BILBAO—GENERAL VIEW.
themselves on the yellow sands. The old ramparts of the land defence works are now demolished, and their site is occupied by the handsome streets of the Parte Nueva, or New Town. The Calle de la Alameda, stretches across the isthmus that divided the old town from the new. And beyond the old town the gaunt eminence of Monte Orgullo, crowned by the castle of La Mota, rises sheer out of the sea, and forms a scene which fills the eyes with beauty and the mind with memories that do not easily fade. The Grand Casino, which cost £80,000, the bull-ring, the churches of Santa Maria and San Vicente, the Palacio de la Diputacion, and the Pelota Court—these lions of San Sebastian are but so many specks in the broad impression one carries away of ocean, and sky, and the black mountain frowning majestically through the golden sunshine.
BILBAO—VISCAYA BRIDGE.
Bilbao, the most important city in the Basque provinces, and one of the most progressive and flourishing places in Spain, is the capital of Viscaya, and gained its proud title of La Invicta Villa de Bilbao by successfully withstanding three sieges by the army of Don Carlos. The river Nervion, upon which it is situated, is navigable for steamers up to the town, eight and a-half miles from its mouth. The old town, which is composed of a mass of narrow streets, closely packed between the river and the hills—the city is built in a mountain gorge—was famous for its iron and steel manufactures in the days of Elizabeth; and Shakespeare uses the terms bilbo, a rapier, and bilboes,
OLD BILBAO.
fetters. The new town, on the more spacious left bank of the river, is well built; the principal streets are straight and broad, and the houses are substantial. Three stone and two iron bridges cross the river between the old and the new Bilbao. The city owes, of course, its prosperity mainly to the enormous deposits of iron ore on the left bank of the Nervion, which, though known since the earliest times, have only been systematically exploited during the last quarter of a century. Long lines of steamers are constantly loading iron ore, chiefly for Cardiff, Newport, Glasgow, and Newcastle; and the annual amount of British tonnage entering Bilbao exceeds, with the exception of Antwerp, that of any other foreign port in Europe. Pig iron is the staple export—red