higher land, and shows beach and hill and sea in turn as it trends over
the downs. It is another clear, taintless morning. The sun is already
high; but, though having the sky wholly to himself, he is forbearing in
his power. Palisades of poplars lend us their shadows; clumps of
protecting firs stand aside for the road, each with a great gash down
its side and a cup fastened below to catch the bleeding pitch. Now we
are facing the Pyrenees; a little to the left they rise before us, still
miles away. These are not the high Pyrenees; the monarchs stand in the
centre of their realm, and are hardly to be seen, even distantly, until
we shall in a day or two turn inland and approach them. The mountain
wall is broken and lower near the sea, both east and west; yet even here
it rises commandingly, filling the horizon with its hazy hills.

The road is the counterpart of that to Bayonne. We fly smoothly on,
above its hard, thin crackle of sand. We meet peasants afoot, and
burdened horses, on their morning way to Biarritz or Bayonne. The men
ornament their loose, blue linen frocks and brown trousers with the
bright scarlet sash so popular in this region. Heavy oxen draw their
creaking loads toward the same centres,--their bowed heads yoked by the
horns, which are cushioned with a woolly sheepskin mat and tasseled with
red netting. They pull strongly, for the loads are not light, and the
clumsy wheels are disks of solid wood. Little donkeys trot amiably by,
with huge double panniers that recall the _cacolet_. A file of marching
soldiers is overtaken; small villages are passed, each one agog with the
stir of our transit; while now and then we meet a dog-cart and cob or a
stylish span, antennae of the coming season of fashion.

To the right is the accurate level of the sea-horizon; about us are the
heath and furze and the sand-dunes; and far along to the south we can
trace the arc of the beach, until it ends in the projecting hills of