The game of pelota is not only interesting in itself, but it challenges the common impression that the Spaniards are an indolent people, who prefer to take their recreation with the least possible physical exertion. In point of fact, Spain is experiencing, in common with England, the dubious blessing of athletic professionalism. Her bull-fighters to-day are all “pros.,” and her pelota players belong to the same category. The game, which would resemble fives if it were not so vastly different, is the most fatiguing I have ever witnessed. So greatly does it tax the constitution, that the career of its paid devotees is limited to three, or at the most, four years. It is played with a four-ounce ball, which has a diameter of eight
PASAJES DE SAN JUAN (GUIPUSCOA).
inches, and is “volted” about a court, 175 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 40 feet high, by the players, whose hands are encased in leather gloves about two feet in length, protected by basket-work backs. The rallies between good players realise anything between twelve and twenty strokes; and although “soft returns” are not unknown, the majority of the strokes are delivered with all the force of which the players are capable. In a game of fifty up the players will wear a hole completely through the soles of their shoes.
SAN SEBASTIAN—COUCHA PROMENADE.
The traveller by the Paris-Madrid route leaves France at Hendaye, the charming little seaside town on the Bay of Biscay, and enters Spain at Irun, which is comparatively modern, is charmingly situated, and is about as much French as Hendaye is Spanish. But except that here the passenger has his luggage examined, changes trains, and puts his watch back twenty-five minutes to mark the difference that is observed between Paris and Madrid time, Irun is of no particular interest: unless, of course, the traveller has plenty of time on his hands, for in that case he will traverse the eight miles to Pasajes, the pretty land-locked harbour which, thanks to the enterprise of a private company, has been made the best port between Coruña and Cherbourg, and ships a third part of the entire exportation of the Spanish wine to France. Pasajes is perhaps the most picturesque port on the north coast of Spain. The tramway also runs over the eleven miles which separate Irun from San Sebastian. This city, which boasts some 33,000 inhabitants, and the favour of royal patronage, is historically interesting on account of the gallant assault by which it was taken by the English forces in the face of the strenuous defence made by the French veterans under General Rey in 1813; it is fashionable by reason of the annual visit of the ex-Queen Regent and the young King, who spend four months in each year in the handsome royal palace overlooking the sea, and it
BILBAO—SUBURBS.
is beautiful with a beauty that is entirely its own. Here you shall find the tamarisks and the geranium and heliotrope in full bloom far into the autumn, and the birds singing among the foliage, and the Spanish sunlight glinting through the trees and lying hot on the white horse-shoe of glistening sand. And even on the stillest day the blue Atlantic rollers break fiercely upon the rocks beneath the quaint bit of old town, and curl themselves magnificently along the firm, smooth beach. La Perla del Oceano, the bathing establishment, is a popular resort, and, in the season, thousands of bathers disport