Tarragonastands high and nobly on the coast of Cataluña looking east towards Rome, as her million citizens did when the Cæsars ruled, and she gave her name to the vast province of Tarraconensis. The Phœnicians were here, of course, before the Romans; they called the place Tarchon, and found it already strengthened by walls which remain to this day. Publius and Cneius Scipio wrested the town from Carthage, and afterwards the lords of the world gratified the city with the titles ofvictrix,togata, andturrita. “It had a mint and temples to every god, goddess and tutelar; nay, the servile citizens erected one to the emperor,DivoAugusto, thus making him a god while yet alive.” Since that time, Tarragona has not flourished, though it was for a brief interval the capital of the Visigoths. Desolated by the Moors, it was given at the reconquest to a Norman adventurer whose wife, in his absence, proved as doughty a warrior as he. And now shrunk and depopulated, the once imperial city stares in a sort of mellow calm for ever seaward, as if plunged in reveries on the glorious past.
High over the town, on the crest of the slope, towers the cathedral. “This,” says Street (and none will disagree with him), “is one of the most noble and interesting churches in Spain. It is one of a class of which I have seen others upon a somewhat smaller scale (as,e.g., the cathedrals at Lerida and Tudela) and which appears to me, after much study of old buildings in most parts of Europe, to afford one of the finest types from every point of view that it is possible to find. It produces in very marked degree an extremely effective internal effect, without being on an exaggerated scale, and combines in the happiest fashion the greatest solidity of construction with a lavish display of ornament in some parts to which it is hard to find a parallel.” Roughly speaking, it may be described as Romanesque, with adornment of the Gothic period. The delicacy and richness of the later style has relieved the crudeness of the earlier, while the severity of the original plan has kept in check the tendency to be profuse of ornament.
Schemes were on foot to rebuild the church at the end of the eleventh century and Street thinks the oldest part—that is, the eastern apse—may date from 1131, though the greater portion of the fabric (including the nave and its aisles and the cloister) seems to have been executed at theend of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the brother Bernardus, who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.
The west front is striking; it was begun in 1278, but not completed for another hundred years. The lower half is occupied by a deep-set portal of four orders, rising to a point. The jambs are occupied by figures of saints under canopies, and these are continued round the two buttresses which flank the doorway and end in pinnacles. The shaft is formed by a statue of the Madonna upon a pedestal, the sides of which exhibit in relief the scenes of the Creation and Fall. “These subjects are very fitly placed here, the Fall in the centre coming just under the feet of her who bears Our Lord in her arms, and thus restores the balance to the world.” (Street.) The tympanum is pierced with rich geometrical tracery. Over and behind the cross surmounting this grand doorway is an enormous rose-window. The whole is surmounted by a gable, the central portion of which has disappeared, giving a somewhat ruinous appearance to the church when seen from a distance. Flanking this, the front of the nave, are the round-arched entrances to the aisles, with round windows above, betrayingNorman influence. Ford states that the great rose-window is Norman work.
The interior is grand and impressive in the extreme, though a trifle marred by the heaviness of the pillars. There is no triforium. The pointed windows of the clerestory are filled with glass vividly coloured, much of it modern, some of it the work of Juan Guas, specimens of whose craftmanship are to be seen at Toledo. The aisles are half the height of the nave, the intervening space being pierced with small rose-windows. At festivals the arches are hung with precious tapestries, designed after the Italian fashion with scenes from the histories of Joshua, Samson, David, and Cyrus. They are believed to have been presented by some potentate to the chapter about the year 1600.
While the columns are massive and plain, the bases are finely moulded and the capitals are carved with exuberant foliage. The choir screen is of marble and jasper; the stalls are plainly and chastely carved. Over the crossing rises a low, simple, but effective octagonal lantern. “The old outside roof is destroyed; but the finish of the lanterns of Lerida and of the old cathedral of Salamanca made it pretty certain that it was intended to have a pyramidal or domical stone roof.” The transepts are square, except for an apsidal recess at the east side of each. Thenave and aisles end in apses—the oldest part of the edifice. The roof of the chancel apse is considerably lower than the choir’s, and the wall-space is pierced with a small rose-window. This part of the church is pure Romanesque. The high altar, however, is Gothic, and adorned with admirable reliefs, illustrating the martyrdom and apotheosis of St. Thecla, the patron of Tarragona. The centre is occupied by a colossal statue of the Virgin, covered by a very high peaked canopy of wood. To the right of the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Alfonso de Aragon, who died in 1514, and to the left a tomb older by two hundred years, that of Juan de Aragon, Patriarch of Alexandria. The remains of Cyprian, a Visigothic bishop of the see, are contained in an urn behind the reredos. The tombs are not very fine or numerous for a cathedral so ancient and so splendid.
At the south side of the chancel, at its junction with the apse, is a very remarkable stone turret stair, leading up to a square tower which rises over the end of the south aisle. There was probably at one time a corresponding steeple on the north side.
The chapels, though they have undergone considerable restoration, are interesting and possess much architectural interest. In the beautiful north transept is the fourteenth-centurychapel of the Tailors (de los Sastres). Close by is the Capilla del Sacramento, formerly a Roman work, and incorporated with the cathedral by Archbishop Augustin (1561-1586) whose fine tomb, by Pere Blay, it contains. The chapel was at one time the canon’s refectory. Several ancient tombs from the other parts of the cathedral have been placed in this transept. On the opposite side of the church is the gorgeous eighteenth-century chapel of St. Thecla.
The cloister adjoins the north-east angle of the cathedral—a most unusual position. The door communicating with it is the finest in the building. It is a round-arched doorway richly and curiously sculptured in the Romanesque style. This cloister is considered one of the best of the many beautiful works of the kind in Spain. “Each bay has three round-arched openings divided by coupled shafts, and above these two large circles pierced in the wall. The arches and circular windows are richly moulded and adorned largely with delicate dog-tooth enrichments. Some of the circular windows above the arcade still retain their filling-in, which was of a very delicate interlacing work, pierced in a thin slab of stone, and evidently Moorish in its origin, though at the same time probably the work of Christian hands, as in some of them the figure of Christ is very beautifully introduced.” The sculptors have adorned the capitals with all sorts of quaint conceits, notably in one case with a pictorial rendering of the story of the rats who went to bury the cat without first tying her limbs. On another capital there is shown a spirited gladiatorial combat; on another, a cock-fight. These purely secular subjects where the sculptor seems to have indulged his humour and fancy absolutely without restraint, remind us of the “topical” carvings at Oviedo. Their humour has not escaped O’Shea, who, speaking of the Adoration of the Magi, carved on one of the pillars of the doorway from the church, says: “The three kings of the east are economically sleeping three in the same bed, and wakened early by a winged valet de chambre, that they may rise and proceed on their journey to Bethlehem.” The words “6th Company,” &c., to which this writer and others call attention, to be seen on the walls, are reminders of the passage of British troops here.
The chapter-house, the scene of many important councils, opens out of the south gallery of the cloister. The door is Norman. The exterior, like that of the cloister and cathedral generally, is most striking. The apse and the Tailors’ chapel are particularly fine seen from the outside.
Contented with their magnificent cathedral the people of Tarragona have done little to adorn their city with smaller churches. Adjacent to the seminary there stands the graceful little chapel of San Pablo, the origin of which is still a matter of conjecture. Its architectural features suggest the first half of the thirteenth century, with the exception of its west porch, which belongs to no recognised style. The chapel is first mentioned in a document of the year 1234.
These edifices apart, the Middle Ages have done little forTarraco togata. Its remaining monuments belong to its infancy and prime. The Cyclopean walls, now declared a national monument, extend from near the Puerta del Rosario to the crest of the hill on which the city stands, and thence to the eastern angle of the ancient prætorium, now converted into a prison. The base of this wall is formed by huge blocks of unhewn stones, uncemented, and with their interstices filled by smaller stones. The character of the work bespeaks the primitive nature of the builders. On this rude foundation rests the more regular work of the Roman conquerors. Theenceinteformed by these walls is of the shape of an irregular polygon, measuring three-quarters of a mile across, and open on one side. The angles are defended by square towers, and the curtains are pierced by gates, to some of which the name “Puerta ciclopea” is given. ThePuerta del Rosario, called in the Middle Ages “Portal de Predicadors,” is about eight yards thick and is roofed by an enormous block of stone about 36,000 kilogrammes in weight. On the stones composing the Roman part of the wall, Iberian letters are traced. These were merely masons’ marks for the guidance of the native workmen, and form no words. The Torre del Arzobispo was raised in Christian times on the old Roman tower. The wall extending to the Torre del Capiscol is attributed to the Scipios, and dates in any case from their time. The principal Roman gate, called the Puerta del Socarro, is a noble work formed by three concentric arches. Passing through this we obtain a fine view of the strip of wall built by order of Hadrian, and may re-enter the city by the eighteenth-century gate of San Antonio, which pierced a wall built or restored by Norman adventurers in the twelfth century.
Within the city itself not much remains from Roman times. The sites of the forum, the prætorium, and the great temples may be traced easily enough, and stones hewn by Roman hands and commemorating often enough Roman dead, are embedded in the walls of houses and churches all over the town. The local museum contains a few of the spoils of antiquity. There is a beautiful statue of Dionysus in Parian marble,and a great variety of votive inscriptions. For more substantial memorials of the Roman era we must leave the city and follow the Barcelona road some four or five miles. Here we reach the celebrated monument known as the Tomb of the Scipios, consisting of a rectangular base and an upper body, on one face of which are sculptured in high relief the figures of two warriors. The cornice is engraved with a legend in which the words “perpetuo remane” are alone decipherable. There is no ground whatever for supposing that the figures represent the brothers Scipio or that this monument marks their resting-place. It is more probably the sepulchre of some wealthy Roman settler.
The Arco de Bara is one of the best preserved monuments in Spain. The arch itself is flanked on each side by two fluted columns of the Corinthian order, supporting an entablature. It is simple and majestic, like all the Roman works of the kind. An inscription records its restoration in commemoration of the pacification of Spain during the regency of Maria Christina and by order of Don Juan van Halen, the Spanish general who in 1830 assisted at the defence of Brussels against the Dutch.
The noblest handiwork bequeathed to Cataluña by the conquerors of the world is, however, the Aqueduct, which may be compared favourablyas regards preservation and solidity with the more famous work of the same kind at Segovia. Where it spans a valley it is composed of two series of arches, eleven below and twenty-five above, and rising to a height of 217 metres. The stone of which it is built was Obtained from the caves of Monte Loreto, where the quarries may still be seen.
Then there is Centcellas, on the banks of the little river Francoli, supposed to be on the site of the villa where Hadrian lodged. Part of the oldThermæremains—a stone chamber square without and circular within; while another building seems to incorporate the ruins of an early Christian structure, including a mosaic of the Ravenna type.
Aboutthirty-four miles from Tarragona, near the station of La Espluga, stands the ancient fane of Poblet, the Escorial of Aragon. It bears (according to tradition) the name of a hermit who in the first part of the twelfth century was three times captured by the Saracens and as often was miraculously released, whereupon the paynim king, recognising that he had to do with a man protected by heaven, endowed him with all the lands hereabouts, to be enjoyed by him and his brother hermits. In proof of this story, the religious triumphantly pointed to a venerable-looking parchment inscribed with Arabic characters, which they said and believed was the original deed of gift, and as no one could read it no one was able to throw doubt on the story. In 1496 a Moorish prince examined the document and contented himself with observing that it was not dated in the twelfth century but in the year 1217. However, no one paid any attention to this assertion, and the legend was repeated till on the dismantling of the monastery in the last century the document at last came under the critical eyeof Don Pascual de Gayangos, who confirmed the Moor’s correction and pronounced the so-called deed simply a general permit to the monks to pass through and travel freely in the Moorish dominions south of the Ebro.
The foundation of the abbey may now be ascribed with safety to Count Ramon Berenguer IV., who, having conquered the territory of Lerida, bestowed the lands of Poblet on the Cistercians of Fontfroide near Narbonne, who, to the number of twelve, took possession of the site in the year 1150, Don Esteban being abbot. The monastery soon rose fair and strong, and prospered exceedingly under the favour of the Kings of Aragon, who made of it their official place of sepulture. The wealth of the community was enormous, the power of the abbot extended over fifty-six villages, but from all this prosperity resulted a falling away from monastic simplicity, till the holy men would not sit down to table unless two partridges were placed on their dishes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they could find no better employment for their wealth than in loading their beautiful abbey with the atrocious sculpture and ornament of the period; and then in 1835 came the anti-clericals and swept out the monks and theirbaroquerubbish with them. What the mob spared, the collectors and villagers annexed—precious manuscripts,vestments, statuary, all were carted away; and ruinous and forlorn, as it now stands, Poblet would have rejoiced the heart of the author of the stern Cistercian rule.
It is a vast and embattled pile that greets the eyes of the traveller, encircled by a crenellated wall which is pierced by a richly sculptured gate built in 1460 and so richly gilded a hundred years later as to merit the name of the Puerta Dorada. Enclosed by these outer fortifications is another line of wall twice as high as the first, which, together with its twelve towers, was built in the fourteenth century. To the right of the entrance and still in the outer ward we have the little church of San Jorge, built by Alfonso V. in honour of the patron saint of Aragon in 1541, and the chapel of Santa Catalina, believed to have formed part of the primitive building. In the outer ward may also be distinguished the remains of numerous other buildings, such as the Abbot’s house, the Hospice, and the Bridewell, reserved for female offenders against the Abbot’s jurisdiction.
The inner ward is reached through a gatehouse of the Edwardine type, flanked by heavily machicolated drum-towers, and decorated with the escutcheons of Aragon and Castile. We approach the church, founded by Ramon Berenguer, but substantially the work of his sonand successor. The ugly Græco-Roman façade marks the ancient west front, which is approached across an atrium called the Galilee. The church is in the form of an elongated Latin cross. The simplicity of the architecture—its absolute freedom from ornament—illustrated the early Cistercian ideals. The aisles are of seven bays, and the chapels are confined to the south aisle and apse. There were once seventeen altars in the church, of which only four were kept up by the monastery, the rest being at the charge of individuals and corporations. All these, including the high altar, have been stripped of their ornamentations and accessories, and of the once magnificent choir only a fragment of the screen remains. Piferrer, who saw the monastery in its prime, gives a detailed account of it, and enumerated the tombs it contained. He speaks of the imposing entrance to the royal mausoleum, between the chancel and the choir. On the Epistle side lay Don Alfonso of Barcelona (II. of Aragon), opposite him was the sarcophagus of James the Conqueror, near him lay Pedro the Ceremonious. In addition to these monarchs Juan I., Martin, Fernando I., Alfonso V. and Juan II. of Aragon were buried here, with eight queens, thirty-six infantes and nine infantas. Here lies Carlos Prince of Viana, the illustrious scion of the house of Navarre; here were thelast resting-places of Aurembiax, Countess of Urgel and the last princess of her house; here lay the proud Cardonas and the noble knights and ladies of the Moncada and Anglesola lines. Nearly all the tombs that had not already been despoiled of their carving and marbles have been removed to Tarragona. Of those remaining, the best preserved is that of the Infanta Juana, with its figures relieved against thick blue glass.
The north side of the church abuts on the great cloister, dating in its greater part from the thirteenth century. The windows on the south side are round-headed, those on the other three sides pointed, with good traceries. Through a round-headed arch we enter the chapter-house, divided into three aisles by four pillars, so slender as in no way to interrupt the view of the whole. The groining springs so gracefully from the capitals that the pillars themselves have the appearance of shooting up and bending like the branches of a tree. Then there is the library which once contained 10,145 volumes, including 385 valuable codices, and 250 MSS. in various styles of handwriting—forming a complete museum of calligraphy. This library is a noble chamber divided by four columns. Its walls were once hung with the portraits of the Kings of Aragon and their great nobles. Reminiscent of the brave days of old is the charming façade ofthe palace built by good King Martin and intended by him to be a retreat in his old age. He died before its completion and the work was abandoned.
You may still traverse miles of cloister and hall at Poblet strewn with broken tablets, overgrown with shrubs and climbing plants. One of the most beautiful of the galleries is the Novices’ Dormitory, roofed in with timber; then there are the locutorium, the only spot where conversation was permitted between the recluses; the infirmary and the beautiful cloister of San Fernando, built in 1415 by order of the first king of that name, the little chapel of the saint, founded by the Count of Barcelona, and the royal apartments, built in 1375.
SantaCreus is the sister foundation of Poblet from which it is distant about five leagues. It was also founded by Ramon Berenguer IV. and belonged to the Cistercian Order. Not so large as Poblet, this abbey of the Holy Crosses is equally severe and chaste, and of the two, is distinguished more by its artistic harmony. The church is one of the most finished works of the age and style. Its front is discovered immediately on entering the monastery, raised on a terrace above the long and spacious court round which are grouped the conventual buildings. The battlements above the façade are a recent and incongruous addition. The west porch is finely moulded and chiselled, and with the rich foliage of the capitals creates a good impression. Another door, symmetrical and elegant, leads into a cloister on the south side of the church and was at one time flanked by the statues of Don Jaime II. and his wife Blanca. The wall on this side bears an inscription to Bernard Ranc, which is assumed to be the name of the architect. The church was begun in the year 1174, and openedto public worship in 1211. It preserves its altar, on which the light falls through a rose-window in the apse. The principal objects of interest in the interior are the noble tomb of Don Pedro the Great (who defeated the French and bound Sicily to the throne of Aragon) and of Jaime II., who conquered Sardinia and harried the Moors of Granada. King Pedro’s tomb consists of a great porphyry urn supported by lions, which is believed to have been taken from the infidels; and on this rests the stone coffin carved with figures in high relief under pinnacled canopies. The tomb is covered by a beautiful stone baldachin, with three traceried circles on each side upheld by slender columns with elaborately carved capitals. The tomb of Don Jaime is on the same plan, but is further adorned by the effigies of the king and queen in the Cistercian habit, placed here, it seems likely, long after the completion of the rest of the work. The tomb was designed by Bertran Riquer, the architect of the royal palace of Barcelona.
The church communicates with a spacious cloister with four sides of seven bays, built at the beginning of the fourteenth century by order of Queen Blanca. The traceries of the windows remaining here and there are late Gothic, and contrast oddly with the severe lines and rudecapitals of the shafts. As at Poblet, in a corner of the cloister is a hexagonal chamber said to have been a lavatory. A great number of persons of distinction seem to have been buried in this cloister, in attendance, one might say, upon their lords within the church. Among these was the knight Queralt, who may been seen in effigy in a suit of fine mail, with surcoat and greaves and girt with two-handed sword. Some of the figures of divine persons to be seen over the tombs were evidently carved by late fourteenth-century sculptors.
Here, as at Poblet, the Kings of Aragon had their habitations in life as in death, and the courts of the ruined palaces of Don Pedro and Don Jaime still bear some traces of the glory and culture of the greatest maritime power of the Mediterranean of a bygone age.
Vallbona, the third great royal abbey of Cataluña, is situated in the province of Lerida, but on the borders of Tarragona, in a singularly wild and remote district. Like Poblet, it is named after a hermit who in the year 1157 founded here and at Colobres, monasteries for both sexes. Twenty years later, both houses were formed into a single community of Cistercian nuns, under the headship of Doña Oria de Ramiro. The pious Anglesola of Vallbona is buried before the high altar in the company of James the Conqueror. The church is gloomy, silent and severe. It is entered through a Romanesque porch in the north transept, the west front presenting an unbroken wall. Vallbona has also a noble cloister, with a fine gallery in the Pointed style; on the north and the remaining galleries in the Romanesque. In Piferrer’s time, pictures and monuments relieved the excessive severity of the royal nunnery of Aragon, but now there reigns a desolation and poverty which might have affrighted even the hermit founder.
Montserrat, easily accessible from Barcelona, is one of the four or five renowned shrines of Christendom. The legend of its institution is one of the quaintest and at the same time silliest in the annals of hagiology. In the time, it seems, of Count Wilfred, the Henry of Barcelona, there dwelt on the mountain a hermit named Guarin whose sanctity was famed even to the ends of the earth. Church bells rang of their own accord when he passed, and the forces of nature were at his beck and call. This being so, when Richildis, the Count’s daughter (she was beautiful, of course), became possessed of a devil, Guarin was at once called in to turn him out. Such a task was a mere matter of an Ave and an invocation on the part of the holy man; but the devil thus incontinently expelled from the person of Richildis appears to have passed into the body of the hermit. He conceived an unlawful passion for the maiden, who remained with him after her cure, to learn the arts of sanctity. He succumbed to temptation and consummated his crime by murdering the girl, cutting off her head and burying her in his cave.
Stricken with remorse immediately after, the erstwhile holy man hurried to Rome and confessed his crime. The Pope ordered him to return to Montserrat on his hands and knees and never to resume an erect posture till his pardon should be miraculously announced.
So faithfully did Guarin carry out the penance imposed that he crawled for seven years about the mountain that he had once illumined with his sanctity, living on grubs and roots and becoming to all intents and purposes a wild animal. One day Count Wilfred, while out hunting, noticed this strange beast and had him taken to his stables at Barcelona. There Guarin abode some months, saying never a word but pleasing his captors by his docility. One day he was led into the castle to amuse the Count and his Court. But before he could perform any tricks, the infant son of the Count, a baby but three months old, cried out, “Arise Guarin, for God has pardoned you.” Whereupon the strange beast rose up on his hind legs, praising God, and confessing his enormous crimes.
In these days men were very much alive, and thrilled to the passions of love and hate. But, touched by the miracle, the Count forgave the murderer of his daughter, and set out with him for Montserrat to disinter the body buried seven years before. But lo, when the fair form wasrevealed, it throbbed with life, and a red line only showed where her head had been severed from her neck.
Richildis was so grateful for her restoration to life that she determined to devote the rest of it to the service of God. The Count founded a monastery for both sexes, of which his daughter was abbess and Guarin became a humble lay-brother.
A mere fairy tale, yet it is full of what was best in the mediæval spirit—the conviction that no misfortune was irreparable, no crime unredeemable, no sinner unreclaimable, that for all men and all things there was indeed mercy and plentiful redemption.
Upon the invasion of the Arabs in 976 the nuns abandoned their convent, but the monastery remained and was recognised as a regular community about the time of Fernando and Isabel.
It is not, of course, to pray before the shrine of Guarin that pilgrims climb the ragged sides of the saw-edged mountain. Long before the hermit immortalised his name by his crime and his repentance, a miraculous image of the Virgin, said to have been carved by St. Luke, and brought to Spain by St. Peter, had been hidden, to save it from the infidels, in one of the caverns. Nearly two hundred years after, its whereabouts was revealed to some shepherds by lights and mysterious melodies. These manifestations were repeated every Saturday—that being the day of the week specially consecrated to the Virgin by the Church. The Bishop came over to investigate the phenomenon, and on entering the cave whence the sounds proceeded, they found the heavy image carved by St. Luke. So heavy was it that it resisted all efforts to remove it; so there it remained till the end of the sixteenth century, when it was found possible to enshrine it in the present church.
Most of those who have seen the image are not favourably impressed, so it is worth while to quote another opinion than the present writer’s. “I cannot conceive [writes Mr. Herbert Vivian] that any one who has been privileged to behold it can deny the imposing majesty of its expression. It inspires awe rather than the sympathy and compassion which we are accustomed to associate with Our Blessed Lady. Indeed, those who change its vestments on holy days, say that it fills them with fear, that they do not dare to look it in the face. In the Virgin’s right hand is a globe, from which springs a fleur-de-lis. The crowns worn by her and the infant Christ are of prodigious valve, being of pure gold and containing no fewer than 3500 precious stones, many of them of exceeding size and purity. Like everything else at Montserrat, they are of modern origin, allthe old valuables having been carried off by French troopers in 1811. In front of the image are two little staircases of walnut-wood by which those who wish to kiss its hand may ascend and descend.”
As buildings, the church and monastery of Montserrat are wholly destitute of interest. But they have their memories. Ignatius Loyola, during the process of conversion, passed long hours at the feet of the Virgin of Montserrat; Don John of Austria, before the altar of the Immaculate Conception, swore to maintain the doctrine of the Virgin’s freedom from original sin, against all and sundry, at the sword’s point, and the victory of Lepanto was gained perhaps in fulfilment of that vow.
There is a monastic seminary on the mountain, also an extremely ancient and aristocratic foundation. The boys have some curious customs. On the feast of St. Nicholas, the patron of youth, they elect one of their number Bishop, who entertains them all to dinner and heads the visits which they pay to all the monks in turn.
But if as a shrine Montserrat has little to attract the curious, as a mountain it is without rival for picturesque and strange grandeur. So fantastic is the conformation that in all ages it has been regarded with a certain superstitious awe. The caves with which it is honeycombedare full of mystery and fascination. They extend and ramify in all directions, constituting a veritable subterranean city. At all times they have served as asylums to the natives of the surrounding country when threatened by invaders. On one occasion the French discovered a party of peasants in such a retreat and would have attacked them had not one of the Catalans told them that a single explosion would bring all the surrounding rocks upon their heads. Whether this was true or false the soldiers did not care to prove, and they hastily withdrew.
There are plenty of people in Cataluña still who believe in the wonder-working properties of the Virgin of Montserrat, and newly married couples come up by the funicular railway to spend a night on the mountain, in the hope of thereby assuring themselves of a numerous family.
We may trace the footprints of St. Ignatius to Manresa, a name dear to the Jesuit in all lands, and borne by the Manchester of Cataluña. It is a lively, picturesque town, built on an amphitheatre of hills on the left bank of the Cardoner. High over the factories towers the Collegiate Church begun in 1328 and finished, probably, a hundred years later. It is one of those wide-naved churches characteristic of the principality, its span of nave is, in fact, greater thanthat of any cathedral with aisles, except Palma. An interesting peculiarity is the flying buttresses built partly in and partly outside the church. Over the first roof rises an impressive bell tower. The interior is disappointing. The side chapels are Gothic. There is some good glass in the clerestory windows, and the organ displays one of those Saracens’ heads we so often find in Catalan churches. In the archives are some interesting pictures by local artists, reminding one of Byzantine work, and there also is preserved that altar frontal which excited the fervent admiration of Street. In a vault beneath the presbytery are treasured the relics of St. Agnes and St. Maurice, translated here from Vienne on the Rhône in the time of Berenguer III.
The fine old church of the Carmen commemorated a miracle reputed to have occurred in the year 1345. The town having been laid under an interdict by the Bishop of Vich, the innocence of the townsfolk was demonstrated by a light which penetrated through the windows of the church, filling it with radiance. But these mediæval traditions are obscured by the glory of St. Ignatius, whose name the citizens delight to honour. In the church of Santo Domingo was formerly shown a black cross which the saint used to bear on his shoulder while he prostrated himself before the altars in turn. The church ofthe Cueva—an odiusbaroquework—is raised over the cave wherein during ten months he underwent the dolorous process of his spiritual regeneration. In the Jesuit College you may see one of his fingers, his books, and the bricks that served him as a pillow. There is not a spot nor a house in Manresa that the citizens will not fail to point out as in some way, however slight, associated with the immortal founder of the Society of Jesus.
Not far from Manresa is the flourishing town of Tarrassa, which occupies the site of the old episcopal city of Egara. The primitivearxor citadel gave place in Christian times to a cathedral which was destroyed by Al Mansûr, and the site is now occupied by the three interesting Romanesque churches of San Miguel, Santa Maria, and San Pedro.
The oldest of these is undoubtedly San Miguel, which is distinguished from other Catalan churches by many peculiarities. The plan is rectangular, over the centre of the roof rises a lantern, resting on a quadrangle of columns. The capitals of these columns are evidently part of an older and different structure. Beneath the church is a crypt which is believed to have been the baptistery of the old Roman cathedral.
Santa Maria was consecrated in 1112 by Raimundo Guillen, Bishop of Barcelona, andwas served by Augustine canons down to 1592. It is contemporary with the church of San Pedro and both present an aspect of extreme antiquity accentuated by the Roman tablets and fragments incorporated with the structure. Close by are the ruins of a fortress and a chapel attributed by tradition to the Templars. On the other side of the prettily named Rio Vallparadis are to be seen the fragments of a tower and castle.
About six miles from Manresa, on the banks of the Llobregat, is a little monastery of San Benito de Bages, now a private residence. “All here,” says Piferrer, “invites man to lift his eyes to God, and to banish the frivolous recollections of this world. The building’s antiquity, the modesty and simplicity of its plan alike contribute to still the voice of passions and to excite more tranquil thoughts.”
The thoughts of the former occupants, however, were evidently not always tranquil, for the little apses opening into the transepts have been squared off, apparently for defensive reasons, and the tower looks as if it had been constructed for the same object. The church is dark and sombre, like a vault, and the cloister has the same funereal aspect, only slightly relieved by the interesting carvings of courtiers and warriors on the rude capitals.
Piferrer states that the chapel was built in themiddle of the tenth century and that it was consecrated in 972 in presence of Count Borrell and his Court by the Bishop of Vich. In the year 1067 it was incorporated with the Abbey of San Ponce de Tomeras near Narbonne; the foundation received women, who were subject, like the monks, to the rule of St. Benedict. At the end of the sixteenth century the community was united to that of Montserrat.
Cardonais a picturesque walled town on the road from Manresa to Solsona. It is crowned by a strong castle built by the Cordona family, which traces its descent from Foulques, the ancestor of the Plantagenets. Within the castle is the collegiate church of San Vicente, dedicated in the eleventh century. It is a fine example of the Romanesque. Its aisles are marked off from the nave by square pillars; the nave is broad, the aisles narrow, without chapels. A very low lantern rises above the crossing and the presbytery is raised by a few steps above the level of the nave. There is not a single moulding in the whole church, or any curve other than a semicircle. Of the sepulchres of the mighty lords of the castle only two remain. Within this fortress died St. Ramon Nonnat in the year 1240. The chapel dedicated to his memory dates from 1682.
Tortosa, on the banks of the Ebro, close to its mouth, is the southernmost of the cities of Cataluña. It is an ancient place where Roman and Visigothic coins were struck. It fell into the hands of the Saracens in 716 and was reconquered in 1147 and consecrated in 1441. Among the architects were the two Xulbes, whose opinion was taken on the question of the nave at Gerona. Though disfigured by a classical façade the church produces a good effect. Its aisles are separated from the nave by twenty columns, which sweep round the east end in a graceful semicircle so as to form a double apse. To the nine Gothic arches of the chancel correspond as many apsidal chapels, whose windows overlook the high altar. The reredos dates from 1351. There are five chapels in each of the aisles. The windows are filled with transparent marble instead of glass.
The Collegio Real of Tortosa is in the best Plateresque style. The cloister is formed by three tiers of galleries, the columns and balconies being adorned with medallions and escutcheons. The original building belonged till the year 1528to the Dominicans and was then reconstructed by order of Carlos I. with a view to serving as a seminary for Moorish converts. The College is now a barracks.
The Convent of Santa Clara, dating from the thirteenth century and restored by order of Jaime II. of Aragon, is another precious memorial of Tortosa’s more prosperous days.
TheBalearic archipelago no longer deserves the name of the Forgotten Isles bestowed upon it a dozen years ago by a French traveller. Much has since been written about the islands in our own and other languages, and yachtsmen often put in at what the Genoese Admiral classed with June, July and August, as one of the four best harbours in the Mediterranean. But the influx of tourists has not been large, and the isles run no immediate risk of losing their marked local characteristics. The remote past keeps a firm grip on Mallorca and Menorca; as in Egypt, you never cease to feel dead stony eyes are staring at you across thousand-year-long vistas. In the aisles the monuments of antiquity belong to the very dawn of human history, appearing almost the works of nature, even as those who reared them seem hardly to have emerged into full manhood. At every turn, as in Sardinia, you are met by the rude handiwork of that primitive Mediterranean race, which passed away in the struggle between Latins, Greeks and Semites. Every one knows now that the word Balearic is derived from aGreek word meaningto throw, and that it refers to the extraordinary dexterity of the natives in the use of the sling. This was their national weapon, their sole means of attack and defence. In summer, as their only clothing, each man wore three slings—one round his head, one round his loins, and one at his wrist. To train their children in its use, the mothers, we are told, would not let them have their bread or meat till they had brought it down from a bough or ledge by means of the sling.
Of all their dexterity they had need when strange men with black curling beards and dark stern faces—men that they had never seen—came sailing into their harbours and tempted them down from their perches with a display of bright rare stuffs and gewgaws. Poor simple white savages, it is likely enough that they had thought themselves till then the only men in the world. Then came the attempts of the Phœnicians to enslave and to subdue them, and wildly the islanders fought for their freedom, knowing as little as the creatures of the jungle do of the forces arrayed against them. The wild birds were netted at last. In the sixth century before Christ, the Carthaginians were masters of the archipelago, and dragged the slingers off to serve in their armies. Mago, a Punic leader, gave his name to Puerto Mahon. Then came a time whenthe natives felt the grasp of the Semites relax. Their power had been crushed by the Romans and the islands enjoyed a brief interval of liberty. But in the year 123B.C., the conquerors of Carthage remembered their neglected heritage, and sent Cecilius Metellas to take possession. He founded the cities of Palma and Pollensa, which still retain their Latin names, and brought with him some thousands of Italian and Spanish colonists, who soon tamed the wildness of the aborigines. Thence onward for centuries the archipelago prospered quietly, safe beneath the outspread wings of the Roman eagle. Upon the break-up of the empire it passed through various hands to the Visigoths, to be wrested from them in the eighth century by the Arabs. Under this new dominion the islands became a nest of pirates, who ultimately founded a kingdom embracing parts of the Spanish mainland and of Sardinia. The depredations of the Balearic Moors excited the anger of Christendom, and Pope Pascual II. preached a crusade against them. Constituting themselves the ministers of Europe’s vengeance, the Pisans and Catalans inflicted a severe punishment on the Pirates and sacked the rich city of Palma. Over a hundred years later, in 1227, Don Jaime I. of Aragon reduced the whole group of islands in a memorable campaign, and annexed them finally toChristendom. The conqueror constituted his new possessions into a kingdom for his second son and namesake, from whose grandson, Jaime II., they were taken by Pedro IV. in the year 1347 and incorporated with the kingdom of Aragon.
But history had not yet done with the islands. The old rancour between the peasantry and the nobles came to a head at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the war of the Germania or brotherhood. The viceroy took refuge in the Citadel of Ibiza, while the nobles defended themselves in the castle of Alcadia against the desperate attacks of the peasantry led by Juan Colom. The arrival of a royal squadron commanded by Don Juan de Valesco led to the extinction of the revolt. Ruled by Carthaginians, Romans, and Moors, the islands excited the cupidity of another race of conquerors. Seized by the English in 1708, Menorca remained in their possession till 1781, when it was retaken by the French and Spaniards. The failure to relieve the garrison cost Admiral Byng his life. We again took possession of the island in 1793 to surrender it finally to Spain at the peace of Amiens nine years later.
Mallorca (it is as easy to call it by its proper name as by its variant Majorca) is the largest and most beautiful of the islands. Towards the north and south-west it presents an iron-bound wallof rock to the turbulent waters of the Catalan seas; on the south the plain stretches to the shore, and here we find the little harbour of Santa Ponza, at which the conqueror Jaime I. disembarked his army on September 10, 1229.
Hard by is the estate of Ben Dinat, so named, it is averred, because the conqueror expressed in those two words his satisfaction with a meal of bread and garlic served him at this spot. It is more probable that the name is that of some long-forgotten Moor. Then comes the little harbour and tower of Portopi and round the next promontory the lovely bay of Palma, with the capital of the Balearics smiling a welcome to the stranger. The walls that once surrounded the city have been demolished: the turrets that rise above the house-tops are those of the Cathedral and the Exchange (Lonja). We enter the town through the Water Gate, a building not without majesty, and crowned by a statue of the Blessed Virgin. The streets, as in most Spanish towns, are narrow and shady, often rewarding the curiosity of the passer-by with glimpses of Renaissance patios, graceful balconies, and turret windows. Among the most interesting houses of the Butifarras (big sausages), as the nobility of the island used to be called, are the Casa de Vivot and the palace of the Counts of Montenegro. But Palma is a living city, and side by side with thesedignified memories of the past we find handsome modern buildings such as the Bank of Spain and the Hall of Provincial Deputation. Nor does Palma want for wide breathing-spaces and promenades. It has the fine Paseo del Borne and the Boulevards constructed round the bay and on the site of the old fortifications. Close to the landing-stage the new-comer’s attention is first attracted by the Exchange or Lonja. Charles V. on visiting the island for the first time hastened at once to see it, eagerly demanding if it belonged to the Church or to the State, and was visibly relieved on hearing that it was a civil edifice. The Lonja is a quadrangular building, surmounted by a crenellated balustrade and flanked at each angle with an octagonal tower of six stages, one of these rising above the balustrade. The walls are strengthened with graceful pilasters, and pierced in their lower story by ogival windows with good traceries. The door is square and enclosed within an ogival arch. The interior forms a single great hall, the roof of which is supported by only four slender fluted columns, from which the arches spring like palm branches. This interesting building was designed and begun by Antonio Sagrera in the year 1426. Like the numerous other Spanish Lonjas, it has long been deserted by the mercantile community.
The cathedral towers above the whole city andis one of the most important churches in the kingdom. The name of the architect is unknown, but the foundations were laid by order of Jaime the Conqueror soon after he had annexed the island. The plan is rectangular, the walls supported by massive flying buttresses, surmounted with pinnacles and turrets. The south front is the finest and is pierced by the beautiful Puerta del Mirador, in florid Gothic style, the work of Pedro Morey, who died in 1394. The west porch is an elaborate work, finished in 1601. On the north side is the noble square bell-tower.
The interior is remarkable for the enormous span of the nave, the widest in Spain. It rises to a height of 147 feet and is sustained by relatively slender columns. The nave terminates in the beautiful Capilla Real, founded in 1282, wherein is the modest tomb of the last King of Mallorca. The wooden gallery running round the wall is strongly suggestive of Saracenic influence. Opening into this chapel are the Capillas de Santa Eulalia, containing a Gothic altar and the tomb of a Bishop of Palma, and San Mateo, in which ends one of the aisles. In the chapel of St. Jerome is the fine tomb of the Marques de la Romana, who did such good service to Spain by bringing from Denmark the Spanish troops in Napoleon’s service. Another notable sepulchre is that of Bishop Gil Sancho Munoz, successor elect toPope Benedict XIII. (1447). The choir is in decadent Gothic style, but the carving is very good and reveals imagination and fertility of resource on the part of the artist. The statues of St. Bruno and St. John were brought here from the chapter-house of Valledemosa. The old Moorish palace of Almudaina, adjacent to the cathedral, is the residence of the Captain-General and seat of the High Court. It is provided with a chapel built by Jaime II.
The only other church worthy of mention at Palma is that of San Francisco de Asis, remarkably like the cathedral for the span of its nave and for the tomb of the famous Raymond Lull, Mallorca’s most illustrious son. This famous philosopher was born in 1235 and is said to have been converted from evil courses in his youth by finding that his mistress was devoured by cancer—such reasons for a change of life being frequent in the Middle Ages. He imagined himself called upon to overthrow the religion of Mohammed not by the old methods, but by a “great art” of logic which he devised. Like some liberal Catholics of later days, he held that the dogmas of his Church could and should be demonstrated by reason, and not by mere exhortations to believe. To combat Islam he rightly considered necessary that missionaries should understand the language of their adversaries. His exertions induced thePope to found one or two chairs of Arabic and Syriac, and his philosophy, strange to say, met with no censure from ecclesiastical authorities. Lull was credited with immense and preternatural wisdom by his generation, and was popularly believed to have discovered the Philosopher’s Stone. He undertook several journeys to Northern Africa in his zeal for souls, and on the last of these visits received such severe injuries from a Moslem mob that he succumbed on board ship within sight of his native isle (1315).
A picture of his funeral may be seen at the Town Hall, which is a rather imposing Renaissance building adorned by one of those heavy projecting eaves, carved and once painted, that one sees at Granada. Another house that should be noticed is the Casa Bonapart, said to have been founded by an ancestor of the Imperial family in 1411.
In the suburbs of Palma is the fine old castle of Bellver, founded by the last King of Mallorca. It is composed of a vast keep, strengthened by bastions and surrounded by a moat. Connected with this stronghold by a bridge of two tiers is the massive Torre del Homenage. The castle has received many distinguished and involuntary guests. Here was confined Jovellanas, the able Minister of Carlos IV., and here was shot General Lacy for conspiring against the tyrant Fernando VII. Arago the Astronomer took refuge here, when the mob, suspecting that he was signalling to the French when he was simply making observations, sought his life.
Seven miles from Palma is Raxa, the seat of the Conde de Montenegro, who has an exceedingly valuable collection of antiquities. Here may be seen a curious chart of the world, drawn in 1439, according to the instructions of Amerigo Vespucci. It is partly obliterated by the ink spilt over it when it was being spread out for examination by George Sand.
That gifted Frenchwoman slayed at the suppressed Carthusian monastery of Valldemosa, and there she wrote the romance “Spiridion,” at which Mr. Titmarsh poked his fun. It is a beautiful, decayed old place, once a royal palace, and decorated with frescoes illustrating its history.
We again come to the traces of Raymond Lull at Miramar, the beautiful seat of the Archduke Ludwig Salvator, who kindly placed a hospice at the disposal of travellers. This was originally the college established by the philosopher for the study of Oriental tongues. The ill-fated Maximilian of Mexico borrowed the name of his palace near Triente from this enchanting spot.
In addition to the capital, Mallorca contains three or four towns of importance, such as Manacor, Alcudia, and Pollensa, but thesepresent few features of interest. The scenery in the vale of Soller is radiant and smiling, the soil being of amazing fertility, such as the Barranco and Gorch Blau, or Blue Gorge. Between Pollensa and Soller in the heart of the hills is the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lluch, the origin of which is accounted for by a legend similar to that of Lourdes. To accommodate the pilgrims who flocked to the spot, a hospice was built, which in course of time was converted into a school of religious music. Here as at Miramar every stranger can have three days’ free lodging, including fire, light, and the indispensable oil and olives.
On the other side of the island are the caves of Anta, rivalling those of Han and Adelsberg. “The most fantastic part of this subterranean region,” says Mr. Vuillier, “goes by the significant name of L’Infierno. It is a nightmare in stone. Tongues of petrified flame seem to lick the walls. An enormous lion squats in one corner, staring at unhewn tombs overhung by rigid cypresses. Strange forms of antediluvian monsters lurk half-seen in the obscurity. Many of the stalactites when rapped sharply with a stick emit musical notes, some like the vibration of a harp-string, others like the deep resonance of a church bell. These are in an immense hall as vast as a cathedral nave.... In silence anddarkness, the forces of nature have for centuries been hewing and shaping an architecture more sublime than ever was conceived in the wildest dream of the Gothic craftsman.”
Menorca, the second largest of the islands, is bare and bleak and flat round the coast, though at one point in the interior it rises to a height of nearly 6000 feet. Here and there are picturesque spots, notably the Barranco of Algendar; but speaking generally the island is the Holland of the Mediterranean. Cleanliness, well-being, industry and good conduct are the characteristics of the inhabitants, who live farther outside the world of romance even than most Latin people. We flatter ourselves of course that they learned their good qualities from our ancestors, when they ruled the island, and certainly there are frequent reminders of our influence to be traced in the daily life of Menorca. “Ashes to Ashes,” though seldom heard now, was in Ford’s time an oath or exclamation often on the lips of the natives, and children use English words when playing marbles, a game that we taught them among other perhaps less useful arts. We sent to the island a Governor Kasie, who made roads and built market-halls, and did all that a worthy and unimaginative English gentleman might feel it is his duty to do in such a position; but the natives do not sigh once more to beunder our dominion, as they are sometimes polite enough to tell English folk they do, and a Spanish writer actually refers to our paternal government as the Babylonish captivity.
Puerto Mahon was founded, as we have said, by the Carthaginians, and was appropriately enough occupied by us, the Carthaginians of later days. Its harbour is one of the best in the Mediterranean, and is very strongly fortified. Except for the forts, the town contains no public monuments of interest. The streets are very clean and rather quiet, and you remark the absence of the running water in the gutters characteristic of so many European towns. The streets are well paved, often with tombstones from the English cemetery; the dustman goes his rounds as he does in London, and many of the houses have English windows. The domestic life is held in high honour at Mahon, and the chief occupation and delight of the women is cleaning their houses. “It is an amusing spectacle” says M. Vuillier, “to see them armed with brooms of dwarf palm and immense pails of lime-water, gossiping along the walls from early morning, while they scrub and wash as if their lives depended upon it, fastening their brooms to long poles the better to reach the higher parts of the wall. Should a death occur in a house the walls are not whitened for a week, a fortnight oreven a month, according to the closeness of the relationship or the degree of grief felt for the deceased. In rare cases the walls are not touched for six months.” The traveller comments on the absence of the tribe of unwelcome bedfellows, so persistent in their attentions in other parts of Spain.
This does not sound very interesting. Mahon is not, however, wholly devoid of the picturesque element. The old gate of Barbarossa is named after that famous pirate, by whom the city was surprised and sacked in 1536, and the fortifications still bear traces of the siege of 1781. Ciudadela, the old capital, at the opposite end of the island, is more suggestive of old times and memories. The streets are quaint and arcaded, and lined with fine old mansions: and there is an old palace, and a vast dim cathedral, which no one has ever properly explored. Ten minutes will be enough in which to exhaust the sights of Ciudadela, and you may then go and look at the Buffador, a blow-hole like those to be seen at Sark.
The people of Menorca have long since abandoned their native dress—presuming that they ever had one; but M. Vuillier remarked the continuance of the old custom, observable in other countries, of strewing the path of a bridal party with obstacles and building a wall before the house of the bride and bridegroom, the morningafter their marriage. We see one of the innumerable survivals here of marriage by capture. The people are strangely fond of the practice of vaccination, and will perform it on each other with the least possible excuse. In blood-letting they also entertain an ineradicable belief.
Speaking of Alazor, a large village, Ford says: “It is worth the traveller’s while to go into any of the peasants’ houses and convince himself that in no other part of the world do the lower (i.e., working) classes live in greater comfort and even luxury. A man who has only a franc and a half a day as wages, and a little bit of garden, has a large and commodious house, well furnished, exquisitely clean, and always with a spare bed for the stranger. The character of the people is in exact harmony with their surroundings. They are polite and hospitable, crime is unknown, and their hygienic condition being so favourable they are healthy and long-lived. If is difficult to write of them without exaggeration and using too many terms of admiration for the good and wholesome life they lead.”
To the economist, then, the island of Menorca must be of interest, but it is infinitely more so to the archæologist. From end to end it is strewn with the works of prehistoric man, whose record in stone is hard to read. These megalithic remains present a strong resemblance to the mirageof Sardinia and Malta, but have also local characteristics which have puzzled and delighted the learned. M. Cartailhac has traced the sites of many ancient villages. The most considerable may be seen at Torre d’ea Galines, south of Alazor. There, on the summit of a slight eminence, a vast pile of stones is all that remains of the “city” to which the naked aborigines fled wildly the instant a sail rose above the horizon. In the constant and arduous struggle waged by the present inhabitants with the stones and the rock, the limits of the stronghold have, ages ago, disappeared, and if it had an outer wall it can no longer be traced. The dwellings were grouped together so closely that no streets can be distinguished. No chariot or beast of burden could have been known to the citizens. They communicated with each other by corridors leading from cabin to cabin. Here and there the doorways remain intact and uphold a heavy lintel of stone.
In each of these villages is to be found a single huge monument, composed of two blocks of stone, arrangedT-shape. It is surrounded by a semicircular wall of unhewn stones, which probably once rose higher and higher and supported a roof of flat stones. These monuments are termed altars by the people of Menorca, and such they may, in fact, have been, but nothing definite can be said on this point.
Equally uncertain are the nature and purpose of the monuments called talayots, a word allied to the Arabic term for watch-tower. These are structures of uncemented blocks of stone in the form of a tower, slightly conical or cylindrical, sometimes square at the base. None of them is wholly intact. Whether the summit was a dome or a platform we have no means of knowing. “I observed, however, at Torranba de Salort,” says M. Cartailhac, “a detail which throws some light on this point. The tower is among the highest at the summit and at two steps from the centre lies a great stone more than a metre in diameter, in the shape of a thick mushroom, almost circular, flat on one side and with a protuberance on the other. It is possible that this block once crowned the culminating-point of the edifice.”
Among the largest talayots are those of Torre Ilafuda. They measure sixteen metres across the base and fourteen at the summit. The stones are laid horizontally and are carefully adjusted. The walls are three or four metres thick, and skilfully constructed. The interior usually forms a single chamber, and where this was large the roof was supported by a column formed of huge blocks of stone. The wall itself is often threaded by a passage to the roof or upper chamber, so narrow that it could only have been ascended by crawling. The entrance to the talayot is through a square opening large enough to permit a short man to walk through upright. All sorts of theories and guesses have been made as to what these towers originally were. Near everyT-shaped altar one or two are to be found; there was always one at least on every town site. Perhaps, suggests our authority, they existed before all the other structures and were used as centres by a later population. Though they are often placed on eminences, it has been established that they were not fortresses; it can be proved more or less satisfactorily that they were not dwelling-places, storehouses, or tombs.
The boat-shaped piles, called navetas or naves, on the other hand had clearly a sepulchral character. The front or prow is slightly concave. The entrance measures about half a metre across and three-quarters of a metre in height, the edges are grooved as though to admit some sort of door. Inside, the passage widens and conducts you to a second opening as narrow as the first, through which you penetrate into the mortuary chamber itself. Filled now with rubbish, filth and carrion, these are the tombs of the fathers of the Mediterranean races, whose bones are brought to light each time the Menorcan ploughs his stubborn soil.
Stones must always have been a plague to thepeople of the island, and this, besides accounting for their selection of the sling as their peculiar weapon, may partially explain, as Ford reasonably remarks, the abundance of these monuments. “The erection of a large tumulus was not a piece of barbaric extravagance. It provided an unperishable monument for the person it was intended to honour (?) and it got rid of an immense mass of loose stone which greatly impeded agriculture.”
“One fact,” adds this lively writer, “is very curious. The Menorcans, even now, are in the habit of constructing just such tumuli as the talayots for the use of their cattle, though of smaller stones. In the distance they present an appearance not at all unlike the older structures.”
Ibiza, the third largest island of the group, is one of those spots which can afford no sort of justification for its existence. It is a mere backwater, a stagnant pool of humanity, interesting, though, as a place buried beneath prejudices and customs hundreds of years old. How should they be blown away in so out-of-the-way an island? The town stands on a fine harbour and reminds one rather of Guernsey. The collegiate church, formerly a cathedral, was founded by the Archbishop of Tarragona, in the thirteenth century, at the time the island was granted to him byJaime the Conqueror. It is uninteresting, except for the view from the belfry. Better worth a visit is the fortified church of San Antonio at the other end of the island, wherein the people took refuge at the approach of the Corsairs. It is flanked with two massive towers and the apse has a parapet pierced with embrasures for guns. The walls are nearly eight feet thick, and the doorway is protected by a machicolation.
There is little else to be seen at Ibiza during the short time the traveller will be disposed to stay there, but M. Vuillier, who lingered there longer than he had intended, is able to tell us much that is interesting about the people and their customs. The islanders are a savage primitive stock. The recognised form of salutation between man and maid is for the former to hurry after the latter and without any warning discharge his gun into the ground at her feet. After spending the evening at her house, he fires at the ceiling, so that it should be easy to tell at a glance on going into a house for the first time if the daughters have been much sought after. The men do not confine their shooting to this sort of practice, however; duels, assassinations, and vendettas are frequent, and the feuds partake of the mysterious brutal character of those of Kentucky and Tennessee. In such a country animals fare badly, and one isnot surprised to learn that throwing stones at a live cock is one of the favourite pastimes. When the youths come a-courting, each sits with the girl for a few minutes in turn and if he overstays the allotted period is punished by the others with the knife or pistol. Abduction is the rule rather than the exception; but for all the anxiety shown to possess them, the women have a wretched time, being hardly allowed to stir out of their dingy poverty-stricken cabins. Altogether it must be as difficult to make yourself happy at Ibiza as at any spot on or off the planet.
Of the remaining islands of the group, only one deserves mention and that only for its sad memories. This is Cabrera. It is little better than a bare rock, incapable of affording subsistence to more perhaps than two or three score of men, yet here during the Peninsular War the Spaniards were thoughtless enough to confine 5500 French soldiers, the victims of Dupont’s surrender at Bailen. Their sufferings were more severe than those of many a shipwrecked mariner. Each man was allowed only 24 ounces of bread and a few beans every four days. There was but one spring in the island and the thirst-maddened men would fight each other desperately to get a drink from this. Murder was common, and in one instance a man was detected in theact of preparing a meal from the remains of a comrade. It is touching to relate that for many months the men made a pet of a donkey they found wandering on the island, and it was not till the boat which brought them their miserable ration was long overdue that the poor famished wretches could find it in their hearts to kill and eat their only four-footed companion. As time went on, the captives made some attempt to cultivate their island, and their lot greatly improved, as the Spaniards continued to send the same rations, though their number was now reduced by two-fifths. Finally, in 1814, the last survivors were taken off by a French transport. The bones of those who died on the island were interred by the crew of a French warship and a monument was erected over their remains.