thirst for vengeance. Their uniform is picturesque, yet workmanlike, consisting precisely of the costume of the popular Italian brigand without his tawdry finery. The great charm of the Majorcan population is that they are a distinct island race, with a language almost of their own; and having lived for centuries happily and contentedly as one family, they are docile and orderly, and courteous to a degree to strangers. Steam has only been introduced of late years, and up to the first arrival of _El Vapor_ they were comparatively cut off from all the world, its plots and passions, and engrossed in their own quiet industrious pursuits. Majorca is at present free from the plague of tourists. Scarcely a stranger intrudes, beyond the city of Palma, into the recesses of its woods, mountains, and villages. Consequently the charge for everything is remarkably moderate, and on the occasion of our excursion to Soller we had a capital dinner for five people,[30] including a sack of four hundred oranges fresh from the boughs, for ten shillings, besides a deal of stroking, and patting, and shaking of hands on the part of the "fair, fat, and forty" landlady, her daughter, and mine host of the Fonda de la Paz, upon our departure for the mountain pass of El Barranco. The good landlady, who is also cook, we understood danced a characteristic dance some twelve years ago before Lord L----e, on his visit to Soller, like the daughter of Herodias before Herod. Being at the time of our visit of sufficient dimensions to put up in the middle of a room for an invalid to walk ten times round in the course of a day, as a measurement for a term of gentle exercise, that lady very properly abstained from repeating her Terpsichorean experiments upon this occasion. Had she given way to her love of the graceful exercise, she would have borne no very distant resemblance to a frisky elephant, and might probably have broken through the floor of the apartment. From the _mirador_, or pretty terrace on the top of the house, entwined with vine-leaves and jasmine, and partly shaded with the fig and various sweet-scented plants, a lovely view of well-nigh the entire valley, with its mass of vegetable life, its wide orange groves, and its waving palms, is obtained, while the fragrance of the orange flower is wafted through every casement. The winter climate of the valley is mild and delicious, as its tropical vegetation amply testifies; while the heat in summer is never too intense, for an opening through the heart of the mountains towards the north-west, through which a small silver river flows to the sea, admits the freshening breeze.