the days of the Romans, probably since long before, out of kin with all
the world, and the world's periods have passed on and left them. No one
knows their birth-mark; they have forgotten it themselves. Of theories,
numberless and hopelessly in discord, each still offers its weighty
arguments, and each destroys the certainty of any.

This appears incredible. What mystery is insoluble in the sharp light of
modern research? Yet until the defenders of the view that the Basques
came from Atlantis can make truce with the advocates of their Phoenician
origin,--until the well-attested theory of their affinity with certain
South American races can overthrow the better-attested theory that they
are the remains of the ancient Iberians,--until Moor and Finn,[7] Tartar
and Coptic, can amicably blend their claims to relationship, the Basques
must remain as they are,--foundlings; or rather, a race whose length of
pedigree has swallowed up its beginnings.

[7] It is said that the Basque nomenclature of domestic animals is
almost entirely Finnish.


It is these unattached sea and mountain races who are always hardest to
conquer. Hence the boast of the Basques. Even the Romans, though they
could defeat, could not subdue them. The strong Roman fortress of
Lapurdum (now Bayonne) did not succeed in even terrifying them, though
they were worsted several times by its legions. Down through all the
early part of the long Christian era, the forefathers of these
frank-faced fishers and mountaineers we see here in the streets of St.
Jean kept their hills stubbornly to themselves. Later, as much perhaps
from policy as necessity, the race came gradually to fall in with the
general governments crystallizing about them. The Spanish Basques came