Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces

It was not the Revolution alone that brought about a division of landed property in France. The Crusades, particularly that of Saint Bernard, accomplished the same thing, though...

In the western valleys of the Pyrenees, opening out into the Landes bordering upon the Golfe de Gascogne, rises the little river Bidassoa, famous in history and romance. To the...

One of the great joys of the traveller is the placid contemplation of his momentary environment. The visitor to Biarritz, Pau, Luchon, Foix or Carcassonne has ever before his ey...

There is a section of the Pyrenees that may well be called "the unknown Pyrenees." The main chain has been travelled, explored and exploited for long years, but the Canigou, lyi...

Most people, or certainly most women, connect the name basque with a certain article of ladies' wearing apparel. Just what its functions were, when it was in favour a generation...

It may be a question as to who discovered the Pyrenees, but Louis XIV was the first exploiter thereof--writing in a literal sense--when he made the famous remark "_Il y a des Py...

One of Guy de Maupassant's heroes, having been asked his impressions of Algiers, replied, "_Alger est une ville blanche!_" If it had been Perpignan of which he was speaking, he...

Orthez is another of those cities of the Pyrenees which does not live up to its possibilities, at least not in a commercial sense. Nevertheless, some of us find it all the more...

Pau, _ville d'hiver mondaine et cosmopolite_, is the way the railway-guides describe the ancient capital of Béarn, and it takes no profound knowledge of the subtleties of the Fr...

The Gave de Pau, a swiftly-flowing stream which comes down from its icy cradle in the Cirque de Gavarnie and joins with the Adour near Bayonne's port, winds its way through a ge...

This book is no record of exploitation or discovery; it is simply a review of many things seen and heard anent that marvellous and comparatively little known region vaguely desc...

The Roman conquest of Gaul was the first impetus given towards a coherent massing of the peoples. Formerly there had been many tribes and races, but the three divisions made by...

The entire valley of the Ariège, from the Val d'Andorre until it empties into the Garonne at Toulouse, contains as many historic and romantic reminders as that of any river of t...

Roussillon is a curious province. "Roussillon is a bow with two strings," say the inhabitants. The workers in the vineyards of other days are becoming fishermen, and the fisherm...

The Béarnais and the Basques have no historical monuments in their country anterior to the Roman invasion, and for that matter Roman monuments themselves are nearly non-existent...

The old Vicomté de Béarn lay snug within the embrace of the Pyrenees between Foix, Comminges and Basse Navarre. It was further divided into various small districts whose entitie...

If Bayonne is the centre of commercial affairs for the Basque country, its citizens must at any rate go to Biarritz if they want to live "the elegant and worldly life."

Never was there an architectural glory like that of Carcassonne. Most mediæval fortified bourgs have been transformed out of all semblance to their former selves, but not so Car...

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the ancient capital of Basse-Navarre, is the gateway to one of the seven passes of the Pyrenees. To-day it is as quaint and unworldly as it was when cap...

Oloron, at the confluence of the Gave d'Ossau and the Gave d'Aspe, has existed since Roman times, when it was known as Iluro, finally changing to Oloro and Olero. It was sacked...

Foix, of all the Préfectures of France of to-day, is the least cosmopolitan. Privas, Mende and Digne are poor, dead, dignified relics of the past; but Foix is the dullest of all...

Le Pays de Couserans lies in the valley of the Salat, in the mid-Pyrenees, hemmed in by Foix, Comminges and Spain. Its name is derived from the Euskarans, an Iberian tribe who w...

On ascending the Gave d'Ossau, all the way to Laruns and beyond, one is impressed by the beauty of the snow-crested peaks before them, unless by chance an exceptionally warm spe...

The Comté de Foix and its civilization goes back to prehistoric, Gallic and Roman times. This much we know, but what the detailed events of these periods were, we know not. Arch...

There is a clean-cut, commercial-looking air to Tarbes, little in keeping with what one imagines the capital of the Hautes-Pyrénées to be. Local colour has mostly succumbed to t...

The antique city of Beneharnum is lost in modern Lescar, though, indeed, Lescar is far from modern, for it is unprogressive with regard to many of those up-to-date innovations w...

The Aude, rising close under the crest of the Pyrenees, flows down to the Mediterranean between Narbonne and Béziers. It is one of the daintiest mountain streams imaginable as i...

Three distinct _quartiers_ are formed by the flowing waters of the Nive and the Adour, communication being by a series of exceedingly picturesque, if not exactly serviceable, br...

On the first steep slope of the Pyrenees, bounded on one side by Couserans and on the other by Bigorre, is the ancient Comté de Comminges, the territory of the Convènes, whose c...

There is no more gracious little river valley in all France than that of the Nive, as it flows from fabled Ronçevaux by Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Bidarray and Cambo, to the Gulf...