The Fortunate Isles: Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza

Feeling our way up the worn stairway, we reached a floor with more empty and silent apartments. Two or three broken steps led to a cunning opening placed exactly over the front entrance. Besiegers essaying to storm the door must have fallen easy victims to the alert watchers above; and that wide hearth had room to heat an amazing lot of water. At either side of the opening were embrasures into which the defender of the fortress might dart after he had aimed his missile – scalding water, arrows, heavy stones, or whatever the fashion of his time in projectiles chanced to be.

Mounting yet higher, we found ourselves standing in the open air, on a flat circular roof overlooking the wide bay. On one side of the roof were two chambers and a draw-well.

The view from the top of this ancient Moorish tower was grand. The sun had long set, but the sky still held a thousand glorious hues that were reflected in the sea. No craft moved on the surface of the water, and not a living being was in sight on land. The whole lovely world seemed to belong to us. Allured by the romantic beauty of the spot, we lingered until the colour had faded and the sky had become so dark that we had to stumble our way fonda-wards over the rough field-track, vowing to return on the morrow to see the place by daylight.

Supper was waiting when we got indoors – half-a-dozen fried eggs served with fried potatoes, cutlets, cauliflower and cheese. A home-made sausage, a mould of membrillo jelly, fruit and coffee – an outré combination perhaps, but it was all very tempting and nicely cooked, and we enjoyed it.

Another of our charming Balearic days had ended. And so, as Pepys would say, to bed.

Our wonderful luck in weather continued. We awoke to yet another perfect morning. Immediately after breakfast the Man set off to sketch one of the countless curious antique Moorish wells – known as norias– used for the irrigation of the crops: wells whose chains of earthenware jars are worked by the motive power supplied by mules that, yoked to a long shaft, keep walking in a circle. The mule needs no guide, as the rein, which is tied to the beam overhead, at intervals gives a gentle tug in the required direction.

It was oddly pathetic to see the patient brutes, their eyes blindfolded by having straw saucers fastened over them plodding steadfastly round and round, while from the ceaseless filling and emptying of the chain of jars the water gushed in a miniature waterfall into the trenches dug between the long lines of growing vegetables. In this fertile plain near the sea, the crop at this mid-winter season appeared to consist mainly of cabbages and cauliflowers. And when we saw those grown at Alcudia we knew where the mammoth cabbages that had dominated Pollensa market had been reared.

The Boy had gone alone to do a sketch on the roof of the Moorish tower that had interested us on the previous night. As he sat working, there came a sound of steps ascending the crumbling stairs; and to his pleasure three pretty Majorcan girls appeared, come to fill their earthen water-jars at the old draw-well on the roof, a well that even after the lapse of hundreds of years still continued to yield an abundant supply of pure water. The girls were exactly the figures required to complete the sketch. So to their gratification and his own benefit the Boy put them in.

In the afternoon, the Man and I walked the easy mile to Alcudia, and wandered about the quaint old town, climbing both the inner and the outer walls, wishing we knew more of its history, and lamenting that our limitations of language kept us ignorant of the meaning of these extensive and variant lines of fortifications. So we made no exhaustive inquiries, but prowled about and drew our own rough conclusions as to the relative values of the Roman and Moorish manner of building and defence.

Coming upon a handsome and imposing church, we went in. It was dark and silent. Straying through the outer building, which had a vast Moorish dome, we entered a curious and beautiful inner church, whose sides were lined with the nearest approach to private boxes that we had ever seen in a sacred edifice.

Returning to the outer church, we were looking at the decorations in the dimness of the side chapels. The Man had struck a match to enable us to see a grotto that was rendered still more obscure by half-drawn curtains. The sound echoing through the silence brought a lad, who was evidently intensely interested in the church and its possessions. Lighting a tall candle, he drew aside the curtains, and with something of the pride of ownership in his manner revealed to us the Christmas tableau of the scene in the stable at Bethlehem.

His glory in the display was so evident that we did not remark on the contempt for perspective that had represented the Virgin and Child as giants, and the worshipping kings and shepherds as merely pigmies; nor did we venture to hint that anything in the nature of an anachronism marked the presence of a gay satin cushion at Mary's feet.

The lad's soul was evidently in the work of the church. When we thanked him, and the Man offered him a coin in recognition of the willing services he had rendered us, he at first refused to take it; then, when we insisted, accepted and immediately put it into the collection-box marked "For the High Altar."

Our landlord had spoken of the remains of a Roman amphitheatre that was in the district; and finding that we were interested, he volunteered to pilot us thither. And, indeed, without his escort we would never have found the place, for it lies in the heart of a farm, the way to which leaves the main road half-way between the old city and her port.

A commonplace path between stone walls led to the farm-house, whose quite ordinary exterior gave no suggestion of the strange tracks of bygone races that lay hid in the ground all about. Having asked and obtained the permission that enabled us to trespass, we passed on and reached a rocky slope which bore signs of having at some time been used as a quarry.

To our unskilled eyes nothing seemed to promise that our surroundings would prove other than the usual Majorcan farm placed on a particularly rocky bit of country.

Our guide, who had been walking in advance, stopping suddenly, pointed to the ground at his feet.

"There!" he said.

And looking, we saw that we were standing on the top step of a barely distinguishable semicircle that had been roughly hewn in the rock. With a beautiful disrespect for age, a stone dike had been built right across the seats. I think we counted six rows above and five below the wall. And in the arena flourishing almond-trees had rooted deep in the once blood-stained soil. A hole in the ground allowed a peep into a cavern where the wild beasts used in the combats had been housed.

But the ground held other secrets. In the solid rock that rose above the sides of the amphitheatre there were many graves – once sealed; now, having been desecrated by bygone generations of Moors, merely slits gaping to the skies.

About four years earlier a strange finding had taken place within a few paces of the farm-house. An untouched Roman grave had been discovered; and our guide, who had been present at the opening, described the scene in language so graphic, and accompanied by such dramatic gesture, that we had not the smallest difficulty in following the most minute detail.

He told us how, when the hermetically sealed top stone had been lifted away, the complete body of a woman, apparently young, lay before them, as she had been placed two thousand years before, with a necklace of gold round her throat, earrings in her ears, rings on her fingers. And how, as they looked in awed silence, the body that throughout these ages had maintained a semblance of humanity, had before their eyes slowly crumbled into undistinguishable dust.

XVI

MINORCA

The weekly steamer from Barcelona to Minorca was due to call at the port of Alcudia at 3.30 a.m. We went to bed, but not to sleep, for half a dozen intending passengers, five of them commercial travellers, had arrived by diligence from La Puebla, and the fonda echoed with unwonted noise.

When, about three o'clock, we went downstairs, the large hall was brilliantly lit, and men muffled in big cloaks and scarves were gulping glasses of hot coffee before leaving the shelter of a roof. In the public room beyond, some harbourmen and one of the never-absent carbineers sat smoking.

A nondescript being – faded red cap on head, bare feet thrust into hempen sandals – summoned by the landlord, appeared from the outer darkness and, shouldering our baggage, passed out into the night. We followed, and walking by faith, at length found ourselves standing on the pier, the unseen water lap-lapping at our feet, an increasing group of fellow-voyagers gathering about us.

Out of the dense blackness a boat with a lantern burning dimly at her prow crept beneath us and paused. Some one lit a match, revealing a short flight of steps leading to the water. Descending with fumbling feet, we reached the elusive craft below.

A curious company we were, vague, indefinable, all closely packed together, and all silent. A priest, a party of commercial travellers, and a gaunt Moorish-looking being, who was wrapped from his head – on which, as we afterwards saw, he wore, probably to save bother in packing, a wide felt sombrero with a jaunty yachting cap set a-top – to his naked ankles, in a great white blanket.

There was no moon, and the paling stars gave but little light as the two boatmen, standing up facing the bow, moved the heavily laden boat across the smooth swart water. Urged on with strong, unswerving strokes, the boat moved away from the invisible land, the while we sat dumb, motionless.

I was just thinking that in something of these attitudes of utter and hopeless despair might the unwilling passengers of Charon endure the last dread journey across the Styx, when the Boy, who was sitting next to me, whispered, "Don't we look exactly as though we were shipwrecked people adrift on the ocean?"

Then the bulk of the Monte Toro loomed vaguely ahead, and as our bow neared the accommodation ladder the elder boatman, abandoning his oar, began collecting his fees of fivepence each (dos reales) for piloting us over the bay.

The illusion had vanished. We were everyday human beings once more.

Before we left London a Spanish friend had strongly advised us to travel second-class in Balearic Island steamers. He said the second saloon accommodation was justly popular with those who knew, because, first-class passengers being few, it was better placed and more commodious.

The Man has cherished a lifelong theory that when journeying by sea the best accommodation is not too good. But on this occasion of our crossing from Majorca to Minorca, as the weather was still tranquil, he allowed himself to be persuaded to put our friend's advice to the test. And the experience of that night was so eminently satisfactory that it not only added to our immediate comfort but saved us much money in the future.

When crossing from Barcelona our first-class cabins, which were small and had thwart-ship berths, had been situated in the stern. The second-class cabin on the Monte Toro, which I shared with the only other lady passenger, was large, airy, and as gay as ivory paint, brass rods, and scarlet draperies could make it. It was right amidships too, had two port-holes, and berths that for comfort could scarcely have been improved upon.

The lighter with a load of pigs being still on the way, the decks of the smart little steamer were quiet. A pet donkey, covered with a scarlet blanket, was tethered under the sheltering boat deck; a glint of gold lace in the galley revealed the captain warming himself by the cook's fire.

When I entered the cabin labelled "Señoras," a pretty girl in a pink petticoat was standing before the mirror engaged in exaggerating the bulk of her abundant dark hair by padding it out with quite unnecessary "rats" and cushions into twice its natural proportions.

Lying down, I fell asleep to the lullaby grunting of the pigs that were being hauled on board. When I awoke it was daylight, and a glance through a port-hole showed that we were nearing a flat coast.

The pretty pink petticoat had already gone on deck, and putting on a cloak and hood, I followed to join my people in a sheltered corner of the promenade deck, from where we surveyed the coast that we were approaching with the deliberate rate of speed that characterizes Balearic Island steamers.

The general aspect of Minorca, the flat country, the white houses, the windmills, vividly recalled our first glimpse of Guernsey as we had approached it early one winter morning many years ago.

Ciudadela, which is the oldest city in the island, was the capital in the time of the Moors. It was to the rulers of Ciudadela that King Jaime sent his demand for the submission of Minorca. From our place on deck we could see Cape Pera, the eastern point of Majorca, twenty miles distant, where the young King and his knights kindled the huge bonfires that, by alarming the Moors into the belief that a hostile army lay encamped there ready to invade them, gained him a bloodless subjection. Ciudadela, which was the seat of a bishop in 423, is still the ecclesiastical capital of Minorca, though Mahón has long superseded her in all else.

The sea is rarely smooth on the Minorcan coast. It was within a short distance of Ciudadela that, not many days later, the General Chanzy, bound from Marseilles to Algiers, was wrecked with the loss of every soul on board with the solitary exception of one young man, whose escape was surely the most marvellous on record.

As we lay to outside the very narrow entrance to the harbour, the five comerciantes, who were preparing to go on shore, eyed askance the tossing cockleshells of boats that were advancing ready to convey them to land. By taking the motor-car that ran the twenty-eight miles connecting Ciudadela with Mahón, which is on the opposite extreme of the island, they would save three precious hours. With the prospect of a charming sail along the coast before us we did not envy them.

After a protracted delay the boats succeeded in approaching near enough to the accommodation ladder to enable the commercial men to embark. And they were off, clutching at the sides of the little boats, as with rueful faces they joggled shorewards over the choppy waves.

Our chilly friend of the enveloping blanket and the naked ankles, who was a deck passenger, had, as the Man reported, spent the night perched on a grating over the engine-room – a situation where he would surely be warm enough. Where he performed his toilet no one knows, but as we neared Port Mahón he appeared transformed from a shivering bundle into a dandy. Neat black socks covered his ankles, and his brown coat, orange shirt, and green velveteen trousers revealed a nice taste for colour. His yellow-white blanket had disappeared, but he still wore his two hats.

Meanwhile the pigs, whose lamentations had rent the silence of the night, were being hauled, pulled, jerked, pushed, and dumped along the deck, over the side, and into the lighter that was to take them ashore, as they went raising their voices in shrill protest. As the Boy remarked, quoting Uncle Remus, "These pigs know whar dey come from, but dey don' know whar they gwine!"

As the Monte Toro steamed slowly round the low cliffs that seemed to descend sheer into deep water, so little sign of broken beach or of outlying reef was there, we could see how through the ages the restless sea had nibbled and gnawed at the edges of the cliffs, which in many places were deeply honeycombed, and even hollowed into caves.

There were no first-class passengers. The accommodation reserved for them just over the screw was vacant. Third-class included an interesting quartette of stubby Spanish soldiers, and one slim naval stoker, whose flexible movements and sportive bonhomie were in striking contrast to the stolid immobility of his companions. Possibly the stoker felt more at home on shipboard. Certainly he had all the life of the party; for while the others muffled their heads in shawls, and squatted on their carefully spread cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, he was never still, helping an overburdened young mother by shouldering her small boy and taking him round to visit the pet donkey, making friends with the ship's dog, or playing good-humoured tricks upon the others.

The sky was flecked with white clouds – the first we had seen for many days – and the houses scattered over the flat and almost treeless table-land were all white – gleamingly white, after the old russet towns of Pollensa and Alcudia. Here and there we could see one of the great beehive-like heaps of stones that the sailors have christened "watch-towers." Though Majorca was only twenty miles distant, we already felt in a new world.

There was something oddly familiar in the nip of the air. And while we breakfasted on a satisfying "home" meal of omelet, ham, hot buttered toast, and coffee, we recalled what we had heard of the lingering effects of British rule in Minorca, and felt inclined to give it the credit of the breakfast, even though the ham was served raw, and decanters of wine and jars of wooden toothpicks jostled our coffee-cups.

When we again went on deck there were signs that the short voyage was approaching its end. The bearded mate of the Monte Toro, who had made the trip in a red nightcap, had, with a toothpick behind his ear, appeared in a uniform cap, though he retained his velveteen coat. And the most stolid-looking of the soldiers, producing a comb and a tube of pomade, proceeded to make quite an elaborate toilet on deck. Still seated on his outspread handkerchief, he combed and recombed his hair, and greased it with extreme thoroughness; though it must be admitted that when it came to washing he contented himself with a cursory dipping of his hands in the water-bucket. His face he left to Nature.

The pride of Port Mahón is its three-mile-long harbour. As we steamed up its length the trim fortifications recalled certain of our own naval and military stations, notably Portsmouth. But never did Portsmouth show such a glory of scarlet-blossomed aloes as burned on the face of these fortified rocks.

Our first impression of Mahón was one of unexpected brilliance. Until we were well up the harbour the town was invisible. Then, as it came in sight with its dazzlingly white red-roofed buildings perched high on the crest of the brown serrated rock, the unexpected picturesque beauty of the scene filled us with surprise and delight.

Already the military influence that is so noticeable a feature of Mahón coloured the scene. Boats manned by soldiers were rowing to and from the forts on the opposite shore. Soldiers were standing on the quay as we stepped down the gangway – for, happily, there is no need to land by small boats in a harbour of such accommodating depth. And as we followed the porter bearing our luggage up the rough twisted slope of the Calle Vieja – that old street whose haphazard construction is so different from the carefully planned new ones – we passed a group of officers going down. Throughout our stay in Mahón I do not believe we ever glanced up or down a street that was not enlivened by the glamour of a uniform.

There isn't a river or even a stream on the entire island, yet, in spite of the apparently limited supply of fresh water, the whole effect of the town, with its green shutters, red-tiled roofs, its pavements and carefully whitened houses, is that of extreme cleanliness. To judge by results, the pail of whitewash must be almost an equal factor in a Minorcan housewife's daily task with a broom or a duster. During our few days in Mahón we became quite accustomed to seeing women touching up the street fronts of their dwellings with a whitewash brush.

Minorca is said to be rarely visited by tourists, consequently it offers but small choice of hotels. The one we had been recommended to try – the Fonda Central – was a favourite stopping-place with commercial travellers. There could be no doubt of that. Their iron-clamped chests of samples lumbered the passages and stairway. Their sprightly presence filled the large principal table in the dining-room.

At a hotel that is popular with these gentlemen of the road the cooking is said to be certain to be good. At the Fonda Central it could scarcely have been excelled. The proprietor, a reverend-looking señor, superintended it in person. And his efforts on their behalf were heartily appreciated by his guests, the summons to a meal at the Fonda Central invariably falling on eagerly expectant ears.

"Arroz to-day?" I overheard one guest inquire as he entered the dining-room for luncheon. And having received an affirmative reply, he sat down, adjusted his napkin, grasped his spoon, and awaited its appearance with an expression of anticipatory satisfaction.

The rooms were scrupulously clean, the table service brisk and punctual. Yet the house was hardly one that could be recommended to ladies. Owing to the popularity of the hotel, all the available space had been turned into sleeping accommodation; there was no sitting-room proper. One of our bedrooms that faced the street and had two good writing-tables made us partly independent, and we had a side table to ourselves at meals, but I was the only woman in a company that numbered over two dozen.

The beds were comfortable, but there were no bells in the rooms. When our chamber-man wanted to attract our attention, he did it by clapping his hands loudly in the corridor outside our doors. And when we wanted anything the Boy went downstairs and demanded it.

Going out to explore the town, we could not help noticing certain of the lingering effects of the British occupations which came to an end early in the last century. The windows almost invariably had the regulation English window sashes, and many of them showed white lace curtains or little muslin window blinds; and the front doors opened into passages, not into either patios or sitting-rooms, as in Majorca.

The British craving for sweets seemed to have proved infectious. At the hotel luncheon we had been agreeably surprised by the appearance of a sweet course, and the shop windows revealed a tempting array of bon-bons and of jams and pickles, commodities in which Majorca is sadly deficient. And one grocer had quite a number of tins of Crosse & Blackwell's Scotch oatmeal. Tobacco pipes, which are seldom seen in Majorca, were both in use and displayed for sale.

Wandering up and down in the short January afternoon we came upon many odd nooks and steep streets that had a picturesque character all their own. From the top of the quaint Calle de San Roque we got an extensive view inland, with Monte Toro, some eleven hundred feet, the higher of the two Minorcan hills, in the distance.

Down by the curve of the bay we found the Alameda, a charming little Italian-garden-like promenade, where on summer evenings Mahón society assembles. It must be pleasant and shady there under the trees by the cool water. Even in winter it was attractive, with its close-cropped low hedges and great clumps of the vivid scarlet-blossomed aloes.

Just beyond the Alameda is a great cistern, from which is drawn much of the water for supplying the town. And from that point mules toil patiently up the rock-sided slopes, laden with barrels of water for the solace of thirsty folks.

Next morning, while breakfasting, we arranged our plans for the day. The Man was bent upon going at once to sketch the town as we had first seen it from the harbour. The Boy and I agreed to ramble about during the morning; and after luncheon we all arranged to go in search of some of the famous stone monuments, respecting whose origin nobody appears to have been able to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion.

But before breakfast was ended the sky had become darkly overcast. We reached our rooms to find hail tapping with ice-tipped fingers at the window panes, to see lightning flashing, and to hear the rattle of thunder.

Our plans perforce being modified, we waited indoors until the storm had abated a little, then sought the Ateneo Cientifico Literario y Artistico, of whose existence the landlord had told us. The town, which has many cultured inhabitants, boasts three Athenæums. Two are for the use of the general public. The third, which we visited, is said to be the centre of literary and artistic Mahón, and is something of the nature of a club.