fastness, seem less uncouth, and are possessed of a greater degree of intelligence than their brethren of the interior. The customs of these famous mountaineers, variously known as Basques, Asturians, Cantabrians, and Galicians, according to the respective localities they inhabit, have varied but little in the course of many centuries. They have ever been distinguished by simplicity of manners, sturdy honesty, unselfish hospitality, and a spirit of independence which has seldom failed to successfully assert itself against the most persistent attempts at conquest. A mysterious and unknown origin attaches to the Basques, whose strange tongue and weird traditions are supposed to connect them with the original inhabitants of the Peninsula, and who, in this isolated wilderness, have preserved the memory of one of the aboriginal races of Europe. The rugged districts lying to the westward of what is now called Biscay, the home of the Basques, were formerly inhabited by the Iberians, a branch of the Celts, which, by force of circumstances and through the necessities of self-preservation, has become fused with colonists from the southern provinces until its distinguishing features have disappeared. The well-known bravery of the defenders of this bleak and forbidding country, its poverty--which offers no allurements to either the avarice or the vanity of royal power--its ravines swept by piercing winds, and its mountains draped with perpetual clouds, long secured for it freedom from invasion. The Carthaginians never passed its borders. The Romans, under Augustus, succeeded, after infinite difficulties, in establishing over its territory a precarious authority, disputed at intervals by fierce and stubborn insurrections. It yielded a reluctant obedience to the Visigothic kings, whose notions of liberty, coarse tastes, barbaric customs, and frank demeanor were more congenial with the nature of the wild Iberian than the luxurious habits and crafty maxims of Punic and Latin civilization.