town the party halted for a while-spending some busy days within
its walls, and making an excursion into the country-and then took
ship for Palma, the capital of Majorca and the Balearic Isles
generally. Again the voyagers were favoured by the elements.

The night was warm and dark, illumined only by an
extraordinary phosphorescence in the wake of the ship;
everybody was asleep on board except the steersman, who, in
order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in a voice so
soft and so subdued that one might have thought that he feared
to awake the men of the watch, or that he himself was half
asleep. We did not weary of listening to him, for his singing
was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and
modulations totally different from those we are accustomed to,
and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke
of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a
reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless divagation of
the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which
kept time with the swaying of the ship, the faint sound of the
dead water, and resembled a vague improvisation, restrained,
nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms.

When night had passed into day, the steep coasts of Majorca,
dentelees au soleil du matin par les aloes et les palmiers, came
in sight, and soon after El Mallorquin landed its passengers at
Palma. Madame Sand had left Paris a fortnight before in extremely
cold weather, and here she found in the first half of November
summer heat. The newcomers derived much pleasure from their
rambles through the town, which has a strongly-pronounced
character of its own and is rich in fine and interesting