to be suspicious, or even surprised, when I seated
myself upon a low wall, and watched the laborers.

The knoll upon which the farm-house stood sloped down gently into the
broad, rich plain of Palma, extending many a league to the eastward. Its
endless orchards made a dim horizon-line, over which rose the solitary
double-headed mountain of Felaniche, and the tops of some peaks near
Arta. The city wall was visible on my right, and beyond it a bright arc
of the Mediterranean. The features of the landscape, in fact, were so
simple, that I fear I cannot make its charm evident to the reader.
Looking over the nearer fields, I observed two peculiarities of Majorca,
upon which depends much of the prosperity of the island. The wheat is
certainly, as it is claimed to be, the finest of any Mediterranean land.
Its large, perfect grains furnish a flour of such fine quality that the
whole produce of the island is sent to Spain for the pastry and
confectionery of the cities, while the Majorcans import a cheap,
inferior kind in its place. Their fortune depends on their abstinence
from the good things which Providence has given them. Their pork is
greatly superior to that of Spain, and it leaves them in like manner;
their best wines are now bought up by speculators and exported for the
fabrication of sherry; and their oil, which might be the finest in the
world, is so injured by imperfect methods of preservation that it might
pass for the worst. These things, however, give them no annoyance.
Southern races are sometimes indolent, but rarely Epicurean in their
habits; it is the Northern man who sighs for his flesh-pots.

I walked forward between the fields toward another road, and came upon a
tract which had just been ploughed and planted for a new crop. The soil
was ridged in a labyrinthine pattern, which appeared to have been drawn
with square and rule. But more remarkable than this was the difference
of level, so slight that the eye could not possibly detect it, by which
the slender irrigating streams were conducted to every square foot of
the field, without a drop being needlessly wasted. The system is an
inheritance from the Moors, who were the best natural engineers the
world has ever known. Water is scarce in Majorca, and thus every stream,
spring, rainfall,--even the dew of heaven,--is utilized. Channels of
masonry, often covered to prevent evaporation, descend from the
mountains, branch into narrower veins, and visit every farm