Bidasoa and its shore on the sea, and its woods above the river, crowded in spring with daffodils. The sudden change from everything that is French to everything that is Spanish cannot but be surprising. It is due, no doubt, to the fact that beneath the French and the Spanish civilization and language, the people have an older language and civilization common to either side. The Basque spoken varies but little, being merely a little broader in Spain than in France. Mme. d’Aulnoy noticed the abrupt change wrought by a few yards of travel. “It’s certain, as soon as I past the little river of Bidassoa, I was not understood unless I spake Castilian; and not above a quarter of an Hour before I should not have been understood had I not spoke French.”[52] Obstacles and delays begin: “Here are Toll-gatherers who make you pay for everything you carry with you, not excepting your Cloaths. This Tax is demanded at their Pleasure and is excessive on Strangers.” Letters are no longer received in a well-ordered service: “There is in this country a very ill order touching commerce, and when the French carrier arrives at St. Sebastian, all the letters he brings are deliver’d to others who are good footmen and ease one another. They put their packets into a sack tied with rotten cords to their shoulder, by which means it oft happens that the secrets of your heart and family are open to the first curious body who makes drunk the Footpost.” Mme. d’Aulnoy is irritated by the unintelligibility of Basque: “This country called Biscaye is full of high mountains where are several iron mines.[53] The Biscays climb up the rocks as easily and with as great swiftness as stags. Their language (if one may call such jargon language) is very poor, seeing one word signifies abundance of things. There are none but those born in the country that can understand it; and I am told that to the end it may be more particularly theirs they make no use of it in writing: they make their children learn to read and write French and Spanish according to which King’s subjects they are.” “They are said to understand one another,” said Scaliger of the Basques, “but, for my part, I doubt it.” The most famous scene of peace witnessed by the Bidasoa was the meeting held in the _Île des Faisans_, or _de la Conférence_, a narrow island, now worn to a mere strip by the flow of the tide, between Philip IV. of Spain and Louis XIV. of France in 1660. It was a scene of lavish splendour and magnificence, and Velázquez, then in the last year of his life, superintended the decorations and assisted at the interview.[54] But most often we hear of the Bidasoa as a scene of strife and anxiety, escape and pursuit. The very river was an object of dispute between the Governments of France and Spain, until it was decided that the one half of it belonged to France, the other to Spain; in the centre of the bridge of Béhobie is the dividing line, marked in blue for France and red for Spain. Many a time has the sight