On the Mediterranean island of Majorca, a rugged mountain range ends abruptly in a spectacularly beautiful limestone headland. At the northeastern tip of Majorca, largest of the Balearic Islands, a picturesque peninsula juts boldly into the azure Mediterranean. According to many seasoned travelers, it encompasses some of the most beautiful seascapes in the world. In some places the cape’s weathered limestone cliffs plunge straight down to the crashing sea. Elsewhere the cliffs border narrow golden beaches, while in still other places scented pine forests cover gentler slopes from the cape’s mountainous backbone to the water’s edge.
The Northern Sierra, the mountain chain that terminates at Cape Formentoi forms a barrier all along Majorca’s northern coast. The mountains are composed mostly of limestone that formed on the bottom of the ancestral Mediterranean some 250 million years ago. The gradual collision of two of the immense plates that make up the earth’s crust—those comprising southern Europe and northern Africa—elevated the sedimentary beds far above sea level about 40 million years ago. Later crustal movements separated the Balearic Islands from the mainland and from each other and then submerged them once again. Subsequent shifts in the earth’s crust approximately 5 million years ago raised the islands to more or less their present heights.
More recently two forces have altered the contours of Majorca—and Cape Formentor. The island has been slowly subsiding, and at the same time sea levels have risen because of the melting of continental glaciers at the end of the last ice age. The result on Majorca is what geologists call a drowned coastline. Waves now lap at the faces of cliffs that once stood above sea level, and the ocean has invaded once-dry valleys to form picturesque, fjord like inlets known as rias.
Despite these changes, Cape For-mentor still rises dramatically above the sea. Near its tip a lighthouse stands atop a cliff about 690 feet (210 meters) high. It is an excellent vantage point for viewing the cape, the slopes and whitewashed villages inland on Majorca, and on a clear day the neighboring island of Minorca some 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the east across the blue Mediterranean.
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