Back on terra firma

Women Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands

Dec 30. A most agree­able pre­sent ar­rived at break­fast-time from the con­sul, an enor­mous sweet brioche, about two feet in di­am­e­ter, and in shape like a gi­gan­tic cornu am­mo­nis, and as good to eat as to look at, repos­ing on a heap of sweet rusks; à pro­pos of which I may re­mark, that in all the Span­ish towns we have uni­formly met with ex­cel­lent bread, and here it was par­tic­u­larly good.

In the course of the morn­ing M. Con­stant ac­com­pa­nied us to the cathe­dral, which was built to­wards the close of the 13th cen­tury; and if fin­ished, would be ex­tremely hand­some within, as well as with­out; but it is so far from com­ple­tion, that most of the long lance-shaped win­dows are filled up, and only small square open­ings left at the top for light. Those which are filled with stained glass are the rich­est in colour I ever saw, con­sist­ing en­tirely of the deep­est and most gor­geous reds, dark blues, greens, and browns, like a clus­ter of car­bun­cles. (...)

Above the high altar were sus­pended in the air by threads an in­fin­ity of lit­tle white things, like paper but­ter­flies, which, it seems, are sa­cred wafers; and it is the cus­tom so to sus­pend them from Christ­mas till the Epiphany. Sev­eral canons were chant­ing in the choir; and after mass was over, we were ac­costed by one of them, a friend of the con­sul, who spoke very good Eng­lish; he was a na­tive of Mi­norca, and they fre­quently learn Eng­lish, at least with the Amer­i­can ac­cent, at Port Mahon, the usual win­ter sta­tion for Amer­i­can ships in the Mediter­ranean.(...)

Dec 31. This was the an­niver­sary of the tak­ing of the town from the Moors, and high mass was per­formed at the cathe­dral in con­se­quence. We walked up an as­cent to a new fish-mar­ket, which seemed well sup­plied; and here were some most ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily dressed peas­ants. One very fine-look­ing old man in par­tic­u­lar was ad­mirable in his cos­tume, which was a large spot­ted calf-skin put on as a pelisse, en­tire, with two aper­tures for the arms, and the tail cut off: the straight­ness and length of the back, and the per­fect grav­ity with which the wearer was talk­ing and ges­tic­u­lat­ing with a friend hardly less ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily ac­cou­tred, was ir­re­sistible.

We af­ter­wards took a long walk out of the town, through the green corn-fields, full of fig-trees, olives, and al­mond-trees, which in a month will be in full flower. We passed by some de­serted con­vents, with very fine palm-trees in their gar­dens; came to a large ceme­tery, with num­bers of mon­u­ments in stone and mar­ble, and some in coloured tiles; crossed a small river, and walked to an em­i­nence look­ing down on a beau­ti­ful val­ley be­yond, wooded with olives and ilexes, with views of the fine out­lines of the moun­tains, which are peaked and craggy : re­turned by the same way to the town, meet­ing num­bers of peas­ants in full cos­tume, with black hats with enor­mous rims, a kind of dark waist­coat, and very full white trowsers, like the Greek dress, all but the hat — their hair grow­ing in a bush, like that of the Russ­ian priests. These men sit at an im­mense height on their mules, on a kind of plat­form sad­dle, so that their legs are some­times placed hor­i­zon­tally at full length, and al­ways side­ways; they have fine good-na­tured coun­te­nances, and evince no sur­prise at the sight of strangers, in which they dif­fer much from the Spaniards, to whom we must be much less a nov­elty.

The steamer, the “Mal­lorquin,” came in from Barcelona this morn­ing: the storm had been dread­ful there; 16 ves­sels were lost in the har­bour, and some dri­ven out, and wrecked on the bar. An Eng­lish brig was lost on the coast near Rosas; the cap­tain, two ladies, and four of the crew, were drowned. “La Sur­prise” saved two ves­sels which were dri­ving out, by catch­ing hold of them with grap­pling irons. A Dutch gal­liot and a Swedish brig ran ashore near Mon­juich, and the crews were drowned, all but seven men out of the two ves­sels. The crew of a Russ­ian ship in the har­bour saved them­selves by leav­ing the ship, which went to pieces.