The rustics have the advantage over the town-bred men; they are familiar with the by-paths; every sheiling is a refuge for them, every dweller therein a self-constituted scout. When they choose to seek them, they must have secure hiding-places. Artillery is an arm of derision in the hills; cavalry can rarely act effectually, and in the way of reconnoitring is next to useless, as its movements can be espied from rock-cover on every eminence; but in the open these insurgents can do nothing against disciplined troops. Pity that they should be such fools as to abandon their pleasant and comfortable, if humble, homesteads, to help on the aspirations of any right-divine make-believe claimant to the heaven-sent mission--by accident of birth--of impressing other human beings that he is wiser than they, and should have revenues and reverence for condescending to govern them. What would our ox-drivers do, I wonder, if they could overhear and understand the conversation in which thoughts like these are exchanged in the lumbering Noah's ark they are helping through their domain? We are getting nigh and nigher to the clouds, and the quilt of snow on the mountain grows thicker. The pathway is traceable only by the marks of the hoofs of beasts of burden and the ruts of wheels, and the fleecy banks at each side rise gradually higher. It is palpably colder, and yet we are far from the culminating point of the Pyrenean pass; straight saplings are not infrequent around, and here and there a lowly hut in a nook under some sheltering rock, both hut and rock hoary with snow, startles us with the reminder that human beings actually live here. The Basques, said Voltaire, are a people who sing and dance on the summit of the Pyrenees. Our ox-drivers do not sing, neither do our muleteers. This interminable glare is becoming very fatiguing to the eyes, and the higher we ascend the rarer are the refreshing little streaks of darker hue. Stumps of dwarf trees replace the straight saplings to be seen lower down; and hardly are we on the crest of one snow-capped hill than another, hidden under the same smooth sheet of everlasting lime-white, mocks us. Slowly and painfully the oxen toil along, and the peasants by their side sink knee-deep at every step. Will this ever end? It was picturesque at first to watch the long caravan coiling over the spiral track which turns right and left like a corkscrew. Now it is tedious, for we are chilled and worn-out, hungry and cramped. The sublimity of nature is grandiose, but there may be too much of it. One tires of rolling perpetual cigarettes; one even tires of studying the forcible Spanish adjurations that begin with the third letter of the alphabet. My companions, four French commercial travellers, relapse into silence and doze off into fitful starts of the sleepiness begot of extreme cold; the fifth--a grandee of Castile I take him to be at the very least by his appearance, broad swarthy countenance, shaven upper lip and chin,