“It is how we Basques name our own tongue.”
“Well, I don’t care. Get me a guide.”
“I fear I cannot, monsieur. The country people do not want Alava to become the prey of tourists, and they will be slow to allow a stranger.”
“Have you got a road-map?”
Yes, the proprietor had a road-map—of sorts. It looked faulty, and Cartaret found later that it was more faulty than it looked; but he resolved to make it do, and that afternoon found him in the saddle of a lean and hardy mare, ten miles on his way. He had brought with him a pair of English riding-breeches and leggings—purchased in Paris for no other reason than that he had the money and used to love to ride—his reduced equipment was in saddle-bags, and the road-map in his handiest pocket.
He put up at a little inn that night and rode hard, east by south, all the next day. He rode through fertile valleys where the fields were already yellow with wheat and barley. He came upon patches of Indian corn that made him think of the country about his own Ohio home, and upon flax-fields and fields of hemp. His way lay steadily upward, and in the hills he met with iron-banks and some lead and copper mines. Queerly costumed peasants herded sheep and goats along the roadside; but nobody that Cartaret addressed could understand a word of his speech. The road-map was bad, indeed: twice he lost his way by consulting it and once, he thought, by failing to consult it. A road that the map informed him would lead straight to Alegria ended in a marble-quarry.
Cartaret accosted the only workman in sight.
“Alegria?” he asked.
The man pointed back the way that Cartaret had come.
He followed the direction thus indicated and took a turning that he had missed before. He passed through a countryside of small plains. Then he began to climb again and left these for stretches of bare heath and hills covered with furze. From one hilltop he looked ahead to a vast pile of mountains crowned by two white peaks that shone in the sun like the lances of a celestial guard. The farms were less and less in size and farther and farther apart—tiny farms cultivated with antique implements. Apple-orchards appeared and disappeared, and then, quite suddenly, the hills became mountains, their bases covered by great forests of straight chestnut-trees, gigantic oaks and stately bushes whose limbs met in a dark canopy above the rider’s head. At his approach, rabbits scurried, white tails erect, across the road; from one rare clearing a flock of partridges whirred skyward, and once, in the distance, he saw a grazing herd of wild deer.