By Fontarabia."

--MILTON.


The next day an indolent morning train draws us back to the frontier.
The landscape is rather shadeless; "a Spaniard hates a tree." It should
be but a twenty-minute ride, and so, it being short at the longest, we
do not have time to grudge the additional twenty consumed in
"indolencing." The time-table allowed for that, and so prepared us. It
is when larger times are involved,--when a four-hour ride is inflated to
eight, and an eight-hour trip to fifteen, as in going to Burgos,--that
the corporate deliberateness of the Spanish railways ceases to be a
curiosity, and becomes a crime.

We are soon in Irun once more, and after change of cars, cross to
Hendaye, and baggage is inspected for France. The train goes on its way
north, but we stay in Hendaye, to lunch, and to make our projected
excursion to Fuenterrabia.

In terms of logic, San Sebastian the modern has in Fuenterrabia the
ancient its full "contradictory." The one, the resort, is affirmative
and universal; the other, the old, strange town, is negative and
individual. The one has told us little of old Spain; we turn hopefully
to the other.

Fuenterrabia lies near the mouth of the Bidassoa, on the Spanish side of
the stream, below Irun. It is but two miles, from Irun, and readily
reached from that place by carriage; from Hendaye, on the French side,
one reaches it by row-boat in about the same time, with the additional