Scale 1 : 50,000.

Delightful Fuenterrabia (Fontarabie), with its escutcheoned houses, is likewise shut off from the sea by a bar, and is indebted for such importance as it possesses to its sea baths and the vicinity of France, which is visible from its battered walls. Irun, the terminal station of the Spanish railways, close to the French frontier, is an important strategical position; and Tolosa, with its factories, is the capital of Guipúzcoa. Zarauz, Guetaria (on the neck of a peninsula), and Lequeitio are seaside resorts. Zumaya, at the mouth of the Urola valley, has quarries of gypsum, which furnish excellent cement. Near Vergara are ferruginous springs, and a famous college founded in 1776 by the Basque Society. The convention which put a stop to the first Carlist war in 1839 was signed here. Durango, likewise, has frequently been mentioned in connection with the civil wars carried on in the north of Spain. Guernica, in Biscay, boasts of a palace of justice and an old oak beneath which the legislature is in the habit of meeting; but, like all other Basque towns, it is hardly more than a village.

The centres of population are not more numerous on the southern slope of the Pyrenees. Vitoria, the capital of Álava, on the railway connecting Madrid with Paris, is a commercial and manufacturing town. Pamplona, or Pampeluna, recalls the name of Pompey, who rebuilt it. It is a fortress, often besieged and captured. Its cathedral is one of the finest in Spain. Tafalla, la flor de Navarra, the ancient capital of the kingdom, has the ruins of a palace, which Carlos the Noble, who {448} built it, desired to unite by means of a covered gallery with the palace of Olite, three miles lower down in the same valley. Puente la Reina is celebrated for its wines. Estella, one of the most charming towns of Navarra, commands several roads leading to Castile and Aragon, and its strategical importance is consequently considerable. The Carlists, during the late war, transformed it into a formidable fortress.

Tudela, abounding in wines, Calahorra, and Logroño, all in the adjoining province of Logroño, are likewise of some value from a military point of view, for they command the passages over the Ebro. Calahorra, with its proud motto, “I have prevailed over Carthage and Rome,” was the great bulwark of defence when Sertorius fought Pompey, but was made to pay dearly for its heroism. Besieged by the Romans, its defenders, constrained by hunger, fed upon their women and children, and most of them perished. Though situated in the fertile district of Rioja, beyond the frontiers of the Euskarian language, the history of Calahorra is intimately connected with that of the Basque provinces, for upon its ancient laws were modelled the fueros of Álava.[161]

VIII.—SANTANDER, THE ASTURIAS, AND GALICIA.

The Atlantic slope of the Cantabrian Pyrenees is a region completely distinct from the rest of Spain. Mountains, hills, valleys, and running waters succeed each other in infinite variety, and the coast throughout is steep, with bold promontories and deep inlets, into which flow rapid torrents. The climate is moist and salubrious. The Celto-Iberian inhabitants of the country have in most instances escaped the commotions which devastated the other provinces of the peninsula, and the population, in proportion to the cultivable area, is more dense than elsewhere. This region, being very narrow compared with its length, has been split up into several political divisions, in spite of similarity of physical features. The old kingdom of Galicia occupies the west, the Asturias the centre, and Santander the east.[162]

The mountain region of Santander begins immediately to the east of the Sierra Salvada and the depression known as Valle de Mena. The Cantabrian Mountains slope down steeply there towards the Bay of Biscay, whilst their height above the upland, through which the Ebro has excavated its bed, is but trifling. The Puerto del Escudo attains an elevation of 3,241 feet above Santander, its southern descent to the valley of the Virga hardly exceeding 500 feet. The Pass of Reinosa (2,778 feet), farther west, through which runs the railway from Madrid to Santander, is even more characteristic. An almost imperceptible height of land there separates the plateau from the steep declivity which leads down to the coast, and by means of a canal sixty feet deep, and a mile in length, the waters of the Ebro might be diverted into the river Besaya, which enters the Atlantic at San Martin de Suances. This height of land forms the natural outlet of {449} the Castiles to the sea, and its possession is as important to the inhabitants of the plateau as is that of the mouth of a river to a people dwelling on its upper course.

[Μ]

Fig. 176.—THE ENVIRONS OF BILBAO.