zest and boast of recrossing the river and of entering and leaving Spain
once more.


II.

Luncheon past, we walk up the long, easy incline that leads from Hendaye
station into its town; and with a turn to the left find our way through
its streets down again to the river bank. Here are boats and boatmen,
and we have to run the customary gauntlet of competition, as vociferous
at Hendaye as at Killarney or the Crossmon. We elect two of the
competitors as allies, and the rest become our sworn enemies forthwith.

The tide is low, the water still and shallow; and we are sculled
smoothly out into the stream, restful in the soft sunshine, the full
blue of the afternoon sky. The voices of our hundred enemies recede; the
sounds from the town yield to the dripping oars; soon the stream
stretches its silent width about us. Close-grouped on the opposite shore
we see the dark walls of Fuenterrabia, domineered by the castle. The
railway whistle begins to seem a memory of another existence, the bustle
of travel a thing remote. The quiet of the river, unlike Lethe, turns us
to the past, and clouds the present in a dreamy haze.

"In that sunny corner where the waves of the Bay of Biscay wash over a
sandy barrier and mingle with the waters of the Bidassoa stream,"--thus
runs the legend so charmingly recounted in _The Sun-Maid_,--"they tell
the ancient story that a favored mortal won from the gods permission to
ask three blessings for Spain.

"He asked that her daughters might be beautiful, that her sons might be