THE METHOD OF SHOEING BULLOCKS IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY.
A sketch at Sant’ Esteban. (Page 207.)
galleries, while the women have the great surface of rather dusty wooden floor to themselves.
Just where it is necessary to turn to the left to get to the bridge the square-turreted Château de Louis XIV., built by Louis XIII., stands overlooking a wide place. The Mairie, built in 1657, contains the act of marriage of Louis XIV., and the Maison de l’Infante, on the quay, is shown as the house where the royal bride stayed before her wedding; it contains a painting of the ceremony by Gérôme.
No. 2, Rue Mazarin, behind the Maison de l’Infante, was occupied by Wellington when he had his headquarters in the town from November 17, 1813, to February 20, 1814, after defeating Soult at the Battle of the Nivelle. In this time of inactivity, while preparations were being made for investing Bayonne, the life in St. Jean de Luz is thus sketched by Colonel Hill James:
‘A gay little town was St. Jean de Luz in those days, when a pack of English foxhounds successfully drew the neighbouring woods, followed by a brilliant field of the boldest spirits of the day. Lord Wellington encouraged the sport by constantly appearing at the meets, wearing his favourite Salisbury Hunt livery of sky-blue with black cape. The Basque inhabitants flocked to see this novel sport, undismayed by their warlike surroundings; for the manly, honest, and straightforward conduct of the strangers had reassured them, and they had returned to their homes to court the presence and protection of the British Army, which paid with a liberal hand in good coin for all it required.’
As long ago as 1520 Basque ships sailed from St. Jean de Luz to fish off the coast of Newfoundland, and as pioneers in this enterprise one can feel the fullest sympathy for the tenacity with which the French have held to their fishery rights on that part of the American coast.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries St. Jean prospered exceedingly, although in 1588 the Spaniards had succeeded in burning the town, in revenge for the many things they had suffered at the hands of the Basque corsairs who lived at the mouth of the Nivelle.