San Sebastian.—A large and very attractive Spanish watering-place, frequently visited by the King of Spain; citadel, on Mont Orgullo, is all that remains of the defences of the town, besieged by the English in the Peninsular War; Churches of Santa Maria, built in 1743, and San Vicente, rebuilt in 1507; modern bull-ring.
Irun.—A small town of little interest; the church dates from 1508.
Fuentarrabia.—A very quaint old walled town, at the mouth of the Bidassoa, about 3 kilometres from the main road at Irun.
This section of the tour is a two days’ journey to and from Pamplona, the capital of Navarre. It is recommended on account of the scenery of the passes of the Pyrenees which are traversed rather than for any architectural or archæological interest, beyond the picturesqueness of the houses of the wayside villages.
For the whole time one is either among the Basque people or their neighbours a little to the south, who are sufficiently similar to them to be almost indistinguishable.
THE BASQUES
The Basque people, when unmixed, are a fair people in face and hair, and they are generally regarded as the survivors of the Iberian race which in primitive times occupied Western Europe from Spain to Ireland. Everywhere else they appear to have been absorbed by other races, and by many who have studied the subject have been looked upon as a part of the stock of the modern English, Irish, and Welsh.
Their language is of the agglutinative order, and has been called the despair of philologists, the difficulty of discovering how many of the Basque words have not been assimilated from other tongues being almost insurmountable.
Of the religion of the ancient Basques Dr. Webster declares that no signs remain, their country being without burial tumuli or standing stones, although in the neighbouring areas the tumuli are thickly sown. The early Christian missionaries speak of idols, but no one knows what these were. Although a Roman road penetrates the heart of their country, the Basques were very gradually Christianized, while the Celts, on the contrary, were very susceptible to the new teaching from the East.