On the anniversary of the death of one of their number, the friends gather at the grave, and offer to the departed gifts of bread and fruit, as if they required supplies of food for the endless journey in another world. On the holidays, which are many in a year, they are wild in the dance, with the tambourine and bagpipe and castanet, being far more demonstrative in the height of their excitement than the more southern inhabitants of Spain. They are a proud race, and more proud of their ancestry than any thing else, the poorest peasant among the hills displaying on the door of his hut a coat of arms, and claiming descent from some ancient and illustrious house. As a race they have no trouble in reckoning their pedigree back to Tubal and Noah, and unless your tree of genealogy has branches springing out of a trunk that bears the name of Adam, these people are far ahead of you in the line of their ancestry. They occupy the Basque Provinces, three divisions, small in extent, lying among the Pyrenees and on the Bay of Biscay. They are probably lineal descendants of the first settlers of Spain, and may be correct in their boast that they are not tainted with Roman or Moorish or Gothic-German blood. They still speak a language so strange and so formidable to a foreigner that it is said no one has been able to master it. There is a tradition among them that the devil himself spent five years in studying it, and was able to learn three words only. But after much inquiry I could not trace this tradition to any reliable source. In fact, it is said that one or two bold and persevering scholars have actually made some inroads into the language, but the discoveries made were a very poor reward for the time and labor spent. Into this new yet ancient country we enter at once, for it is the northern gateway of Spain. At the outset of our journey we must “change cars,” for the Spanish government, in granting license for a railroad to enter its domains, refused to allow it to be made of the same width with that of France, as it would in that case afford to the French facilities for invasion in case of war! The idea is very characteristic of Spain. And the same stupidity that dictates such an impediment to travel forgets that every train of passengers coming in from the north is an invasion that is just as fatal to the regime of Spain as would be another incursion of Goths or Gauls. Ideas, rather than arms, work revolutions now-a-days.