My fine distinction was beyond him, and it took me not a little indirect questioning to discover that he was certainly more French than Basque. He presently denounced the Spanish Basques in good round terms, and incidentally showed me that there must be a very considerable difference in their respective dialects. For he complained that the Spanish Basques spoke so fast that it was hard to understand them.
He put me ashore at last on a mud flat and accompanied me to the Fonda Miramar, where a bright and pretty waitress hurried, after the fashion of Spaniards, to such an extent that she got me a simple lunch in no more than half an hour. My Spanish is far worse even than my French, but in spite of that we carried on an animated conversation in French and English, Basque and Spanish. At lunch my talk grew more fluent and Mariquita went more deeply into matters. She desired to know what I thought of the Basques, of whom she was one, and a sudden flicker of the deceitful imagination set me inventing. I told her that I was a Basque myself, though I was also an Englishman. She exclaimed at this. She had never heard of English Basques. How was it I did not speak it? This was a sore point with me. I assured her of the shameful fact that the English Basques had lost their own tongue; they were degenerate. I had some thoughts of learning it in order to re-introduce it into England. As soon as Mariquita had mastered this astounding story she hurried to the kitchen, and as I heard her relating something with great excitement, I have little doubt that a legend of English Basques is now well on its way past historic doubt. Leaving her to consider the news I had brought, I went out with my boatman to view the old town. I found it quaint and individual and lovely.
A man who has seen much of the world must hold some places strangely and essentially beautiful. My own favourite spots are Auckland, N. Z.; the upper end of the Lake of Geneva; Funchal in Madeira; the valley of the Columbia at Golden City and the valley of the Eden seen from Barras in England. To these I can now add Fuentarabia, the Pyrenees and the Bidassoa. I stood upon the roof of the old ruined palace of Charles Le Quint, and on every point of the compass the view had most peculiar and wonderful qualities. Beneath me was the increasing flood of the frontier river: at my very feet lay the narrow and picturesque street cañons of the ancient town; to the south was Irun in the shelter and shadow of the mountains; east-south-east rose the pyramidal summit of Larhune; the west was the sharp ridge of the brown Jaisquivel which hid San Sebastian; to the north was the rolling Bay; and right to the south the triple crown of Las Tres Coronas cut the sky sharply. Right opposite me Hendaye burnt redly in the glow of the southern sun. In no place that I can remember have I seen two countries, three towns, a range of mountains, a big river and the sea at one time. And there was not a spot in view that had not been stained with the blood of Englishmen.
But now there were no echoes of war in Fuentarabia. Peace lay over its dark homes and within its ancient walls.
ON A VOLCANIC PEAK
I had seen Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, but had never yet climbed any volcano until I stood upon the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, Pico de Teyde, home of the gods and devils as well as of the aboriginal Guanches of the Canary Islands.
The wind was bitterly cold, more bitter, indeed, than I have ever felt, and yet, as I stood and shivered upon the little crater's brink, fumes of sulphurous acid and smoke swept round me and made me choke. The edge of the crater was of white fired rock; inside the cup the hollow was sulphur yellow. Puffs of smoke came from cracks. I dropped out of the wind and warmed myself at the fire. I picked up warm stones and danced them from one hand to another. And overhead a wind of ice howled. For the Peak is twelve thousand feet and more above the sea. An hour before I had been cutting steps in the last slopes of the last ash cone of the volcano which still lives and may burst into activity at any fatal moment.
To stand upon the Peak and look down upon the world and the sea gives one a great notion of the making of things. Once the world was a crucible. The islands are all volcanic, all ash and cinders, lava and pumice. But I perceived that the Peak itself, the final peak, the last five thousand feet of it, was but the last result of a dying fire—a mere gas spurt to what had been. The whole anatomy of the island is laid bare; the history and the growth of the peak are written in letters of lava, in wastes of pumice and fire-scarred walls. The plain of the Cañadas lies beneath me, and is ten miles across. This was the ancient crater; it is as big as the crater of Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Islands. But Kilauea is yet truly alive, a sea of lava with many cones spouting lava. Such was the crater of Teneriffe before the last peak rose within its basin. Now retama, a hardy bitter shrub, grows in these plains of pumice; the flats of it are pumice and rapilli, white and brown. But the ancient crater walls stand unbroken for miles, though here and there they have been swept away, some say by floods of water belched from the pit.