A party of country people from the plains, who seemed to have come up to Valdemosa on a pleasure trip, clambered into a two-wheeled cart drawn by one mule, and drove away. My old friend gave me the distances of various places, the state of the roads, and the quality of the wine; but he seemed to have no conception of the world outside of the island. Indeed, to a native of the village, whose fortune has simply placed him beyond the reach of want, what is the rest of the world? Around and before him spread one of its loveliest pictures; he breathes its purest air; and he may enjoy its best luxuries, if he heeds or knows how to use them.
Up to this day the proper spice and flavor had been wanting. Palma had only interested me, but in Valdemosa I found the inspiration, the heat and play of vivid, keen sensation, which one (often somewhat unreasonably) expects from a new land. As my carriage descended, winding around the sides of the magnificent mountain amphitheatre, in the alternate shadows of palm and ilex, pine and olive, I looked back, clinging to every marvellous picture, and saying to myself, over and over again, "I have not come hither in vain." When the last shattered gate of rock closed behind me, and the wood of insane olive-trunks was passed, with what other eyes I looked upon the rich orchard-plain! It had now become a part of one superb whole; as the background of my mountain view, it had caught a new glory, and still wore the bloom of the invisible sea.
In the evening I reached the Four Nations, where I was needlessly invited to dinner by certain strangers, and dined alone, on meats cooked in rancid oil. When the cook had dished the last course, he came into a room adjoining the dining apartment, sat down to a piano in his white cap, and played loud, long, and badly. The landlord had papered this room with illustrations from all the periodicals of Europe: dancing-girls pointed their toes under cardinals' hats, and bulls were baited before the shrines of saints. Mixed with the woodcuts were the landlord's own artistic productions, wonderful to behold. All the house was proud of this room, and with reason; for there is assuredly no other room like it in the world. A notice in four languages, written with extraordinary flourishes, announced in the English division that travellers will find "confortation and modest prices." The former advantage, I discovered, consisted in the art of the landlord, the music and oil of the cook, and the attendance of a servant so distant that it was easier to serve myself than seek him; the latter may have been "modest" for Palma, but in any other place they would have been considered brazenly impertinent. I should therefore advise travellers to try the "Three Pigeons," in the same street, rather than the Four Nations.
The next day, under the guidance of my old friend, M. Laurens, I wandered for several hours through the streets, peeping into court-yards, looking over garden-walls, or idling under the trees of the Alameda. There are no pleasant suburban places of resort, such as are to be found in all other Spanish cities; the country commences on the other side of the moat. Three small cafés exist, but cannot be said to flourish, for I never saw more than one table occupied. A theatre has been built, but is only open during the winter, of course. Some placards on the walls, however, announced that the national (that is, Majorcan) diversion of baiting bulls with dogs would be given in a few days.