fain keep out of the modern world. The spectacle of this little
confederacy, steadily maintaining its isolation for so many centuries,
is most interesting, and, in some aspects, affecting; but the very
stubbornness and the prolonged success of its resistance to all attempts
to draw it into the current of modern life and thought only enhances the
significance of its ultimate failure, and furnishes an expressive
commentary upon the futility of a people's most determined efforts to
hold itself aloof from the brotherhood of nations. Contact is God's
manifest decree. The five Basques at Bayonne bridge, helpless against
the incoming tide, present a truthful prophecy of the destiny of the
whole race before the advancing and mounting wave of modern
civilization."

[8] VINCENT: _In the Shadow of the Pyrenees_. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.


V.

In this region, too, lies the famous pass of Ibañeta or Roncesvalles. It
may be readily visited in a two days' excursion from St. Jean or from
Biarritz. There is a carriage-road to Valcarlos, a small village on the
way; beyond, a mule-path winds on up through the pass and down to the
convent on the other side.

This convent was founded to commemorate the one greatest tradition of
the pass,--the destruction of Charlemagne's rear-guard by the Basques in
ambush and the death of the hero Roland.

"Oh for a blast of that dread horn