THE FORTUNATE ISLES.
THE Fortunate Isles do really deserve their name, and the pride of the people in their town of Palma de Mallorca is one of the most reasonable things on earth. It is a lovely,
spotlessly clean southern town, with reminiscences of the East in its narrow, rough-paved streets. A stranger cannot discover any signs of poverty in the city, and the few beggars who stand outside the beautiful cathedral on a Sunday seem to beg for alms only as a hobby, or as a rich man might ask a passer-by for a match. The kindness of the people to strangers is not less remarkable than their indulgence to their animals, which in the South is very rare. The horses are all well groomed and fat, and one never bears even the crack of a whip, while the sleek dogs, that mingle with the population at street corners, almost seem to claim an inferior grade of citizenship, as they mingle humbly at the conferences of men at the street corners. The women are fat-faced, comely, and smiling as the Japanese, and outside the town the peasants salute the traveller with much friendliness.
To the Englishman who knows the Mediterranean Islands the peace and quiet of Mallorca come as a great surprise. In Crete, in Cyprus or Sardinia, there is an atmosphere of unrest and excitement ; but in Mallorca, the garden of the Midland Sea, there is a delicious tranquillity that has even infected the waiters and the managers of hotels. Hearing that there were some wonderful caves, we took a motor-car and drove across the island. Round the city there are many thousands of fruit trees standing in a never-ending sea of wheat. Later in the year, when the fruit trees have flowered, the beauty of the land must be exquisite, with wave upon wave of blossoms. After a time the fruit trees give place to olives, which stand in a soil every inch of which is cultivated. This passion for the land has had a curious result. One passes dry water- courses but never a running stream, for the simple reason that every mountain river has been tapped, and wherever water is obtainable it is used for agriculture. The islanders devote the same attention to this industry as a lady to her toilet, and the result is worthy of their efforts. Mallorca, having decided to become the pool of peace of this part of the world, has determined to play the role thoroughly, and is favoured not only by her inhabitants and her soil, but even by her animals. When I asked the chauffeur whether there were wolves and eagles in the mountains he answered me pacifi- cally, "No, Senhor, ay conejos y perdices " (there are rabbits and partridges). Slinging is a forgotten art in the Balearic Islands, and the people seem too contented to have a memory. Even our chauffeur, unlike the tribe of mechanicians, was a gentle man, and drove with such consideration that the shy mule and the motor-car became brothers of the road.
Our destination was "la Cueva del Drac," which was reached after a quarter of an hour's walk, by a sea as blue as that of Greece, through fields of wild lavender and asphodel. In this cavern there are a series of chambers that seem fairyland itself. The magnesium light glitters on the silver spears of stalactites that hang over subterranean lakes, whose waters are so absolutely transparent that until they are disturbed by the flinging of a pebble they are invisible. When the guide declares that there is water below, the evidence of the traveller's eyes discredits the statement, and it is only the splash of the stone which converts his ears and a ripple which convinces him. The architecture of the roofs is of every possible description and the silver furniture of the chambers of every pattern. One room reminds one of a Chinese temple filled with grotesque idols, while in the next chamber to it a stalactite Madonna clasps a stalagmite Bambino in her arms. The pools have each their particular name, which is well chosen. The most luxurious of these, which the hot atmosphere of the place makes inviting, is the Sultan's Bath, while, further on, lying apart, cool and chaste, is the bath of Queen Estil, about whose personality our guide was vague. In places there are sheets of alabaster inscribed with the names of many tourists, amongst them the name of one man who had thrown a bomb at the King of Spain, half erased by a priestly partisan of the Monarchy. When one leaves the Cueva del Drac it is with the feeling that one has seen caves with which none others can compare, and that the earth has nowhere else in her fantastic bowels such vast, dreamlike treasures.
The tremendous caverns of Arta in their depth and strength and beauty almost efface the impression of the Dragon's Cave of Manacor. For these are the caves of fairyland, the palaces of white magic, the creation of Good Djinns for . the delight of Haroun-al-Raschid, while the second cavern is an entrance to the under-world, a subterranean cathedral built by the hands of demons. Queen Mab might have held her festivals in the first; if Vikings had ever been driven beneath the earth to became a race of giant goblins they might have hollowed out this adorned desolation from the heart of the mountains in which to sing a black Te Deum. The Cneva del Drac is charming and friendly, the savage magnificence of the Cave of Arta is grim and terrible. The path to it leads across sweet-smelling, pine- covered cliffs, whose feet are washed by the Mediterranean. The entrance hall is about forty or fifty yards in height, and beyond it there are galleries, naves, and amphitheatres. A huge coal-dark rock, covered with a thousand points of sparkling light, rose above a black pit, which the clean-shaven Mallorquin, with the manners of a nobleman and the caustic wit of another class, who guided us, declared to be an inferno where, he said, the body of a certain Spanish statesman writhed in agony, in the company of other politicians and wine merchants. The air throughout was cool, but there was a complete silence in the chambers except when the guide lighted a Roman candle, and, passing like a monstrous firefly through the stone mazes of the gallery, struck in the far distance of the Hall of Columns the great stalactites that answered with the crashing notes of a volume of falling water and the roll of organs playing. Further on we came to the Room of Flags, where alabaster banners with tassels and the illegible inscriptions of Time and Nature upon them hung, perfect to the crease and fold, from the roof. The Theatre was the one rather dull spot, -where many revolt- ing visiting cards had been left in the fluted working of the stalactites. Beyond the Devil's Pulpit there were again Madonnas and the Child, sometimes clear and gigantic, and sometimes half-veiled by a petrified mist of stalactites. Most beautiful of all the mysteries of stone was the single serpentine column that stood in the centre of one great chamber—a white, slender strength of stone, seeming to support the weight of the mountain above. On our way out we passed a sarcophagus called the Tomb of Napoleon, and our guide protested that conquerors such as he, universal malefactors, should be buried deeper in unrelieved gloom.
We returned to the last Salida, where our guide left us in the twilight that came from the entrance. With an acetylene lamp in his hand he passed, sinister as a servant of the Inquisition, to the furthest end of the subterranean cathedral, when the burning star he carried was eclipsed in the red dawn of another Roman candle. For a few moments the greater part of the cavern became visible—Gothic doors, the oubliettes of the Bastille, veiled shrines, frozen Virgins, and below the Purgatory and the Haunt of Devils stood revealed in an ordered incongruity. Then darkness again took possession of the majesty of the place, and we returned to the blinding light of day and a sky that seemed less vast than the unfathomable blackness behind us. The caves are, however, very far from being all that Mallorca has to offer to the tourist. There are few journeys that are more pleasant than a visit to the lovely valley of Raxa or Raja (from the Arabic raha, rest), with its delicious fountains and orange gardens. Above the great quadrangular house there rises a high series of terraces, planted thickly with cypresses. The drive to Valdemosa is even more enchanting, because it is longer. A great, cool convent, with certainly the most luxurious cells it has ever been my fortune to see, was once a highland refuge for the monks of the island. These holy men must have led an easy and a satisfactory life, since to every cell a delightful private garden is attached. Later, when the poor monks had been dispossessed, George Sand wrote and Chopin composed for months at a time in the convent. From the coolness of Valderuosa the road falls by Miramar to SoHers. The Archduke Luis Salvador has made his home at Miramar, and has built an hospederia, where all who wish to pass some days on the mountain between the sky and sea are his guests. In its own way, too, the town of Sollers, the city of orange gardens and lemon groves and almond blossom, and of one small stream, is as beautiful as it is quiet Cliff 4nd mountain ring it round except in that direction where it faces the sea. Some sensitive souls complain that the fragrance of its streets is overpowering, but the ordinary man finds its dark, narrow alleys, with the perfumed, lazy breezes from the gardens, soothing and restful. At night, if one wakes to smoke a cigarette, one may hear the crooning of a song that seems a ballad sung in semitones. This is the voice of the night watchman, called the " Sereno," who
informs all those who do not sleep of the state of the weather, and who owes his name to the fact that his crooning nearly always affirms the weather to be serene. The railway from Sollers is not less attractive than the road to it, It is like a gradual, spiral staircase, and from the intervals of darkness of the tunnels one sees a dozen different little towns which are all the same big village. The olive yards dance round houses, as the railway winds up the bills, and the gold-green enclaves of orange gardens glitter among the changing grey-green slopes of olives.
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