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Updated: June 2, 2025
He took train to Hendaye, the little frontier town, at the mouth of the Bidassoa, crossed the river in a boat, stepped on to Spanish soil, and climbed the hill on which stands Fuenterabbia. Later he passed again to the French shore, and lunched at the hotel.
I walked down through a field of maize to the Bidassoa, crossed by a ferry-boat to the other side, where a post of the 49th of the French Line were peacefully playing cards for buttons in the shade of a chestnut, and a few minutes afterwards was seated in front of a bottle of Dublin stout with the countryman who forwarded my letters and telegrams from over the border.
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.
Since the 13th of August, Cardinal Mazarin had been officially negotiating with Don Louis de Haro, representing Philip IV. The ministers had held a meeting in the middle of the Bidassoa, on the Island of Pheasants, where a pavilion had been erected on the boundary-line between the two states.
He rode a knowing-looking, thorough-bred horse, and wore a gray overcoat, Hessian boots, and a large cocked hat. We commenced the passage of the Bidassoa about five in the morning, and in a short time infantry, cavalry, and artillery found themselves upon French ground.
He was a genuine hard-working soldier, a man of extraordinary courage, and one who was ever found ready to gain laurels amidst the greatest dangers. When the 7th Fusiliers crossed the Bidassoa, the late duke left the staff and joined the regiment in which he had a company.
Towards that hill, and the Nivelle at its foot, the land slopes down, still wooded and broken, bounded by a long sweep of clayey crumbling cliff. The eye catches the fort of Secoa, at the mouth of the Nivelle once Wellington's sea-base for his great French campaign. Then Fontarabia, at the Bidassoa mouth; and far off, the cove within which lies the fatal citadel of St.
And when the cavaliers thus accoutred possess olive or chocolate complexions, with dark flashing eyes and a considerable amount of beard, and are elevated upon demi-pique saddles, whose holsters may or may not contain "pistols as long as my arm," whilst some of their number have perhaps fowling-pieces slung on their shoulder, it is scarcely surprising if the English Cockney or Parisian badaud mistakes them for the banditti whom he has dreamed about ever since he crossed the Bidassoa or landed at Cadiz.
We moved rapidly by the same road on which we had retired, and, after a forced march, found ourselves, when near sunset, on the flank of their retiring column, on the Bidassoa, near the bridge of Janca, and immediately proceeded to business.
The water of the Bidassoa is to-night an immovable and clear mirror, a little more luminous than the sky, and in this mirror, are reproduced, upside down, all the constellations, the entire Spanish mountain, carved in so sombre a silhouette in the tranquil atmosphere.
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