The next afternoon found me in Vitoria, in the land of the Basque; yet another kind of Spain. Vitoria is a city of to-day, clean, bustling, almost American in her streets and architecture and the wide-awake air of the Vascongado. The boína--round cap without visor and the end of a string for tassel--had all at once become universal, worn, like the fez in Damascus, by every age and grade of man from bootblack to mayor. So pleasing was this prosaic city that even though her prices were high I loitered in her shade until the next afternoon before seeking out the highway to Bilbáo.
There lay sixty-seven kilometers to the seaport, a half of which I hoped to cover before halting for the night. For on the following day Bilbáo was to celebrate in honor of the king. The way led me through a country fertile for all its stoniness, made so by the energy and diligence of the Basque, whose strong features, bold curved nose, piercing eyes and sturdy form was to be seen on every hand. With the southern Spaniard this new race had almost nothing in common, and though as serious of deportment as the gallego there was neither his bashfulness nor stupidity. The Castilian spoken in the region was excellent, the farming implements of modern manufacture and the methods of the husbandman thousands of years ahead of Andalusia.
As the day was fading I began to clamber my way upward into the mountains that rose high in the darkening sky ahead. The night grew to one of the blackest, the heavens being overcast; but he who marches on into the darkness without contact with artificial light may still see almost plainly. It was two hours, perhaps, after nightfall, and the road was winding ever higher around the shoulder of a mammoth peak, its edge a sheer precipice above unfathomable depths, when suddenly I saw a man, a denser blackness against the sea of obscurity, standing stock-still on the utmost edge of the highway.
"Buenos tardes," I greeted in a low voice, almost afraid that a hearty tone would send him toppling backward to his death.
He neither answered nor moved. I stepped closer.
"You have rather a dangerous position, verdad, señor?"
Still he stared motionless at me through the darkness. Could he be some sleep-walker? I moved quietly forward and, thrusting out a hand, touched him on the sleeve. It was hard as if frozen! For an instant I recoiled, then with a sudden instinctive movement passed a hand quickly and lightly over his face. Was I dreaming? That, too, was hard and cold. I sprang back and, rummaging hastily through my pockets, found one broken match. The wind was rushing up from the bottomless gulf below. I struck a light, holding it in the hollow of my hand, and in the instant before it was blown out I caught a few words of an inscription on a pedestal:
"ERECTED TO THE MEM--
THROWN OVER THIS PRECIPICE--
BANDITS--NIGHT OF--"
and before I had made out date or name I was again in darkness.
Over the summit, on a lower, less wind-swept level, I came upon a long mining town scattered on either side of the highway. I dropped in at a wineshop and bespoke supper and lodging. A dish of the now omnipresent bacalao was set before me, but for a time the keeper showed strong disinclination to house a wandering stranger falling upon him at this advanced hour.