more
frontiers.

After Pau our route led to Mauleon (seventy-two kilometres) via
Oloron, straight across Bearn, where the peasants are still of that
picturesque mien which one so seldom sees out of the comic-opera
chorus. One reads that the Bearnais are "irascible, jealous, and
spirituel."

This is some one's opinion of times long passed, but certainly we
found nothing of the kind; nothing indeed different from all the folk
of the South who dawdle at their work and spend most of their leisure
energetically dancing or eating.

Mauleon, known locally as Mauleon-Licharre to distinguish it from
Mauleon-Barousse, is the _douane_ station for entering France from
Spain (Pampelune) via St. Jean-Pied-de-Port and St. Beat, neither of
the routes much used, and not at all by automobiles.

A typical little mountain town, Mauleon is the _chef-lieu_ of the
Arrondissement, and the ancient capital of the Vicomte de Soule. It
has an excellent hotel, allied to the Touring Club de France (Hotel
Saubidet), where one dines well off the fare of the country with no
imitation Parisian dishes. There is a sort of a historical monument
here, the Chateau de Mauleon (Malo-Leone--Mauvais Lion--Wicked Lion:
the reader may take his choice) of the fifteenth century, which
surrounds itself accommodatingly with a legend which the native will
tell you, if asked.

There is no great accommodation for automobiles at Mauleon, and one
can only buy oil and gasoline by going to a man named Etcheberrigary
for it. His address is not given, but any one will tell you where he
lives. They may not recognize your pronunciation, but they will
recognize your dilemma at once and point the way forthwith.

It was forty-one kilometres to St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, over an
"all-up-and-down-hill" road, if there ever was one--up out of one
river valley and down into another all the way until we struck the
road by the banks of the Nive and approached the town.

St. Jean-Pied-de-Port takes its name from its proximity to one of the
Franco-Spanish gateways through the Pyrenees.

It is in danger of becoming a resort, since the guide-books already
announce it as a _station climatique_. Its Basque name of
_Donajouana_, or _Don Ilban-Garici_, ought, however, to stop any
great throng from coming.

It lies directly at the foot of the Col de Roncevalles leading into
Spain (1,057 metres). The pass has ever been celebrated in the annals
of war, from the days of the Paladin Roland to