The first thing we did was to start in search of a _fonda_, with a couple of brown boys in red caps carrying our boxes. After passing along the strong-looking ramparts, and through one or two clean, picturesque streets, in which were some mosque-like buildings turned into barracks, we went under a ruined arch, through which, as in a frame, was seen a beautiful glimpse of distant plains and cloud-capped mountains. We then pulled up at a whitewashed building, which, we were informed, was an establishment entitled _La Fonda de las Tres Palomas_, so named after one of the peculiarities of Palma, and, indeed, of most towns of Oriental descent, viz., the pigeons which are seen everywhere whirling about in the air and walking in the streets, completely tame and unmolested. The Hotel of the Three Pigeons, although tolerably clean, was lamentably deficient in matters of comfort. The bedrooms were simply whitewashed cells. A narrow bedstead, with a mattress stuffed with the leaves of Indian corn, one chair, and a little slender iron tripod, about three feet high, holding a diminutive basin, constituted the furniture. When the British mania for ablution occasionally overtook us, a pint of brown warm water was brought carefully in a coffee-pot, and poured slowly, as if it were molten gold, into the little basin; while the waiter waited to see what we should do with it, and how apply it for personal use. And well he might; for he seemed to be rather a stranger to the process himself. The saloon and reading-room of the hotel was the kitchen; and there the guests assisted at the cooking of their meals, which, however, was, perhaps, about the best thing they could do, as, upon one occasion, the _chef_, in his anxious desire to please, entirely lost his presence of mind, and was about to boil the woodcocks we had ordered for dinner. Why, at the _fondas_ of Majorca, one should find the napkins which ought to be used at dinner placed on the washing-stand for the purposes of ablution, and the towels which should be upon the washing-stand placed on the plates at the dinner-table, will probably remain a mystery, of which it would be vain to seek for any explanation.