April was now nearly over and our holiday in the Balearics was drawing to its close. We had seen Majorca pretty thoroughly, we had had a charming glimpse of Iviza, and it only remained to spend a few days in Minorca to complete our tour of the islands. For fifty pesetas two first-class passages were secured for us on the Isla de Menorca, leaving Palma on April 26th, and at half-past six that evening we went on board, prepared to endure the eleven hours’ crossing to Port Mahon.

To the last it was doubtful whether the boat would start that night; a high west wind was blowing, the bay was flecked with white horses, and the clothes hung out on the housetops were clapping wildly, as if in exultation. But start we eventually did—perhaps owing to the fact that the Governor of the Balearics was on board, a personage of sufficient importance to allay any apprehension on our part as to the voyage, and indeed to act as a practical guarantee of safety, since, though the wind and the waves may be no respecters of persons, it remains an undoubted fact that governors of provinces get drowned far less frequently than do obscure individuals.

At half-past five the following morning we entered the famous Minorcan port, and steamed up it for three miles before sighting Mahon, which occupies a commanding position on the edge of the precipitous rock walls of the harbour. Disembarking at a little quay below the town, we confided our valises to a porter and followed him up a steep, cobbled street to the Hotel Bustamante, a very respectable inn in the higher quarter, where we were promptly accommodated with rooms and board at a pension of six pesetas a day.

Seen at close quarters, Mahon is singularly uninteresting and commonplace. If the architecture of Palma is essentially Spanish, and that of Iviza Moorish, Mahon must be put down as painfully and typically English. The long, straight streets of ugly houses, without balconies or outside shutters, the dreary vistas of grey cobbles and foot pavements recall the outskirts of one of our own manufacturing towns; there are the same mean-looking painted street doors, the same sash windows, even the same lace curtains inside. We were shown the exercise ground, with its row of British-built barracks, the hideous PasÉo, or Promenade, which resembles a cinder track, and the favourite drive along the harbour, a dismally unattractive road. The sole trace of the picturesque that the town can lay claim to consists of one small fragment of the old fortifications that spans a modern street—a turreted archway known as Barbarossa’s Gate, in memory of the corsair who sacked the city in the sixteenth century.

The inhabitants of Mahon share the general commonplaceness of their surroundings. They have neither the dignified bearing of the Majorcans nor their good looks; the men are not clean shaven like those of the other islands, but wear beards, and sometimes whiskers. The style of dress is also very inferior, and here and there we met with signs of actual untidiness among the women—frowsy heads and ill-fitting blouses, such as we had not set eyes on since landing in the Balearics.

Something of this lack of personal neatness may perhaps be set down to the tempestuous winds from which Mahon suffers almost perpetually, and which nearly tore our hats from our heads and our clothes from our backs as we drove out towards the mouth of the harbour to visit the ruined fortress of San FelÍpe. San FelÍpe is a strong position commanding the approach to Port Mahon upon the southern side, and it played an important part in the English occupation of Minorca. Twice captured by the British and twice retaken, it fell for the second time in the year 1782, when General Murray was forced to capitulate to a combined French and Spanish force under De Crillon, after a long and tedious siege which the allies had hoped to avoid by the offer of a bribe of £100,000 to the English general.

It was during this siege that the cook of the Duc de Crillon earned for himself undying fame by inventing as an adjunct to his master’s salads the sauce termed Mahonnaise—the familiar mayonnaise of all cookery books to come.

We had hoped to find objects of pictorial as well as sentimental value among the ruined fortifications, rock galleries, and nameless British graves at San FelÍpe, of which the guide book speaks, but our hopes were destined to be rudely dashed, for after a most uninteresting drive of a couple of miles between untidy stone walls we were unceremoniously stopped by a sentry, who informed us that no one was allowed to approach the fort without a permit from the commandant of Mahon. For our consolation he added that in any case there was nothing to be seen, as the ruins of the old fort had been replaced by modern defence works. A more unpicturesque scene could indeed hardly be imagined than the site of San FelÍpe now presents—a bleak headland traversed by long lines of masonry and intersecting trenches, with grass-grown embankments sloping down to the old sea wall on the side of the harbour, from whence one looks across to the new fortress built on the opposite peninsula.

Disappointed, we retraced our steps. It was now evident that neither Mahon nor its immediate surroundings would produce anything that need detain us in the town, and we decided to set out without further delay in search of those relics of a far older occupation than that of the British—the menhirs and dolmens of a pre-historic race.

These megalithic remains—of which there are said to be some two hundred groups in all—are found scattered over the whole of the southern half of the island; but the average traveller will be wise to confine himself to those specimens only which present most perfectly the different types of monument erected, i.e., the tumulus or talayÓt, the altar, the enclosure of monoliths, and the megalithic dwelling. Some of the finest specimens of all occur in the neighbourhood of Mahon itself, and can be visited in the course of a drive extending over some four hours. Acting on the recommendation of our very friendly host we chartered a galarÉta driven by a swarthy native who knew the country thoroughly. Our host, to our great surprise, spoke very fair English, and even our driver could say “Yes,” which was a great advance upon anything we had yet met with.

It is singular that although so many English customs and traditions have survived amongst the Mahonese—who are dubbed Inglesos by the rest of the island—yet the only island to agree with ourselves in its rule of the road should be Majorca, both Minorca and Iviza following the opposite and continental fashion.

Mounting our galarÉta we bumped and crashed away over the worn paving of the town and emerged by the Barbarossa gate into the open country. The surroundings of Mahon are not beautiful; flat, windswept, and practically treeless, save where a stunted olive-tree hunches its back to the blast, the most conspicuous feature of the landscape is its countless miles of stone walls. If we had thought Majorca stony, it was only because we had not seen Minorca. Majorca is a land of fields intersected by walls—Minorca a land of walls interspersed with fields. Once off the high road one becomes involved in a labyrinth of narrow lanes bordered by stone walls four or five feet thick, and varying in height from six to ten feet, between which one wanders as in an overgrown aqueduct. Every field, however small—and some of them are patches but a few yards square—is enclosed by a prodigious rampart of loose stones, within which cows and donkeys graze as though at the bottom of a quarry. These walls serve a double purpose in sheltering the crops and the animals from the wind, and in relieving the land of a certain proportion of superabundant stone.

As may be imagined, a cross-country tramp in Minorca is attended with considerable difficulty, and in visiting the talayÓts it is essential to have a guide who knows his way about and who can direct one through the maze of obstacles that has to be threaded in attaining some tumulus that rises like a landmark half a mile away. Much of the land is under wheat—the crop much behind that of Majorca—and this has to be carefully skirted, or waded through with an eye to the barest patches of ground; other fields are devoted to pasture, where handsome mauve thistles flourish abundantly in the rocky soil, in company with periwinkles, borage, yellow daisies, white clover, and sweet alyssum. As a rule the enclosures can be entered and quitted by the barrÉras—light wooden barriers kept in place by blocks of stone and removed for the passage of cattle; but occasionally we were obliged to scale the walls by means of projecting footholds built into their sides, whereat spotted cows ceased grazing, to gaze with mild surprise at the unusual spectacle of two ladies performing gymnastic feats in company with a camera and tripod.

A quarter of an hour’s arduous progression brought us to the talayÓt of TrepÚco, said to be one of the largest in the island, but by no means that in the best preservation. The Minorcan talayÓts—a word akin to atalaya, a watch-tower—consist of solid cone-shaped cairns built of roughly dressed stone blocks, often of gigantic size. These cairns range from thirty to sixty feet in diameter, and from twenty to thirty feet in height; but at close quarters they are far less conspicuous objects than might be supposed, partly owing to their general resemblance to the stone walls surrounding them, and partly to the enveloping scrub of lentiscus and oleaster which conceals their outline and lends them the appearance of a natural mound. Some of them are in an extremely dilapidated condition—others again, like the talayÓt of TorÉllo of which a picture is given, are in almost perfect preservation. It is supposed that they are the burial cairns of chieftains, but though cinerary urns are said to have been found inside them in one or two instances, this theory alone does not satisfactorily account for other features of these curious monuments. In some of them traces of interior chambers have been discovered, others have a sloping ramp running round the outside as a means of ascent, and the talayÓt of TorÉllo has an aperture like a window, on a level with the summit of the mound, the reason of which it is impossible to guess.

Not one of these tumuli has, I believe, yet been properly examined, and their purpose—whether sepulchre, watch-tower, refuge, or accessory to some strange religious rite—is still a secret, though the latter supposition finds support in the fact that where there is a talayÓt there is in many cases an altar in its immediate vicinity. These altars or mÉsas—tables, as the natives call them—are composed of two gigantic slabs of dressed stone, the one imbedded in an upright position in the ground, the other balanced horizontally upon it. The altar of TrepÚco consists of two fine monoliths, the lower one measuring nearly nine feet in width and standing over seven feet out of the ground; but that of the TalÁto-de-Dalt far exceeds these measurements, the upright slab being nearer twelve feet in height and proportionately wide. When the upper stone had been laid in its horizontal position it was apparently considered ill-balanced, and a prop has been added in the shape of a leaning slab surmounted by a wedge. The group of monuments at this spot is the most complete that will be found in Minorca; the tumulus itself is in a chaotic state, but the altar is of unusual size, and surrounding it are seen traces of a circle of monoliths of nearly the same height as the pedestal. Just outside this enclosure is a so-called megalithic dwelling into which one can creep on hands and knees; the walls are of rough stone, and two short, thick pillars, about three feet high, uphold the large slabs that form the roof. The members of the priesthood—if such they were who tenanted these modest habitations—certainly did not err on the side of luxury in their homes.

In few countries perhaps would the splendid monoliths of these altars and the tempting quarries of building material provided by these talayÓts have survived destruction as they have in Minorca. The very profusion of stone, constituting not merely a drug but a curse throughout the island, has safeguarded these old monuments more effectually than any protection founded on sentiment could have done, for it has simply never been worth anybody’s while to utilise them.

All the Minorcan country-folk live in excellent stone houses, as might be supposed, and before leaving the island we had the opportunity of visiting a solitary outlying homestead tenanted by a peasant family of a superior class. Although we were fully prepared to find signs of homely comfort in the dwellings of so industrious a people as the Minorcans, yet it was a surprise to see how excellent—not to say luxurious—were the appointments of this house. Not a room but was better furnished than those of any fonda at which we had stayed. The spacious bedrooms had handsome bedsteads, large wardrobes—an article of furniture never seen in Majorca—and one of them actually contained a fine toilet-table À l’Anglaise, with a marble top and sets of small drawers. The daughter of the house showed us the kitchen, the dairy—with its big white cheeses destined for the Mahon market—and then she took us upstairs to the attics, where hanks of homespun yarn hung from the ceiling in company with hundreds of dried sausages and home-cured hams. In one small and otherwise empty room were half a dozen faggots carefully propped together in the centre of the floor within a ring of sheeps’ wool—a scene so suggestive of sorcery that our thoughts involuntarily turned to some magic rite connected with the mysterious cromlechs of the land. But the girl informed us that this was a depÔt for live stock destined for the table—and pointing out myriads of snails adhering to the sticks she assured us that they were very excellent eating when fried.

The neatness and spotlessness of the whole place it would be impossible to exaggerate. The Minorcan housewife is popularly supposed to live with a broom in one hand and a pail of whitewash in the other, and the industry and morality of the islanders make them valued colonists in any land to which they may emigrate. Early trained to habits of thrift and diligent labour in a hard school, the peasants have no sympathy with those who think to sit under the maÑana tree and yet to prosper, and the tragic fate awaiting them is thus recorded in an ancient Minorcan verse:

On April 28th we left Mahon and went to CiudadÉla on the west coast, the town which formed the capital of Minorca up to the time of the English occupation. The two towns are connected by a splendid road that runs through the very centre of the island; and as the distance is little more than thirty miles the journey can easily be accomplished by carriage in a day. We started at nine o’clock in our galarÉta of the previous day; our valises were bestowed upon the front seat beside the driver, and we ourselves climbed into the closed part of the vehicle at the back, not sorry to be sheltered from the wind. We had an excellent mule, both strong and active, who trotted briskly on the flat and pegged away up the hills as though walking for a wager—a characteristic which we observed most of the mules to share.

Leaving the town we bowled away along the great main road of the island. Seen in the brilliant sunshine of an April morning, with a blue sky overhead, green crops in the fields and wild flowers spangling the wayside, even the country around Mahon becomes invested with a kind of fictitious beauty; but what the hideous desolation must be of these endless stone walls seen on a grey winter’s day or under the parching drought of summer it is hardly possible to conceive.

“When the North wind goes down the West wind is already knocking at the door,” says a Minorcan proverb, and the few trees that grow in these exposed regions are driven to the most ridiculous subterfuges in their endeavours to protect their foliage from the blasts that sweep for ever across the island. The prevailing tree is the oleaster, or wild olive, which turns its back to the north, and with bent stem and long hair all blown in one direction assumes as nearly as possible the appearance of an attenuated crumb-brush. Some of the trees are absolutely ludicrous in their contortions, and we could not help laughing at the sight of a whole row of them growing beside a low stone wall, over which they had flung themselves in their attempts to escape; falling on their hands and knees, so to speak, in the next field, they had picked themselves up again and gone on running, leaving their roots and trunks on the farther side of the wall—quite content so long as the very tips of their branches remained alive and out of reach of the dreaded north wind.

At the seventh kilometre stone out of Mahon our driver pulled up, and tying the mule to a gate, he led us across a field to show us what he called a bonito casito—a good little house—built by megalithic man.

At the base of a ruined talayÓt constructed of enormous stones and overgrown with ivy, we saw a small opening, about a yard in height, leading into a low passage some eight feet long, at the further end of which is a still smaller doorway, measuring only two feet six inches by two feet. Once through this, however, one enters a palatial abode not less than twenty feet long, seven wide, and nine high—which, although it will hardly bear comparison in point of grandeur with the stone dwellings built by the Minorcans nowadays for their pigs, was yet so immeasurably superior to the modest priestly dwelling of TalÁto-de-Dalt that we concluded that we were looking upon the residence of none other than the arch-druid or high-priest himself—and that it was through this very doorway that the venerable personage used to emerge on all fours, robed in full canonicals.

Of all the talayÓts that we examined this is the only one that contained an inner chamber of any size, most of the so-called megalithic dwellings consisting of small cavities or recesses that can only by a stretch of imagination be supposed to have served as human habitations.

As one approaches the centre of the island the most conspicuous object in the level landscape is the conical outline of Monte Toro, a mere molehill less than twelve hundred feet in height, but raised to the dignity of a mountain from the accident of having no rival in Minorca. Upon its summit is seen the large convent and church of the Augustines, a place of pilgrimage for the islanders. At noon we arrived at MercadÉl, a tidy and commonplace little village forming a half-way house between Mahon and CiudadÉla, and here we put up for a couple of hours to rest and have luncheon. The Governor of the Balearics who was making the tour of Minorca in a steam diligence, arrived almost immediately after ourselves, and from our window we could watch him being received in the street by the local officials, between whom and the governor’s suite there was much hat raising and clapping on the back—the latter form of greeting being carried out mutually and simultaneously by both persons concerned, with a peculiarly genial and happy effect. The governor’s steam diligence overtook us again before we reached CiudadÉla, and our mule, taking its snorting and rattling as a challenge, responded by racing it frantically along the high road for more than a mile before he would admit himself beaten.

On leaving MercadÉl we made a dÉtour to the south by way of San Cristobal, an hour distant, where Murray’s guide-book asserts that certain “fine and curious talayÓts” are to be found. Our search for these, however, proved a wildgoose chase, for all our questioning of the villagers produced nothing beyond four quite unimportant tumuli, difficult of access and in no way worth visiting—our driver remarking severely that he knew all along it would be so, since if he had not heard of the monuments we were in quest of it was quite certain they did not exist. In spite of this crushing observation we were not altogether sorry to have come to San Cristobal, for the road passes through the prettiest country we had yet seen in Minorca, undulating hills wooded with pine and ilex, and ditches full of a handsome flowering reed not unlike a small Pampas grass.

At FerrerÍas, where we rejoined the high road, the whole soil is so impregnated with iron that at a little distance one might have imagined the landscape to be tinted by a Swiss Alpengluth—the ruddy hillsides and the dark red of the stone walls harmonising strikingly with the crimson flower of a sheet of sainfoin in the foreground. The western side of the island is in general more hilly and more timbered than the eastern coast, some clumps of tall Aleppo pines forming picturesque features in the scene.

When within a couple of miles of CiudadÉla our driver drew up, and pointed out to us a large grey mass lying in a field some little distance from the road. This was the Nau de Tudons, one of the most remarkable monuments in the island, which our guide was particularly anxious to show us; but after getting down and wrestling for a few moments with a high field-gate he returned crestfallen to the carriage to say that the gate was locked, and that it would, unfortunately, not be possible for the seÑoras to visit the Nau, as there was no other way of approach. Assuring him loftily that locked gates were as nothing in our eyes we got over it, to his great astonishment, and made our way across the fields towards a strange erection unlike any other we had hitherto seen.

The Nau de Tudons—nau is the patois for boat—is composed of enormous blocks of stone and built in the form of an upturned boat about thirty feet in length and twelve in height. The rounded bow points to the north, and at the base of the square stern is a so-called dwelling—a retreat barely large enough to accommodate a human being. It is supposed that the interior of the Nau itself served originally as a habitation, for the centre is partially hollow and is roofed over with gigantic slabs, most of which have now fallen in. There is something strangely pathetic about this old monument raised by a long vanished race that has left memorials of imperishable stone without a sign or a word to record who the builders were or whence they came. Mysterious and lonely the Nau stands out against the sunset sky; a couple of donkeys graze amongst clumps of spurge and asphodel, and a stonechat chacks sharply from the topmost slab of the roof; but the tide of human life has long receded from the spot—never to return.

At seven o’clock we reached CiudadÉla and drew up at the Fonda Feliciano in the Plaza Alfonso III. The sunset had cast such a glamour of crimson and gold over the white city on the seashore that we were a little disappointed to find it so essentially unromantic-looking at close quarters, but any haven was welcome after seven hours’ shaking in a galarÉta. We found the inn to be chiefly frequented by persons of the class—as far as we could judge—of commercial travellers, several of whom dined at the table d’hÔte that evening. The fare was ample, but the cookery far more greasy and less refined than in Majorca; the strangest medley of eatables made its appearance on the dish sometimes—the beef being garnished with potatoes, fat bacon, hunks of stewed cabbage, garbanzos—enormous white beans—aniseed cake, and goodness knows what besides, so that during one course we had nine different things on our plate at once, to only five of which could we put a name. Being very tired we went to bed early, our host informing us in bad English as he lighted us upstairs that as the inn was very full he could not give us a second bedroom till the following day. The fact that the house was being rebuilt, and that we should be waked at five o’clock by workmen pulling down a floor overhead, he prudently left us to find out for ourselves.

There are several excursions to be made from CiudadÉla, and the two days we spent there were amply occupied in visiting the principal megalithic remains in the neighbourhood. The talayÓts of Hostal which Murray’s guide-book mentions, we found uninteresting, besides being troublesome to get to—much traversing of rocky wheatfields and stone walls being necessary before reaching them. But the drive to Torre TrencÁda is well worth taking, and can be combined with a visit to LlafÚda.

Starting at nine o’clock, we retraced our steps along the high road for a few miles and then turned off sharply by a cart track leading across the fields. The pastures were studded with outcrops of live rock turned to gold by a brilliant orange-coloured lichen, and innumerable tiny field flowers, red and blue pimpernels, vetches, and a minute orange marigold, spread a gay little carpet under foot. The common daisy of the Balearics is not the crimson-tipped flower of our lawns, though quite as wee and modest; it is a more fragile plant, and its flower has a faint mauve tinge which on being dried becomes a bright blue. A friend of ours at Kew told us it was the Bellium bellidioides of LinnÆus.

A short walk brought us to the altar of Torre TrencÁdo, which is a very fine one. The horizontal stone has in its lower surface a clean cut socket which receives the head of the upright slab, but in spite of this it has needed additional support in the shape of a pillar and wedge like the mÉsa at TalÁto-de-Dalt. One would give much to penetrate the secret of this old-world altar standing in its great solitude, wrapped in the silence of the ages. For what strange worship of sun or moon was it erected? What implacable deity demanded a human sacrifice? Does the spirit of priest or victim ever haunt the lonely monument at twilight and hovering around the symbol of an out-worn faith realise that the gods themselves have passed away in the GÖtterdÄmmerung that has descended upon the land?

The monuments at LlafÚda, although exceedingly extensive, are in a state of chaotic ruin, the monoliths lying in confusion as though flung to the ground by an earthquake. The position is partially encircled by an immense stone wall, ten feet in height, in which are built two or three small megalithic dwellings. This wall is absolutely typical of those built at the present day by the Minorcans, barring the fact that its thickness is in places not less than fifteen feet.

From the neighbouring talayÓt a fine view over the surrounding country is obtained—even the faint blue mountains of Majorca being visible across the water. I had a somewhat ludicrous rencontre upon the summit of the cairn, for just as I reached the top I came face to face with a big brown and white buzzard who was skimming over it from the opposite side. It would be hard to say which of us was the most startled; we both stepped back hurriedly, but the great bird was so close that I felt the wind of his wings in my face and could see his magnificent golden eyes dilate as for one moment he hung motionless, with yellow claws upturned, before he swung round and with one convulsive flap was gone.

One of the pleasantest drives in the neighbourhood of CiudadÉla is to Son Saura, an estate about six miles distant belonging to a Minorcan nobleman. On this occasion we drove out en famille, for being Sunday afternoon not only was the waiter sent with us to enjoy an outing, but we were begged by our hostess to allow little JosÉ, aged six, to be of the party. Little JosÉ was weeping dismally on the doorstep at the moment, but as soon as our consent was given his tears stopped instantaneously, and he was hoisted on to the box seat next the waiter, under whose charge he was put. His mother assured us that he would be good—but we had already seen quite enough of Master JosÉ to discount this statement. Our hostess appeared to have no sort of authority over her children; she would rave and shriek at them, and occasionally reduce them to tears, but in the end they invariably got their own way, and their attitude towards her was entirely that of the little girl in an old Minorcan nursery couplet which for simplicity and impertinence it would be hard to surpass:

I may add at once that little JosÉ did not belie his character. He snatched flowers from the flower beds, trampled mercilessly on precious young tobacco plants in crossing the fields, nearly fell into a large reservoir, was hauled hurriedly over two walls at the imminent risk of overthrowing a whole row of his elders and betters, perilously balanced on the top—and in fact acted as a complete antidote to any pleasure which the poor harassed waiter might otherwise have derived from the expedition. We, not being responsible for the child, took his misdoings less to heart, and when he temporarily disappeared in the vicinity of an open reservoir we were able to search the surface of the water for bubbles with comparative calm—confident that Master JosÉ’s career had not been such as to arouse the jealousy of the gods.

Son Saura is a pleasant-looking house surrounded by a large garden of geraniums and verbenas, roses and lilacs, all in bloom at the time of our visit. The estate is laid out with orange groves, olive and vine yards, corn and tobacco plantations, the whole admirably irrigated from two immense central reservoirs. In summer water has to be sought at a great depth in Minorca, and the wells being too deep for the employment of the Persian wheel, the usual method of raising the water is by means of a large windlass turned by a donkey—one bucket being let down as the other is wound up to the top. The drinking troughs for beasts which stand beside these wells partake of the archaic simplicity and durability of the dolmens, being formed of ponderous stone blocks hollowed out to the required depth.

The modern Minorcan has indeed sundry habits not unworthy of the megalithic monuments of his predecessors. The stones which he builds into his field walls are hardly less vast than theirs, and the palaces he erects for his pigs bear a strong family likeness to the prehistoric talayÓt; composed entirely of loose stones, with a cleverly domed roof, these buildings form quite a feature of the landscape in many parts of the island. The smaller ones are often plain huts, but the larger ones almost always have tastefully ornamented roofs—some resembling the step pyramids of SakkÁra, others being built in round tiers like a gigantic wedding-cake. One—by no means the largest—which we entered at Son Saura, and of which a picture is given, measured not less than twenty feet across, inside, and twelve or fifteen feet in height; spacious, clean, and delightfully cool in hot weather, these houses are used by the pigs of Minorca as sleeping quarters at night and lounges at midday. Any attempt to photograph the occupants we found, however, to be out of the question: the very sight of a camera filled them with suspicion, and when this was followed by a strategic advance their worst fears were confirmed—with volleys of shrieks they broke up in panic, and, with ears flapping wildly, went off helter skelter with all the abandon of their Gadarene ancestors.

Acting as a kind of pylon to the above-mentioned palace at Son Saura is a curious old mÉsa, unlike any other we saw in the island—the horizontal slab being supported on two upright pillars, each of which has a rude capital formed by a separate stone. This monument is possibly of a different date from the other altars, and is said to be of a pattern of which—as far as is known—only one other specimen exists, in the island of Malta.

The last expedition we made at CiudadÉla was to visit the rock dwellings at Son MorÉll—a large property about an hour distant from the town. There are three farmhouses upon the estate, at the first of which one naturally draws up to inquire the way, and unless the traveller is very careful he will here be taken to see two wholly unimportant tumuli lying at some distance away amongst stone walls and a waste of asphodel—the peasants being convinced that to lead a foreigner to the nearest talayÓt is the surest way of making him happy. In all good faith we followed an ancient man across the fields, and in due course reached the talayÓts; it was quite useless to explain to our guide that it was not such as these we were in search of, since besides being very deaf he understood no word of Castillian, and when we remarked that the wind was very high he replied by telling us that he was seventy-eight in January.

After much useless tramping and waste of time we at last discovered that it was Son Morell de BarrÁnco to which we ought to have driven—the Barranco being the ravine containing the rock dwellings—and continuing our route across the fields we presently came to the second farm, lying within a few minutes’ walk of the coast. Leaving the carriage here, we descended on foot towards the sea, and soon came upon a row of curious dwellings excavated in the rock walls of a narrow valley. Three of the caves are of considerable size, and in the one of which we took a photograph a pillar of live rock is left in the centre to support the roof. All have neatly cut doorways and windows, and one of the house fronts, as will be seen, shows traces of decoration—a cornice and a couple of fluted pilasters having been rudely chiselled in the face of the rock. Sheep and goats now inhabit the caves; of the people who with patient labour constructed their dwellings in this wild and lonely ravine by the sea no memory remains.

On the 1st of May we left CiudadÉla and returned to Mahon, stopping for luncheon at the little town of AlayÓr, just off the main road. Seen from a distance AlayÓr is a veritable fairy city set upon a hill—glistening snow white in the sunshine—and though at close quarters it is no longer beautiful, the whiteness of the houses is so dazzling that it is like passing through snow-cuttings to drive through the streets, and we were glad of the green glass panes of our galarÉta to protect our eyes from the blinding glare. Whitewash is indeed a mania among the Minorcans, who, not content with applying it to the outer and inner walls of their houses, extend it to the tiles on the roof, the gutters, chimneys, outhouses, and even neighbouring rocks. Where the field walls are coped with freestone this also is whitened for miles, which gives the landscape the curious and misleading effect of being traversed in every direction by high roads.

Within half an hour’s drive of AlayÓr is the mÉsa of Torralba—one of the largest in the island, though it loses in effect by being encumbered about the base by bushes and dÉbris. The horizontal stone is said to have a square cavity in its upper surface, as though to contain the blood of a victim; but as our outfit did not include a ladder we were obliged to take this statement on trust.

One of the sudden storms, for which Minorca is noted, overtook us while we were engaged in photographing the altar. The sky darkened, and without a moment’s warning such a deluge of rain descended that we were quite unable to regain our carriage, not twenty yards distant. The ground was swimming, the bushes and long grass were drenched, and when ten minutes later the sun came out again and all was smiles, the only dry member of the party was the camera—who with his usual foresight had enveloped himself in the one waterproof cape at the very beginning of the rain.

A couple of hours later we were again in Mahon, and at five o’clock that same afternoon we had boarded the Palma boat and were taking our last look at the town as we glided out of the bay—past the flat green tray of Hospital Island, past the little rocky hump of Rat Island, where some fishermen wave to us as their boat rocks on our swell—past the ruined pepper-pot tower on the Philipet promontory—past the old sea walls of San Felipe and the bristling defences of the Isabella fortress opposite—and as we enter the open sea a chill wind springs up.

At daybreak we land once more—and for the last time—at the now familiar quay at Palma, and are rattled through the streets that three short months ago were new and strange of aspect in our eyes.

Our holiday in the south is over. It is the first week of May: strawberries and cherries are in the market, and the voice of the cuckoo is heard in the land. The pigeons are wheeling in flocks around the sunlit tower of San Nicolas, and myriads of swifts still weave their tireless flight over the town. But the swallows have gone northwards, and we must follow them. Two busy days are spent in packing and in final arrangements for the return home; and on the 5th of May we board the Miramar for Barcelona.

It is a marvellously lovely evening. The wide plain is wrapped in shimmering shades of pink and violet, and brilliant against the deep cobalt of the Sierra stand out the white houses of the town. Cutting the western horizon in dark silhouette are the wooded slopes of Bellver—the castle arch spanning a glowing fragment of the sunset where the gules and or of Aragon are once more blazoned in the sky. The harbour is a sheet of gold, and across the ever widening stretch of water Palma has already dwindled to a doll’s city, where the great cathedral is the last object on which our eyes linger. A spark breaks out on the old Moorish tower as we glide past Porto Pi, some soldiers wave a last goodbye from the earthworks of San Carlos, the darkening mountain slopes recede as we reach the portal of Cala FiguÉra—and at last we are clear of the bay of Palma.

A golden moon hangs in the indigo vault above us, and our wake cleaves a shining path straight up to the old white city that is vanishing from our sight. And passing out into the night on a sea of glass we half expect to hear once more the solemn midnight cry—

“Observant, animated and agreeably sensitive of the charm of the restful island it describes, it will be read with advantage and interest by every one who fosters ideas of some day going there.”—Scotsman.

“The book has a delightful touch of feminine vivacity, and the camera is almost as important in the production of it as the pen.”—Observer.

“Miss d’Este gives a very attractive account of Ajaccio.”—Spectator.

“Margaret d’Este gives a picturesque account of her wanderings all over the island, in and out of the beaten track, and tells us that she found its principal charm in its wild freedom, magnificent scenery and delightful climate.”—Daily Graphic.

“The reviewer is tempted at almost every page to quote, so full of description is this charming book, but space forbids.... We cannot remember enjoying any book so much since the days when William Blake told the tale of his journeyings.”—Daily Chronicle.

“A facile, charming style of writing; a quick, accurate observation of men, beasts, flowers, and things.”—Photographic Monthly.

“There are no fewer than seventy-eight photographs by Mrs. R. M. King and the author in this charming book of travel far from the madding crowd.... An unusually well-written and well-illustrated book.”—Northern Whig.

“The authoress has given us some delightful pen sketches of the scenery, delicate little vignettes of local colour, and strongly sketched-in characters of the natives, and the illustrations are decidedly enticing.”—Photographic News.

“The book is one of the brightest of recent travel volumes. Mrs. King’s photography is a worthy contribution to the work, and is worth studying by would-be picture makers, for its good placing of masses within the space, and for the strong yet not harsh way in which bold patches of deep shadow are placed against broad expanses of light.”—Photogram.