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

XX
ARTÁ AND ITS CAVES

We met the diligence for Artá at Manacor station, where the single-line railway ends on a track so grass-grown as to suggest that it had, inadvertently, strayed into a field. Were the engine to diverge a yard or two from the rails it would wreck the stationmaster's goat, make havoc of his family washing, and devastate his prickly-pear patch.

The Artá diligence, a spacious vehicle, supplied with good horses and a capital driver, leaves the station yard immediately after the arrival of the afternoon train from Palma. Should a sufficiency of passengers arrive by the morning train, a diligence would start then also; but the afternoon coach is a certainty. The distance is 20 kilometros, and the fare is three reales (sevenpence-halfpenny).

The Man and I had secured the front seats. The Boy was inside with a typical set of travellers by diligence – a priest, a soldier, one of the very new recruits who had a six days' leave to visit his home; a specimen of the pleasant elderly countryman who is the inevitable accessory of such a journey, and two commercial travellers that we stopped to pick up as we passed a draper's shop in town.

Our driver was a man of decision. Little time was lost over starting. Five minutes after the train had entered the station we dashed out of it at a pace that threatened to make the distance between us and Artá seem far too short.

It was a perfect evening for driving. There was no wind, and the rain of the previous night had laid the dust. The road was a good one, broad and level – very different from that over which we had bumped and joggled on the previous day. The sinking sun cast a glamour over a land that was at any time beautiful. The swift motion was gloriously exhilarating. Perched up on the box seat, the Man and I felt radiant with the sheer joy of being alive as we drank in the sweet bean-scented air, and watched the approach of the picturesque groups of farm folk who were returning townwards from their day's work in the fields. Our driver, Canet by name, seemed to be popular. Sunburnt faces looked up to smile him a greeting. Laughing girls crowded into ramshackle carts exchanged gay repartee in the passing.

As we drove onwards the surroundings became less flat, and in the distance a range of sugar-loaf hills – the mountains of Artá – appeared. About half-way on the journey we jingled through a nice little town, San Lorenzo, where grape-vines grew on the walls of the houses that lined the narrow streets, and old, old wives sat on the doorsteps taking their ease.

Beyond San Lorenzo hills rose about us, and the road ran between tracts of uncultivated ground. Here, too, the road was busy with returning labourers in delightfully quaint groups. Many of the men wore their blue cotton shirts outside, like blouses, and all wore wide-brimmed hats of straw or felt.

Each family party was accompanied by an animal – an ass or an ox, a goat or a black pig. What struck us as being funniest of all was to see the understanding way in which, in every instance, the pigs trotted sedately beside their owners, exactly like well-bred dogs.

Then the road rose high between pine woods whose undergrowth was thick with the withered blossoms of heath, and we traversed a mountain pass up which the men walked, before rattling inspiritingly down the farther side.

We were still some distance from the town, and the wayfarers we overtook had their faces turned towards it, when it became quite dark – too dark to distinguish anything except vague outlines of mountains.

Leaving the smooth white road along which we had sped so bravely, we entered a narrow street thickly strewn with a misery of sharp jagged stones that made advance a penitential progress for both man and beast. And Canet, turning towards us, said impressively: —

"We are in Artá!"

Our destination in Artá was the Fonda de Rande, which had been warmly recommended by our friend the padre at Palma, but when the coach drew up in front of the Café Mangol we alighted, to find ourselves literally in the embrace of its voluble landlord. By pledging our word to hire a carriage from him on the morrow we obtained our release, and with Canet acting the dual part of guide and porter, we retraced our steps for a few yards along the dark, stony streets.

In speaking of the Fonda de Rande the padre had described the Señora Rande's cooking as being excellent, her charges moderate, and her house the cleanest in Artá. After two nights' experience we not only endorse his statements, but go further, and say that her house is the cleanest in all Majorca, and that is saying a very great deal.

Within half an hour a meal was before us – a dish of pickled fish, another of fresh fish, hot lamb cutlets and fried potatoes, sweet oranges, and plums of the señora's own drying.

Our rest that night was luxurious. The beds were soft, the blankets light and downy. We slept until the hour when a man promenaded the town blowing blasts on a seashell to call the people to their work.

Before we had left our rooms ponderous steps resounded in the passage outside our doors. It was the proprietor of the diligence, brother to the host of the Café Mangol, come in person to ask at what time we would require a carriage for our visit to the caves.

Having promised to be ready an hour later, we descended to the dining-room, where, after we had drunk our glasses of coffee, the señora insisted on refilling them: an attention without precedent in our experience of Spanish hostelries.

Breakfast over, we sallied out in quest of provisions for our little expedition, a somewhat difficult matter, for the shops at Artá are even more independent of signs than those of the other Balearic towns.

A little questioning revealed a quite unexpected house to be a baker's. The apartment next to the street was fitted up with a counter; but its window was closely shuttered, its shelves empty. To all appearance the entire business of the establishment was carried on in the bakehouse at the back, where, in full view of a pile of egg-shells and other evidences that proclaimed the genuineness of the ingredients employed, we bought little square sponge-cakes hot from the oven.

Boldly entering another shop, which we knew to be a greengrocer's by the orange-hued gourd and basin of parsley on the doorstep, we found it half shop, half weaver's workroom. In one part the mistress and her daughter sold vegetables, boots, and many other requirements of both outer and inner man. In the other the portly father wrought at his hand-loom, weaving the strong dark-blue cotton material so much in use locally.

Having bought a supply of sweet little mandarin oranges at twopence a dozen – just half the Palma price – we returned to the fonda to find the carriage, with Canet and the two horses that had made such light work of the diligence, waiting in readiness to take us to the caves.

It had been so dark when we entered Artá that it was not until we left the town and looked back that we realized how picturesquely it was situated. The blue mountains form a wide circle round it, and in the centre of the clustered houses a hill crowned with church towers rises grandly.

Artá is a district of rural occupations. The fresh butter of the island is made at Son Servera, a village close by. On our way coastwards we met many interesting and paintable figures. Here an old man with a scarlet and yellow handkerchief tied under his hat, and a shaggy goatskin bag slung over his shoulder, herding a flock of kids; there a handsome girl, whose petticoat had faded to an adorable shade of crimson, and whose fingers were busy plaiting the strands of the palm-leaves as she watched by a cow that looked, as so many of the island cattle do, like an Alderney.

The fields on either side of the road were planted with flourishing trees of almond and olive and fig. Assuredly in their season no traveller need go hungry in any Majorcan road. He has only to help himself. They say that if a native sees a stranger taking his fruit, in place of upbraiding he will volunteer with sincere good-will to show him the tree the flavour of whose fruit is finest.

At a lonely bit of the way a contented-looking little group, consisting of a fine, stalwart lad in light-blue cotton, a smiling matron in workaday dress, and a plump black pig, stood at the corner of a field by the road to watch us go past.

As we neared them the radiance that illumined their faces found reflection in those of the Boy and Canet.

"It's the soldier who travelled in the diligence last night," the Boy explained. "That must be his home. He is one of the new recruits, and had six days' leave to spend with his mother. Don't they seem to be enjoying it?"

And they did. Even the black pig radiated supreme contentment.

High up on the left as we journeyed we saw a little ancient-looking town grouped about the lower slopes of an eminence whose height seemed to be crowned by a castle surrounded by defences. It was Capdepera, a relic of antiquity of which we knew but little, and instantly resolved to learn more.

The way to the Dragon Caves had been across a bald moorland. That leading towards the Caves of Artá was down a fertile valley, that through the efforts of skilled husbandmen had been brought to a high state of cultivation. In a field by the wayside clumps of narcissus were blooming unappreciated, and as we came near the cliffs we saw that their rocky sides were yellow with a species of gorse which grew in cushioning clumps.

When we were within easy distance of a fine, sandy bay, flanked on the east by a towering cliff, a man left the solitary house which stood in the middle of the valley and came towards us.

"That is the guide," Canet said, pointing his whip-handle in his direction.

The guide to the Caves of Artá was a lean, middle-aged man, whose well-cut face suggested an innate appreciation of humour. When we stopped he mounted to the box, and we went on slowly, for the sandy road was heavy.

A little farther on we drew up again. A woman, supporting with both hands a tray containing something edible, had left the house and was hurrying towards us across the field. When she got near we saw that the tray contained three of the large pastry turnovers that, in outward appearance, at least, so strongly resemble Cornish pasties.

"I could do with one of these turnovers. I wonder if she sells them?" said the Boy, as she climbed to the box beside her husband and the genial Canet.

"A turnover wouldn't come amiss," agreed the Man. "I suppose she sells them."

But the woman did not offer her provender to us. The guide got one. I suspect Canet of getting another. The third was probably the cook's own dinner.

Leaving the carriage, we turned to the left of the lovely bay, on whose sands rollers were breaking, and walked along the mile of delightful path that runs along the side of a precipitous pine-covered cliff. Beneath us roared the sea; from above came the murmur of wind-tossed pines, with whose perfume the air was fragrant, but the way was warm and sheltered.

Our guide, who accompanied us, kept modestly in the rear. It was only when we waited for him, and discovered that he was engaged lunching on one of the hot pasties, that we understood his reluctance to join us. To judge by eyesight, the pasty was stuffed with spinach and prunes. To judge by another sense it was stuffed with garlic.

We were naturally eager to compare the attractions of the Caves of Artá with their rivals of Manacor. A striking contrast was evident from the first sight. The approach to the Dragon Caves had offered no suggestion of the glories within. The exterior of the Caves of Artá, viewed when, turning away from the sun, one mounted the big flight of steps leading to the vast opening in the face of the cliff, was sublime.

When we had climbed the steps and were standing in the entrance-hall under the great overhanging roof, where maidenhair-fern grows green, the guide, kneeling on the ground before a lot of tin vessels, made a stock of acetylene gas to light our journey through the darkness. He had removed his hat, and as, with his mind intent on his work, he carefully mixed the ingredients, he suggested some magician preparing for some uncanny rite.

While he was occupied with his incantations we surveyed our surroundings, and for the first time were able to understand how the Moorish refugees, who at the capture of Palma fled in vast numbers to the caves, were able, for so protracted a period, to defy the army of the Conquistador that had followed them thither.

Beneath the wide opening the cliff falls precipitously to the sea. High above it the overhanging roof forms a protective hood.

The rocky sides and floor of the caves afforded an endless supply of the rough-and-ready missiles popular in those days. A more perfect natural stronghold could hardly be imagined. And but for a clever stratagem on the part of two brothers, members of that band of intrepid young nobles who so ardently supported their valiant leader, the Moors might have held out interminably. These two brothers scaled the cliff, and, having reached the point directly above the mouth of the cave, threw lighted firebrands down upon the huts and defences that were clustered on the rocky shelf beneath, with the object of setting the huts on fire and filling the caves with suffocating smoke. But the caves were so extensive that even this ruse did not quickly prevail. And it was not until Palm Sunday, 1230, three months after the taking of Palma, that the fugitives surrendered.

Shouldering an iron rod, from which were suspended two lamps, the guide announced that he was ready to start. There was no need to take off coats. The caves were so spacious and lofty that the temperature was pleasant, and although the distance to be traversed was considerable, the work of seeing them was not fatiguing.

The attitude of our present guide was different from that of the former. The guide who showed us the Dragon Caves trotted us through them in the business-like fashion of a man who is paid a fixed sum for performing a stated task. He wasted few words, and was, we thought, a trifle stingy in the matter of magnesium wire. The moment of his expansion came only after unexpected tips had been added to the amount of the regulation fees. But Amoras, guide to these Caves of Artá, showed them as though, after even thirty-five years of performance, he still joyed to reveal their glories. His interest also was a hereditary one; his father, who had held the post before him, had been killed by falling from the cliff path to the rocks beneath. Half-way between the bay and the caves, a cross set in the side of the cliff marks the place of the tragedy.

Amoras took the pace slowly, and after lighting us through a succession of vast caverns, paused to remark, with a quiet smile of enjoyment at our surprise, "We are only now at the end of the entrance-hall."

The drought that prevailed without appeared to have had a malign influence even on the water supply of the Caves of Artá. Pointing to a hollow enclosed by stones, Amoras told us that was the well, which, for the first time in his thirty-five years of experience, he now saw dry.

Before we had traversed a tithe of the extent of these capacious caverns we understood how the fifteen hundred Moorish refugees, men, women, and children, with their flocks and herds, an immense quantity of grain, and many precious belongings, had found hiding-place within.

The Manacor Caves are fantastic and wonderful. Those of Artá are stupendous, overwhelming in their gloom and grandeur. Any conception I had ever formed of cavernous magnificence was far exceeded; and to me the Caves of Artá were infinitely more impressive than the Caves of Manacor. When I tried to express this, Amoras said devoutly: —

"The Cave of the Dragon is an oratory chapel. This is a cathedral."

Countless glories are concealed in the vast caverns. Stalactites so large that to try to calculate the length of time occupied in their formation makes the brain reel. Statues as complete in detail as though carven by the chisel of a sculptor. Cascades of glistening crystal. The huge crouching figure of a winged Mephistopheles, and in the Hall of the Banners flags – marvels of immobile drapery – that stood out at right angles from the pillar whence they were suspended.

It was in the Hall of the Banners that Amoras, warning us not to follow, disappeared from sight, leaving us in the dark. Then from a height came strange noises designed to strike terror into the breasts of the timid. Then the light of a Roman candle threw into weird effect the great maze of stalactite pillars, cones, and festoons that rose about and above us to unimagined heights.

But perhaps the most beautiful if not the most amazing of the sights was that contained in the Salon of the Queen of the Columns, where, in a lofty hall, there stood alone, as though conscious of its exquisite beauty and holding aloof, a stately pillar twenty-two metros – over sixty feet – in height. About the base were grouped curiously modelled clusters of flowers, and above, as far as the eye could distinguish, the same delicate tracing was revealed.

"Under it we are as nothing," Amoras had said reverently, as he stood beneath it, and one felt that had he worn a hat he would have uncovered before the column.

There was a delightfully nerve-soothing effect in the absolute stillness of the caves. Not a sound from the outer world could penetrate these vast recesses.

"All the neighbours are asleep," Amoras replied drily when the Man remarked on the silence.

Though the Caves of Artá are astonishing in their immensity, there is nothing alarming or gruesome about them. It did not occur to anybody to speculate secretly on what would happen if the guide were seized with illness or anything happened to the lights.

Both sets of caves – the Dragon and the Artá – are well worthy a special expedition. If it were possible to see only one I would give the preference to the Caves of Artá. But that is a matter of mere personal taste. I must confess that men seem more impressed by the fantastic marvels concealed in the Dragon Caves.

I had promised to show Señora Rande the English way of serving spinach as a vegetable course. So when we reached the fonda, only a quarter of an hour late for lunch, the señora was waiting to hold me to my word.

Fortunately the cooking of spinach is the simplest of culinary devices, and while the fresh green leaves were sinking to a pulp in the earthen pipkin, I had the privilege of watching the señora make one of her excellent omelets – an invaluable lesson, and one that I humbly trust will render impossible my again making such an egregious failure as I did when attempting to cook an omelet at the Hospederia at Miramar.

Being certain of a good driver and good horses, we had engaged Canet to return for us at three o'clock. We were anxious to get a near view of the quaint old town, Capdepera, whose distant appearance had attracted us as we drove to the caves in the morning. And we wished also to visit Cala Retjada, a little fishing village a mile or two farther away, that we had heard was celebrated for its known fish and for its suspected smugglers.

The short drive was full of the life and interest that characterize an agricultural district. About the stone dikes, sloe blossom lay in drifts, looking strangely home-like beside the giant clumps of cactus.

Leaving the carriage when we had reached Capdepera, we walked about briskly, for the wind was fresh, bent on exploration. A peep into the church revealed nothing of special note. Turning away, we climbed a steep street, and found ourselves outside the old gateway leading to the fortified enclosure that in bygone days had evidently been the place of refuge for the citizens when danger threatened. And of a truth the space enclosed within these battlemented walls would have afforded shelter to a great community.

To the well-preserved ramparts Nature had added an impregnable defence in the form of a thick growth of cactus. Both without and within the wall their prickly leaves luxuriated.

From the flat roofs of the watch-towers that surmounted the battlements the watchers must have been able to see to a surprising distance. A white line across the sea revealed the coast of Minorca, twenty miles away. Close by was Cabo de Pera, the eastmost point of the island. With a vigilant guard stationed in these watch-towers no enemy, either from land or sea, could have reached Capdepera before the inhabitants had timely warning to remove themselves and their valuables within the safety of the stronghold.

The old parish church – Our Lady of the Hope – is within the enclosure, close by a modern house that bore signs of occupation. In pockets of hungry soil a little spindly grain grew about the roots of hoary fig-trees. While all the fig-trees outside were still naked, one in a sheltered corner already showed bursting leaves and the diminutive knubbly warts that were to swell into fruit. Besides tufts of wild mignonette, henbane reared its downy foliage and evil-smelling creamy blossom.

Seated in the open doorways of the houses, the women of this remote town were making baskets from the dried leaves of the palmetto (garbayous), a dwarf palm-tree that abounds on the mountains of Artá. Some were pleating the split fronds into long strips that others were sewing into the baskets, which besides being largely used in Majorca are exported by ship-loads to France.

The pleasant and cleanly little industry seemed the ruling influence of the town. In the street we passed men carrying great numbers of the baskets fitted snugly inside one another. A glimpse into the open door of a warehouse revealed the place close packed from floor to rafters with the baskets. On the way to Cala Retjada we drove past a cart piled high with stock ready for shipment; and in a sheltered cove beyond the fishing village we saw, lying at anchor, the pailebot that was waiting to convey the goods to an over-seas market.

When we reached Cala Retjada the wind was blowing in fresh from the sea, and the boats lay snugly drawn up on the beach of a tiny haven. A number of small shut-up houses lining the semicircle of the bay showed that the stone-washed shore was a favourite place of summer residence. To the west is the imposing headland of Cape Vermay. Westwards pine woods clothe the rocky slopes about the sea. Truly a pleasant place to fly to when the interior of the island is hot and relaxing.

The people of the eastern town struck us as being more Moorish in type than those of the more northern or western parts of Majorca. In Cala Retjada, in the person of the handsome bronzed captain of the pailebot, we saw and instantly recognized our ideal of a pirate chief – the heroic pirate who treats his enemies nobly. He wore a scarlet nightcap with a grass-green band, a golden brown velvet suit, an orange cummerbund, and yellow string-soled shoes. Truly he was a joy to behold.

Daylight was fading when we turned our faces towards Artá; and as we approached the romantically situated town, we passed many parties of returning labourers, and many little bands of pretty girls, who had presumably strolled out to meet them, though each sex kept rigorously apart.

It is the rarest thing to see an unmarried man and a girl walking alone in Majorca. The strict system of chaperonage that prevails in the higher classes evidently has its prototype in the lower also, for the maidens walked with twined arms – like some Maeterlinck chorus – and the men, as far as we could judge, confined their attentions to admiring glances.

We had heard that the remains of a Phœnician village still existed in an ancient forest of ilex not far from Artá. When we questioned the señora next morning, as she poured out the coffee, regarding its whereabouts, she promptly suggested that her husband would take us there. So when we sallied forth it was in company with Señor Rande and the perro de Rande– a fine specimen of the ancient hunting dogs that are still prevalent in the island. It amused us to see him leap high into the air to sight his prey.

The way, though it covered a bare half mile, was devious, and without assistance would have been difficult to find. But it ended in something far more wonderful than we had been led to anticipate.

Near the summit of a gentle mound that was covered with ilex and low-growing scrub we found ourselves confronted by a wall built of vast, roughly hewn blocks of stone. Before us was an open portal, formed of two huge blocks supporting a third stone, one end of which was pierced by an orifice that had two openings towards the sky.

Within this gateway were the tumbled remains of a city that had been encircled by walls constructed of great single blocks of stone – a city so old that all tradition of its builders was lost. We had thought the Roman remains at Alcudia and Pollensa as of surpassing antiquity. Here was evidence of an occupation far older still.

An eminence in the centre of the enclosure revealed the site of the inevitable, and at that date indispensable, watch-tower. From its top, though now lowered by the passing of centuries and overgrown with herbage, we saw through the gaps in the trees beyond how comprehensive a view the watchers had commanded of the surrounding country.

The top of the mound on which we stood had been hollowed out, and Señor Rande remarked that children came up from Artá to dig for treasures.

"Do they find any?" we asked innocently.

Raising his forefinger, the señor shook it before his face in the gesture we had grown to think characteristically Majorcan.

"Nada!" he made laconic reply.

Devil's tomatoes, heavy with golden fruit, and beautiful large-blossomed lavender periwinkle grew in great profusion about the devastated homes of the vanished people. And it seemed a curious coincidence to remember that the last periwinkles I had seen were those growing about the base of the megalithic monuments in Minorca. One wonders what connection this starry-eyed flower could have had with these prehistoric races.

I had received the information that begonias grew wild in Majorca, with the mental reservation natural to a native of a less gracious climate. So it was a pleasant surprise to recognize a leaf or two of their distinctive marled foliage thrust out from between the heaped stones of the ruined Phœnician village.

Our return journey from Artá was not worthy to rank in our memories with our triumphal progress thither. We had a special conveyance, but as Canet was already in Manacor, having driven the diligence that left Artá at three o'clock that morning, he could not act as our charioteer, and his employer, who drove us, set the pace sedately.

The wind was high, dust was more than a possibility, and the box seat held no attractions. So we sat inside and yawned a little as the kilometros crept slowly past.

In the little grass-grown station at Manacor the afternoon crowd was beginning to gather. And in the station yard the diligences for Artá, for Capdepera, for San Lorenzo, were drawn up prepared to start as soon as the train had arrived and their passengers had climbed into their seats.

We had taken our places in one of the empty carriages that were standing ready to be attached to the train for Palma, when the smiling sun-tanned face of Canet appeared at the window. He had come to bid us good-speed, and remained to share our tea, and to puzzle over the powers of the Thermos bottle. Though he politely praised the tea, I am convinced that he secretly scorned the bad taste of the "Ingleses" who chose to drink so uninteresting a decoction in a land overflowing with good red wine.

Our little excursion, undertaken though it had been with something of reluctance, had proved like others a charming one, and one whose every moment had been full of new interests.