The Fortunate Isles Part 27

Then the road rose high between pine woods whose undergrowth was thick with the withered blossoms of heath, and we traversed a mountain pa.s.s 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 Arta!"

Our destination in Arta 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 Cafe 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 Senora Rande's cooking as being excellent, her charges moderate, and her house the cleanest in Arta. 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 senora'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 seash.e.l.l to call the people to their work.

Before we had left our rooms ponderous steps resounded in the pa.s.sage outside our doors. It was the proprietor of the diligence, brother to the host of the Cafe 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 gla.s.ses of coffee, the senora 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 Arta 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-sh.e.l.ls 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Towards the Parish Church, Arta]

It had been so dark when we entered Arta 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 cl.u.s.tered houses a hill crowned with church towers rises grandly.

Arta is a district of rural occupations. The fresh b.u.t.ter 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 s.h.a.ggy 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. a.s.suredly 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 Arta 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 Arta 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 Arta 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 Arta, 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 n.o.bles 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 s.p.a.cious 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 att.i.tude 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 Arta, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Entering the Caves of Arta]

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 Arta. 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 t.i.the 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 quant.i.ty of grain, and many precious belongings, had found hiding-place within.

The Manacor Caves are fantastic and wonderful. Those of Arta 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 Arta 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. Stalact.i.tes 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the timid. Then the light of a Roman candle threw into weird effect the great maze of stalact.i.te 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 cl.u.s.ters of flowers, and above, as far as the eye could distinguish, the same delicate tracing was revealed.