The western extremity of the Pyrenees, where France and Spain join, gives us a locality rendered famous by the historical events of San Sebastian, and the legends of Fuenterabia, with the provinces of Bearn and Gascony on the French, and Navarre and Biscay on the Spanish, side of the mountains. Here it is where, although the towns, like Bayonne, Pampeluna, and Bilbao, are French or Spanish, the country people are _Basques_ or _Biscayans_--Basques or Biscayans not only in the provinces of _Biscay_, but in Alava, Upper Navarre, and the French districts of Labourd and Soule. Their name is Spanish (the word having originated in that of the ancient _Vascones_), and it is _not_ the one by which they designate themselves; though, possibly, it is indirectly connected with it. The _native_ name is derived from the root _Eusk_-; which becomes Eusk-_ara_ when the language, Eusk-_kerria_ when the country, and Eusk-_aldunac_ when the people are spoken of; so that the Basque language of the Biscayans of Biscay is, in the vernacular tongue, the _Euskara_ of the _Euskaldunac_ of _Euskerria_. It is not for nothing that this difference of form has been indicated. In the classical writers we find more than one of the old Spanish populations mentioned under different derivatives from the same root, and sometimes a doubt is expressed by the writer in whose pages it occurs, as to whether there were two separate populations, or only one denoted by two synonymous names. Thus, side by side with the Bast-_uli_, we find the Bast-_itani_, and, side by side with the Turd-_uli_, the Turd-_etani_. Now respecting these last, Strabo expressly says that whether they were different populations under the same name, or the same under different ones is uncertain. That the Euskara is no new tongue may be inferred from the fact of its falling into dialects; which Humboldt limits to three, whilst others extend them to five or six. _a._ The Biscayan proper is spoken in the country of the ancient Autrigones and Caristii, and it has been proposed to call it the Autrigonian. It has, less correctly, been called _Cantabrian_, and this is the name which the national taste best likes; for a descent from the indomitable Cantabrian that so long and so successfully spurned the yoke of Rome, and who transmitted the same spirit and the same independence to the Asturian, is creditable enough to be claimed. Nor is the claim unfounded; since, in all probability, the ancient Cantabria included some of the ancestors of the Euskaldunac. _b._ The Guipuscoan is the western Biscayan. _c._ The Laburtanian is the Euskarian of France, spoken in the parts about St. Jean de Luz; and which, in the district of Soule, is supposed to fall into a sub-dialect.