On the right the summit of the great Atchuria[62] was just lighted by the rising sun, and fifty thousand men rushing down its enormous slopes with ringing shouts seemed to chase the receding shadows into the deep valley.” The description of the passage of the Bidasoa in October, 1813, is equally graphic: “From San Marcial seven columns could now be seen at once, moving on a line of five miles, those above bridge plunging at once into the fiery contest, those below appearing in the distance like huge, sullen snakes winding over the heavy sands.” The mountainous character of the frontier, causing Spain to be entered by one or two narrow passages, has indeed concentrated upon a few points a picturesque variety of traffic through the centuries--a historical pageant of soldiers, pilgrims, smugglers, Kings and Queens dethroned or released from imprisonment, wily agents, gorgeous ambassadors, fugitive politicians, exiled Jesuits, heretic missionaries, Carlist conspirators, with a large sprinkling of visitors and adventurers from many lands. IV ESKUAL-ERRIA I.--BASQUE COUNTRY There are few peoples more deserving of study than the Basques, and few countries more pleasant to visit and to live in than the Basque Provinces. After the treeless, unsheltered mountains and plains, and the compact villages of Castille or Navarre, the villages of the Basque country, set in green, and, to quote the phrase of a Spanish novelist, “all in the peace of prayer,” are a delightful contrast. The sky has no longer the harsh intensity of the Castilian, and everywhere is a softness of outlines; everywhere, too, is green--the green of chestnut and oak, of maize and trefoil, meadow and cider-orchard. The maize is the principal crop of the year, providing the heavy, yellow bread, _artoa_, as well as food for the oxen and material for mats, mattresses, and even cigarette-papers. The fields are divided by slabs of stone, and in the mists of the early mornings the Angelus rings from hidden towers; and the only other sound is that of scythes cutting the drenched grass or trefoil. Every true Basque is of noble, ancient family, and the Basque farmhouse, with its wooden façade and carved projecting buttresses, its wide balcony and deep ornamented eaves, is handed down from father to son without change. It stands surrounded by orchards and fields of maize, and often overshadowed by an immense fig-tree or a group of splendid walnut-trees. The roof slopes down on one side till it nearly reaches the ground. The lower part of the front is hollowed into a court, and on one side of this a door leads straight into the spacious kitchen, with its huge fireplace and many vessels of scoured bronze and copper, which forms the principal room of the house. A dark, narrow staircase leads to the bedrooms; through the cracks of the floors may often be seen the oxen in their stalls beneath. Large chests of oak, some of them beautifully carved, are to be found in most Basque farms.