The part which I assign to the Basque boat-girls, and the strain of sentiment which pervades their oar-song, although not consonant with a peaceful state of cultivated society, is quite characteristic of Spain during the Peninsular War. The creed of Hippolytus was not very favourable to those literate pretensions which Molière has so pleasantly satirized in his “_Précieuses Ridicules_,” and the Basque barqueras would be quite to his taste. The persecuted of Phædra, whose uncompromising chastity caused his neck to be broken, said:--Σοφὴν δὲ μισῶ, “I hate a learned woman;” and Blanca and her sisters of the oar appear to have extended that hatred to both sexes. Gen. Jones’s record of the seizure of the island of Santa Clara in the mouth of the harbour is as follows:--“A party of 200 men was landed this night on the high rocky island of Sta. Clara, and made prisoners of the enemy’s guard on it, of an officer and twenty-four men.” _Journals, &c., Supp. Chapt._ Napier makes the military party to consist of only 100 men--such difficulties does one meet in ascertaining the minute parts of even recent history. But probably Gen. Jones may have estimated that the seamen amounted to another hundred. “A heavy fire was opened on them,” says Napier, “and the troops landed with some difficulty, but the island was then easily taken, and a lodgment made with the loss of only twenty-eight men and officers.” _Hist._ book xxii. c. i. The historical fact of the supplies having been conveyed to the besiegers at San Sebastian by boat-girls gives warrant to the supposition that they may have assisted in the capture of the Island. This Canto describes the principal warlike operations between the battle of Vittoria and the first battle of Sauroren, with a description of the first part of which it terminates. The incidents will be found in Napier’s _History_, book xxi. chap. 5.