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The change in entering Spain is surprising; at Behobie, the last place in France, one could easily believe one's self still on the Loire; in Fuentarabia a steep street twelve feet wide, every window with balcony and curtain, every balcony with black eyes and mantillas, beauty and dirt; at the market-place drums and fifes, and some hundreds of women, old and young, dancing a fandango, while the men in their drapery looked on, smoking.
A man who has seen much of the world must hold some places strangely and essentially beautiful. My own favourite spots are Auckland, N. Z.; the upper end of the Lake of Geneva; Funchal in Madeira; the valley of the Columbia at Golden City and the valley of the Eden seen from Barras in England. To these I can now add Fuentarabia, the Pyrenees and the Bidassoa.
Further to the south, and across the Bidassoa, in Spain, rises the sharp ridge of the Jaisquivel, beneath which lies Fuentarabia. Yonder by Irun is the abrupt cliff of Las Tres Coronas, three crowns of rock. Here one is in the south-east of the Bay, where France and Spain run together, and the sea, under the dominion of the prevailing south-westers, is rarely at peace with the land.
Right opposite me Hendaye burnt redly in the glow of the southern sun. In no place that I can remember have I seen two countries, three towns, a range of mountains, a big river and the sea at one time. And there was not a spot in view that had not been stained with the blood of Englishmen. But now there were no echoes of war in Fuentarabia.
Lockhart hastened to tender the services of the regiments in Flanders, and received in return a renewal of his credentials as ambassador, with a commission to attend the conferences between the ministers of France and Spain at Fuentarabia. 3. Montague followed with a letter from the fleet; but his professions of attachment were received with distrust.
Abandoning the hopeless project, he instantly continued his journey to the congress at Fuentarabia, with the delusive expectation that, on the conclusion of peace between the two crowns, he should obtain a supply of money, and perhaps still more substantial aid, from a personal interview with the ministers, Cardinal Mazarin and Don Louis de Haro.
Across the Bidassoa rose the quaint roofs and towers of old Fuentarabia, the Fontarabie of the French. I hired an eager Basque to row me across the river, then running seaward at the last of the ebb. The day was splendid and mild. There was no cloud in the sky, not a wreath of mist upon the mountains.
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