is a flagged
space enclosed on two sides by houses, some of which are over a couple
of centuries old, with armorial bearings sculptured over the doors; on
the third by the Municipality; and on the fourth by a grey church, lofty
and large, seated on an eminence and approached by a flight of stone
steps. The Municipality is a massive building, level with the street,
with a colonnaded portico, and a front over which some artist in
distemper had passed his brush. This facade is eloquent with mural
painting, if one could only understand it all. There are symbolic
figures of heroic size, coveys of cherubs, hatchments, masonic-looking
emblems, and inscriptions. A Carlist sentry, dandling a naked bayonet in
the hollow of his arm, was pacing to and fro in the portico, and the
remaining warriors of the post were lounging about, cigarette in mouth,
much as our own fellows do outside the guard-house on Commercial Square,
at Gibraltar. I was curious to see the Carlist uniform. Assuredly the
uniform does not make the soldier, but it goes a great way towards it.
Uniformity was the least striking feature in the dress of the men before
me. They were clad in the ordinary garb of the mountain-peasants. Short
coarse jackets and loose trousers, confined at the waist by a faja, or
girdle of bright-coloured woollen stuff, were worn by some; blouses of
serge, knee-breeches, and stockings or gaiters, by others; but all,
without exception, had the boina, or pancake-shaped woollen cap of the
Basque provinces, and the alpargatas, or flat-soled canvas shoes.
By-and-by was heard a bugle-blast and the quick, regular tread of
marching men, and the head of a company came in sight. In perfect time
the company paced, four deep, into the Plaza, halted, and fell into line
in two ranks. Thus, in succession, seven other companies arrived,
forming the fifth, battalion of Navarre, a vigorous, wiry set of men,
impressing the experienced eye as excellent raw material for soldiers,
albeit got up in costume very much resembling that of brigands of the
Comic Opera. Physically, the natives of the hilly northern provinces are
the pick of Spain. The battalion had its flag, white between two stripes
of scarlet, on which was inscribed the name of the corps, and the
legend, "The country for ever, but always in honour." This was, of
course, written in Basque, of which my rendering is rather free, but it
gives exactly the sense of the sentiment. It was soon palpable to
anyb