to be wondered at is, that we should find so much of their primitive simplicity still surviving among these Gascons; for the rail it is which has wrought most surely whatever innovation is perceptible among them. The rail has put the old _chaussée_ out of date, and brought the Spanish frontier within eighteen hours of Paris, and to him who shall use his opportunities aright, within thirty hours of London. Hence that which used to be regarded as an out-of-the-way corner of Europe, worth notice only because it witnessed the closing operations of the Peninsular War, is visited now by strangers from all parts of the world--some hurrying by without a pause, intent on business or pleasure elsewhere; others finding in the district itself a temporary home, which the climate, especially in winter and spring, renders as salubrious as the magnificent scenery in which it abounds makes it agreeable. The Gascons cannot, of course, fail more or less to be acted upon by this tide of immigration. As yet, however, it seems but slightly to have affected their characters and manners, which, in all essential points, continue to be what they were when the great Duke led his victorious columns through the passes of their mountains, not to plunder or harass, but to deliver their fathers from the outrages which they suffered at the hands of their own countrymen in arms. The railroad from Bourdeaux to the frontier runs parallel, or nearly so, with the old _chaussée_, as far as Labenne, a little village with a station, about eight miles from Bayonne. There the two lines separate. The old road enters Bayonne, as it did long ago, to the left of the citadel, descending the steep hill on which the fortress stands, and passing through the suburb of St Esprit, in which, during the sortie on the 14th April 1814, most of the fighting took place. The railway, on the contrary, sweeps seaward, and, touching the Adour at Boucaut, runs up-stream by the brink of the river, and so passes through the lower outworks of the citadel to the station. There the traveller who desires to rest for an hour or two will alight close to a church in which General Hay was killed, and round which that desperate struggle took place of which mention is made in chapter xxiv. of the Subaltern's story.