"This old Iberian, world-conquering race came to its sunset hour a thousand years ago, and the gloaming after their sunset is deepening into that gloom which hides all. Only a remnant, a hint of the old-time radiance, remains up to this day. "In Southern Europe, the remnant of this antique race, the fragment of a root with the old-time vigorous sap in it, may still be found. There, on the Spanish peninsula where its cradle was rocked, the grave of a once powerful race is being slowly sodded; for there still live that strange people called the Basques. It matters not today what they are--chiefly mountaineers, I think--but they are of the old Iberian stock, and the Iberians were colonists from some unknown land, pre-historic, undiscoverable by us. Colonists and colonizers also. From some unknown land, hidden from us in the gloom of ages, these Iberians came to Southern Europe in ships. To Sicily they went in ships; to Britain and Ireland; to Norway also, and where else, or how far or for what, is left to conjecture. But being strong in numbers, ambitious to conquer, skilled in navigation, we can well believe that they pushed their flag and commerce nigh to the ends of the world. "Now these Basques, to-day mountaineers, they tell me, were once, nor long ago, great sailors. In instinct and habit, they were true to the old Iberian stock, to which they were as the last green leaf on a dying tree. They were of a world-conquering race, and they sailed the seas of the world, seeking profit fearlessly. Four hundred years ago Jacques Cartier, himself a Breton, with the old Basque or Iberian blood warm in him--for the Bretons were of the old Iberian stock, with the same temper and look of face--sailed into the gulf of the St. Lawrence, and found--what? THE BASQUES BEFORE HIM. Not one Basque ship, but many. Engaged in what? In hunting whales. Whalers they were, and whalers they had been in these parts for years and centuries.