We are now in the midst of the mountains. The road gradually rises as we advance, and frequently makes its way through the heart of the hills. The valleys lie sweetly far below. If the road followed the line of the valleys it might be exposed to frequent injury by floods. And as this range must be crossed, it is better to make the ascent as easy as possible. We might be in Switzerland, so like it are these farms on the hill-sides and in the valleys; the sounds that break on the ear are the same: the houses scattered in cosy nooks, or clustered in little villages which the church crowns with a blessing as of heaven. The oxen have their head and necks covered with a sheepskin or a woollen blanket to protect them from the rain. They drag a cart of which the wheels are a solid block of wood secured with a tire. There has been a fair to-day in some one of the villages, and men and women are going home, leading cattle they have purchased. The men are well formed, athletic, straight, and good-looking. The women are a superior race, and even when leading a calf the peasant woman steps proudly along as if she were entering her drawing-room. Their hair is their glory, worn pendant on their backs. Of their moral and mental culture little is known, as they have slight intercourse with the outer world. From the beginning they have had a government of their own, sometimes being cut up into republics, and managing the most of matters in their own way. Even when they have claimed their own congress, and tariff, and army, the Spanish government has thought it the part of discretion to humor them. When emerging from these provinces into Castile, our luggage was searched to find any tobacco we might be smuggling: for this is one of the privileges of the Basque Provinces, that they may import tobacco free of duty, but it is under a tariff the moment we pass beyond. In this region the Indian corn of our own country is the principal production. Peaches, apples, and cherries are abundant. Iron mines are worked, and furnaces are frequently seen in full blast. Cloth and paper mills are in operation. The inhabitants have an energy and enterprise far superior to that of the people farther south. Many of them become seamen. Some have made discoveries in distant seas. One of the most peculiar of their ideas, and one that may account for the lofty bearing of their women, is, that the right of primogeniture exists among them, but it applies to the first-born child, whether son or daughter! This often places the woman at the head of the house, so that she can say, as few women elsewhere can say, “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is my own.”