The Balearic 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 a Greek word meaning _to 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.