The Argosy — page 73: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

58 , Letters from Majorca. either side is lined with olive yards. Some look old enough to have been Druidical, and date back to the days of the Moors. Ahead of us throughout the drive was a hill that might have stood for the Mount of Olives, and is not unlike it in form. It overshadows Pollensa, and might be supposed to confer sanctity upon it. It does not do so. __Pollensa is said to be the most wicked old town in Mallorca. But it is the other towns that say this: and so, vulgarly speaking, it may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Wicked or not, of the beauty of Pollensa there can be no doubt, and it is difficult not to associate beauty of spirit with gracefulness of form. Crowning this Mallorcan Mount of Olives is an ancient monastery, disused and abandoned, like all the other monasteries in Mallorca. It looks far above the world. It is so in fact, if compared with the level of the sea. It is ancient and venerable; grey with the lapse of time ; has seen cycles roll on and generations rise and fall. It is now inhabited by a man and woman, as ancient as the monastery itself in appearance. You may go up and take your abode there ; watch the sun rise and set across the plains and over the hill-tops, gilding the outlines and softening the undulations, flashing the dis- tant sea and the waters of the harbour which run up into the land. The landlord of the inn rather pressed me to ascend to the monastery, but I remembered the Puig Major (shall I ever forget it?), and declined the pilgrimage. True, it would have been .a very different and much shorter matter: but great or small, long or short, by my own exertions, or by the help of a mule, I have done with mountain climbing. | The landlord was very good. Pollensa is well worth visiting, and possesses some curious buildings, and he took me to all. More than this, he carried my camera for me, and it was with difficulty that I insisted upon bearing the light and elegant tripod. His wife was what the Scotch would call a bonnie woman ; and his children ran about —as the young children do in these places—with nothing on but a little shirt; sometimes with nothing on at all. They might be young cannibals. I don’t know whether it is done from motives of economy or for purposes of hardening, but the result is not effective. We went up to what is called the Calvaire: a hill just above the town, with winding paths and white marble crosses erected in different places. It is used, this Calvary, on days when they have a procession, and the long line of figures must be very striking as it winds up- wards and halts a moment before each cross. | At the top of the hill is a small chapel, as ugly as chapel that ever was built. Near it were some small cottages, inhabited by poor, but decent people. I doubt whether I have seen anything of its kind more picturesque and romantic in Mallorca. At the door of one cottage sat an old woman. Like all these old women, she looked at least a hundred. She had a fine face, nevertheless, and in the days CORMICLIOOKS.(E©) m